Inside the Black Box - Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

Meet the Needs of Participants
Many organizations in this study have a core group of employers they work with as partners for job
placements; however, they have to engage new employers on a continual basis to maintain a sufficient
number of potential job openings for their participants. Because many of the workforce programs in the
study work with harder-to-serve job seekers, strong and trusting relationships with employers are
critically important to achieve high levels of successful job placements. One program administrator
discussed working with employers to help them overcome their perceptions that those who are exoffenders
or are homeless are not qualified candidates for open positions. An administrator from a
different organization acknowledged they assess participants’ needs and forecast employers’ job openings
in order to ensure sufficient employment placements are available to place their program participants.
We know that this percentage of our students are known to have [problematic] background and lower
education. Then we need to make sure we have enough employers in the pipeline to fill that need.
Despite long-standing relationships with the organization, some employers will not hire job seekers with
criminal backgrounds. Due to challenges with placing harder-to-serve clients into jobs, one program
estimated an annual 20 percent attrition rate for their employer partners, requiring them to recruit many
employers each year to ensure there are ample job opportunities. The trusting relationships organizations
aim to build with employers can help place harder-to-serve job seekers, but employer perceptions and a
surplus of unemployed workers makes this task extremely challenging.
Respond to Changing Demand
The organizations’ emphasis on employer relationships may be more critical than ever during periods of
economic recession. Finding job placements for those with barriers to employment has been increasingly
difficult with the recent economic downturn:
It’s hard to help people find jobs partly because of the way the economy has been in the past few
years. Employers can really pick and choose, so they can make hiring ex-offenders like the last thing
they’re [going to] do. They have so many people in the labor market right now…employers can be so
choosy.
As relationships with employers become more important as the economy worsens, they must also evolve
to meet the changing demands and needs of employers and participants. The organizations in this study
have developed innovative ways to engage employers and build relationships that are adaptable to change
over time. A staff person at one program talked about how their engagement with employers helped them
update their program in order to better prepare participants and be more responsive to employers’ current
demand:
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