<p>Second chance employment is a daunting challenge in an environment where national unemployment nears 10% and where in some locations it is much higher. I have worked for several years in the field of helping hard to hire individuals find work.</p>
<p>Initially, my focus was on non-violent ex-offenders and working with employers and service providers (colleges, trade schools, churches) to reintegrate these jobseekers more fully into their communities. With 87 million American adults struggling with the effects of a criminal record, the challenges are huge. Unemployment rates for ex-offenders tops 60% in the first year after release.</p>
<p>A 2009 Justice Department study concludes that over time accused robbers, burglars and batterers pose no greater risk to employers than job candidates in the general population.</p>
<p>According a recent article in USA Today, “Ongoing research could ease employers' concerns about hiring former offenders and perhaps spark new legislative proposals to limit the liability for employers who do hire them.”</p>
<p>Properly screened, trained, educated, and mentored, this group of jobseekers will do anything possible to achieve and revalidate themselves.</p>
<p>But, ex-offenders are not the only population of jobseeker finding the job market difficult to navigate.</p>
<p>Three other groups have quickly emerged as important hard to hire constituents: Boomers, persons with disabilities, and those laid off during this downturn in the economy.</p>
<p>Age discrimination in employment is nothing new. However, the Generation known collectively as “baby boomers”, numbering over 78 million, is the most educated and experienced segment of our workforce with unprecedented political power and visibility.</p>
<p>This cohort is becoming a critical resource as lower birth rates have left the economy with a long-term worker shortage. Very few resources are currently available to Boomers to help them to either reenter the workforce or to move to more fulfilling roles. And even fewer still as geared towards helping employers reach out to this critical demographic. Yet, the Baby Boomer Generation’s buying power is staggering, representing over 55% of consumer package good sales, or just over $230 million.</p>
<p>Age should not make you discardable in the workforce. Youth and beauty are not job performance attributes. Nothing can take the place of experience, instinct, and skill-set mastery.</p>
<p>With over 52 million people with disabilities in the United States, a significant portion of the adult population is being underutilized and that makes this group the largest minority in the country. Over 30 million of these jobseekers would like to be employed and are actively looking, but are, as of yet, unemployed. We’ve heard the cliché for years – that we should look at a person for their abilities not their disabilities – yet while we all nod our heads in agreement, the same heads turn away to shield themselves from the uncomfortable feeling they experience when in the proximity of a person with a disability.</p>
<p>Every day, the paper is full of statistics regarding the rising flow of unemployment caused by laid-off workers. Many of these workers are highly skilled and experienced tradesmen. This group represents both a significant and motivated population that is very much in the news.<br />At the end of a recession, re-employment is a trailing indicator.</p>
<p>Employers begin rehiring only after some certainty of business viability. <br />It is my hope that employees look at the worthiness of the entire “hard to hire” jobseeker population and attempt to strike a balance of what’s right, what’s fair, and what’s good for our country. Second chance employment is all of the above.</p>
<p>As our recovery begins to expose itself and we find we’re not where we were but in a totally new place, the time is ripe to extend a helping hand. Because. . . a second chance only comes along once.</p>
2009-09-22T02:01:24Z
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2009-09-23T13:30:38Z
2009-09-23T17:31:31Z
Second chance employment puts the hard to hire jobseeker population back to work. Are you ready to hire an ex-offender in your company? The risk is less than you think.
A Second Chance Only Comes Along Once
1
2009-09-23T17:31:31Z