Our Impact Report
When friends and I got together to discuss what we originally called Jobs for a Cause, and then renamed to Jobs for Humanity, we had one thing in mind: to build a real bridge of hope for employers to hire from communities who have historically had a hard time getting decent paying jobs.
We thought of those who find themselves in situations where they have a mountain to climb just in order to be financially secure. These are the same people who exhibit the very skills recruiters and hiring managers actually want: resilience, discipline, sacrifice, timeliness, hard work, patience, and empathy.
But many of them, for reasons often out of their control and others deeply rooted in the subconscious of interviewers, fail to get the job offer. In three years, we made meaningful strides in our journey, but still have a mountain to climb to deliver the impact we hope for.
Scale
So far, 473,012 job seekers applied to jobs on our platform. Every applicant was offered free 1:1 job coaching. 6,747 signed up. In order to support incoming requests, we recruited 170 recruiters and corporate employees to help improve job seekers’ resumes, cover letters, interview skills, and build their self confidence during the job search. As of this writing, 66 coaches are actively coaching with 47 more scheduled to start in the coming months.
Success Stories
It’s hard to quantify exactly how many people got interviews and landed jobs, because this info only lives in a company’s own recruitment and HR systems, but we have some data points:
Employers recorded 230 success stories on our platform. We estimate that the actual number of hires is a multiple of what’s recorded.
Coaching efforts are yielding wonderful results: A cohort of 112 job seekers who received coaching from Booking.com employees resulted in 63 receiving at least one interview and 36 (32%) receiving a job offer!
Our interpretation of diversity
To us, diversity encompasses all walks of life: personality, age, ethnicity, gender, background, circumstances, financial means, and much more. In cases where job seekers disclose any diversity characteristic, we have this talent breakdown within Jobs for humanity by community.
Note the intersectionality among communities: it’s common for a person to be blind, white, and be a single parent.
DE&I Training
We built a training program that was recently accredited by The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM). Participants who complete our 8 hour course receive 30 credits that count towards their professional certifications.
Each training covers the top challenges job seekers face and their solutions, the top challenges recruiters face and how to overcome them, how to create an inclusive interview process, reasonable accommodations, onboarding best practices, and how to have effective and difficult conversations.
Justice Impacted (77M+ people in the US alone): Led by Khalil Osiris who spent 20 years in prison before turning his life around. He’s since become a senior advisor for the Mandela family.
Refugees (110M+ worldwide): Led by Eugène van de Hemel who helped more than 800 refugees land paying jobs in the Netherlands and Benelux.
Blind & Low vision (300M+ worldwide): Led by Mark Hanohano who placed blind job seekers at over 20 organizations while being blind himself.
Deaf & Hard of hearing (450M+ worldwide): Led by Sam Sepah who spent 10 years at Google making their products accessible while being deaf himself.
Single parents (450M+ worldwide): Led by Jo Ioannidis, is a single mother who’s run TA and HR organizations for over 20 years and is the founder of Protoscience.
LGBTQIA+ (550M+ worldwide): Led by Izzy Claerhout (she/her) who has 10+ years in TA, co-founded Recruitment Architects, and is an influential voice in the trans community.
Neurodivergent (1B+ worldwide): Led by Dr. Dave Caudel who is the Associate Director of the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University. He was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.
Artificial Intelligence and Automation
In order to combine the best possible candidate experience, recruiter convenience, and accurately measure hiring success, we completed integrations with over 30 major Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).
This allows employers to automatically publish on our job sites, candidate applications to directly enter their ATSs, and application statuses to be directly shared back with Jobs for Humanity.
We’ve also invested in artificial intelligence to instantly derive the top objective of every job description, list its key results, and the skills needed for success. This lets us identify candidates whose past accomplishments match the desired key results of the job.
This approach emphasizes people’s past accomplishments over the pedigree of educational institutions or recognizable corporations, all while ignoring personal information. It opens up opportunities for job seekers who have the right experience but may come from atypical backgrounds.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
We contribute to 6 SDGs, but measure our success based on two: SDGs #8: “Decent Work and Economic Growth” and #10: “Reducing Inequalities”.
Our aim is to be among the largest contributors measured on number of people hired and new income generated by the time the UN meets again to evaluate progress in 2030.
Written by Roy Baladi, founder of Jobs for Humanity.