Getting Started: Strategies for Hiring Disadvantaged Young People

Emily Maldonado was still in high school when she decided to give up the full scholarship she had been awarded to Indiana Tech in Fort Wayne, Ind., to stay home and take care of her father. Her mother had recently passed away, and her father worked for a cleaning service, where he faced potential health risks during the pandemic—which had also led to Maldonado losing her fast-food job.

She landed another similar position, but it was a challenging time. Maldonado says school was important to her, and her mother had wanted her to go to college to land a job that would make her happy. Her mother’s life had been difficult, Maldonado says. She had wanted a better life for her daughter.

But that seemed beyond Maldonado’s reach until her boyfriend told her about a free job training program at the Paul Simon Job Corps Center in Chicago, where he was learning construction skills. The center, one of the more than 120 federally funded Job Corps campuses across the U.S., offers hands-on job training for low-income people ages 16 to 24 who are out of the workforce. In addition to providing training in fields including carpentry, bricklaying, computing, pharmaceuticals, and nursing, the center offers academic programs to help young people earn high school diplomas.

Maldonado moved her hours at the restaurant she was working at to early mornings and weekends and entered a self-paced training program at Paul Simon last year. Today, the 23-year-old works at the University of Chicago Medicine as a nationally certified pharmacy technician. “It changed my life,” Maldonado says. “I went from just a fast-food worker to taking care of patients. … I feel my life is making a difference for people.”

She credits her employer for seeing her as a viable job candidate. “My interviewer made me feel comfortable, made me feel at home. They acknowledged me as a person,” Maldonado says, and they didn’t discount her because she had dropped out of the workforce. “They understood I had some struggles and asked me about my life and who I am as a person,” she explains.

Maldonado is an example of what SHRM refers to as “opportunity youth,” people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor in the workforce. They are disproportionately people of color and may have experienced challenges such as living in foster care, being unhoused, having a juvenile criminal record, or having an incarcerated parent. These individuals often face age and racial bias and unfair misconceptions about their reliability, work experience, skills, and knowledge. All of these factors can cause employers to turn away and leave them with few employment opportunities.

A Win-Win

Recognizing these barriers to employment, SHRM has conducted research into the opportunity youth demographic with the help of funding from Walmart through the Walmart.org Center for Racial Equity, which invests in research, advocacy, and tools to help reduce some of the systemic disparities experienced by Black Americans. In November 2023, the SHRM Foundation and SHRM Research surveyed about 1,500 HR professionals regarding their experiences with opportunity youth and approximately 1,400 U.S. workers about their attitudes concerning this demographic. The results were published in the report From Social Good to Strategic Talent Advantage: The Business Case for Hiring Opportunity Youth.

SHRM researchers found that 96% of companies that partner with advocacy or community-based organizations to recruit and employ young people in this demographic report positive results.

More than half of such companies (54%) say these partnerships have been effective or very effective in helping them access and work with members of this talent pool. More than three-fourths (77%) of HR professionals and 69% of U.S. workers who have currently or previously worked with opportunity youth say they perform as well as or better than other employees.

Teaching members of this demographic skills they can use in the workplace can make them more appealing to prospective employers. Although 43% of HR professionals say opportunity youth lack the skill sets they require of their workers, 89% say their concerns would be addressed if an opportunity youth candidate held a skilled credential related to the work their companies hire for.

“Business tends to think of opportunity youth as a charitable hire instead of the smart business decision it can be to address critical vacancy and retention challenges,” says Wendi Safstrom, president of the SHRM Foundation. “With more than 4.7 million opportunity youth, workplaces that broaden their knowledge and strategies and learn best practices on how to access and attract this talent pool will have a competitive advantage.”

Marvin Carr, a director of the Walmart.org Center for Racial Equity, says businesses such as Walmart benefit from helping train unemployed young people for the workforce. “Nearly 30% of our 1.6 million U.S. associates are between 16 and 24 years old,” Carr says. “We believe a job in retail helps people gain skills and experiences for long-term career growth and opportunities.”

Ice Cream and Opportunities

Emily Bruton, the owner of two Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shops in Nashville, understands where many opportunity youth are coming from—and that they may need more than one chance to be successful. “I was homeless at 17,” Bruton says, “so I like to work with people who don’t always have the opportunity that others have. Even if the first person doesn’t work out—even the second [one]—if you really put the time and effort into it, you can get the most loyal employees.”

Over the past 14 years, Bruton has hired more than 100 people from this population. She says they’ve included “people who have been kicked out of their families’ houses, LGBTQ youth, and those living below the poverty level.” For support in working with this demographic, Bruton and her business partner have turned to Unlock Potential (UP), a program launched in 2022 as a partnership between the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice and Persevere, a nonprofit in Memphis, Tenn. Funded by the Walmart.org Center for Racial Equity, UP is designed “to disrupt the prison pipeline by opening up meaningful career opportunities early on,” according to its website. UP does this by pairing participating businesses with community partner organizations to create “meaningful, fulfilling, and long-term careers for at-risk and overlooked young people.”

Ben & Jerry’s is among several major U.S. employers—including Burlington Stores Inc., Delta Air Lines, Sam’s Club, and Virgin Hotels—that work with UP. “We already employ a lot of youth who have faced challenges and come from all different sorts of backgrounds,” Bruton says. “[UP] already fit in with what I like to do.”

Looking Up

Walmart-owned Sam’s Club, a warehouse club with 600 locations, began partnering with UP in 2023 to build on its successful high school internship program. “We know there are millions of parents who just want what’s best for their kids, including giving them opportunities that they may not have had, like a college education,” says Vanessa Smith, vice president and operations people business partner, at Sam’s Club. “But the fact is, tuition costs are high and continue to rise, and parents may not be able to afford it. Sam’s Club offers a great alternative—a place where you can get your foot in the door and build a career.”

Sam's Club offers paid summer internships, which include teaching life skills, such as effective communication and financial management, to high school juniors and seniors. Interns also have access to Walmart’s Live Better U program, which pays for 100% of their college tuition and books. Sam’s Club’s partnership with UP extends many of these experiences to opportunity youth. “At Sam’s Club, our involvement with Unlock Potential and support of community-based organizations is helping change the narrative about opportunity youth in the U.S. and is giving them a good start to a productive adult life,” Smith says.

Jalyssa Zaragoza is one of the program’s success stories. Her mother was in the Dallas County Detention Center in Texas when she gave birth to Jalyssa, who spent part of her childhood seeing her mother go in and out of jail. Through UP, Zaragoza was matched with a Sam’s Club in Dallas in 2023, where she trained in areas including fresh food production, member services, financial planning, and effective communication. After graduating from a 10-week program, she was offered a full-time position at Sam’s Club, where she is continuing her career.

Zaragoza is one of four UP participants who have completed the program at her local Sam’s Club. This past summer, Sam’s Club had 17 young people go through the program at host clubs in Dallas, Houston, and Philadelphia. The change to their lives has been significant.

“Ultimately, we believe it’s more about the qualitative than the quantitative,” Smith says of the program. “The personal stories of transformation and growth among our participants has been a powerful indication of the program’s success.” She adds that she’s learned a great deal about the resilience and potential of the young people in the internship program.

“Setting an initiative like Unlock Potential in motion requires a deep understanding of the challenges we aim to address, a clear vision of the change we want to bring about, and a strong commitment from all stakeholders involved,” Smith explains. “For it to be successful, it takes all of us—community-based organizations and us as a business—working and learning together about the communities we serve and opportunity youths’ specific needs.”   

Kathy Gurchiek is a senior specialist, B2C Content, at SHRM.