Amy Ruddell, job counselor with the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency, has been finding jobs … [+]
(In seeking jobs for the homeless or welfare recipients or ex-offenders, policymakers often chase after “new ideas” or “innovation”, when the answers lie in doing the basic job placement and retention tasks well. The best job counselors with these groups operate with a craft, as illustrated by a job counselor for the homeless in Sacramento).
On a recent weekday Amy Ruddell is balancing several actions in her role as job counselor for the Homeless Transition Employment Program (HTEP), a project sponsored by the Anthem Foundation and undertaken in Sacramento. The project focuses on unemployed homeless women and some homeless men. It seeks to place them into jobs, and help them retain these jobs.
The first project cycle of 30 homeless participants which started in March 2021, is now completing and Ruddell is checking in on some of the participants with jobs, while continuing to do job placement for five of the participants still unemployed. At the same time she is conducting an orientation session for participants enrolling in a second cycle to begin in January 2022.
For this second cycle, Ruddell has been given 25 referrals from the homeless center at the former Mather Air Force base, outside of Sacramento, and from Women’s Empowerment, a nonprofit providing services to the area’s homeless women. Each of the persons referred has expressed interest in a job. This weekday only 5 arrive at the orientation.
“We’ll start with these five”, Ruddell notes, “Though December isn’t the best time to recruit people for jobs, the failure-to-follow-through rate is high at any time. There’s a lot of anxiety, depression and paranoia among this population, that as job counselors we need to overcome.” Ruddell’s next step is to review in detail the backgrounds and interests of the five enrollees and connect to her network of job leads.
Among the first cycle, Ruddell has been able to place 19 of the 30 participants between April and August 2021, and retention is still high by December 2021. Only two of the participants have quit or been fired. The jobs are in a mix of occupations, with multiple placements as security guards, office administrators with a large Sacramento property management firm, customer service representatives with Wells Fargo Bank
Whether the participants will continue in these jobs over the next years, and even advance in income, remains to be seen. Yet, by standards of homeless housing programs, this is a high placement rate, and Ruddell is still working to increase it.
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In seeking to improve the employment of the homeless, or welfare recipients, or ex-offenders, policymakers often chase after “new ideas”, when the answers lie in doing the basic job placement and retention tasks well. Ruddell doesn’t do anything wildly different than most other job counselors. But she approaches her job as a craft, with the elements of craft: attention to detail, emphasis on results, finding satisfaction in undertaking placement tasks skillfully. She has been in the job counseling field for over 34 years, and says “After 34 years, I still feel a sense of pride with each placement.”
Among the strategies in her craft are the following four:
Gathering job leads from a range of sources, and reaching out to employers to sell my job seekers: ”I reach out widely for job leads: LinkedIn, job boards, our Business Services division at the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency (SETA), and casual contacts. I recently got a lead for security job openings from the security guard at SETA. But a lead is only a start. You need to call an employer, and sell your candidate and how they can help the employer. If the employer is someone I haven’t worked with, I start with, ‘I’ve researched your business and I think I have a good match for you’.”
The hiring pitch: pre-screened candidates, and employer support if any problems arise: “I let the employer know that I’m employed by SETA, and that we’re here to serve job seekers and employers. I emphasize how we pre-screen candidates, and note the strengths of our job seekers and their desire to work. I also emphasize that if my clients are late or absent or any problems arise, I am there to support the employer and resolve problems. Employers often are open to hiring homeless workers, as well as welfare recipients or ex-offenders, so long as they know there is a support system, and they can call me.”
On-the-job training subsidies: “One of the tools that works best for our job seekers is the On-The-Job (OJT) training subsidy available to employers, when they hire the homeless. OJTs can pay up to 75% of wages for three months. OJTs are a tried and tested strategy; they’ve been used for decades. Large firms generally are not incentivized by these subsidies, but small businesses are, and I use them as a selling point. I let companies know that I and other SETA staff will handle the paperwork, making it easy for them to receive the wage subsidy.”
Encouragement and support to workers following placements: “I keep in close touch with my clients during the placement process and after placement. Their personal lives may be chaotic, their families not there for them, they have little confidence in themselves. Even after placement, they are worried that they will lose their jobs. I regularly give them pep talks ‘You’re doing great’, I tell them. I placed four women with a property management firm, and after six months, three of them are still there. The fourth had to leave due to some of her family members constantly contacting her at the job site. Some things you can’t control, though we tried to keep her there. I’ll work with her on another placement.”
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Job counseling as craft is a principle of other higher-achieving job programs across the country. Peter Cove and Lee Bowes started America Works 36 years ago, with their own funds and it has grown into the nation’s largest job placement programs for the homeless, welfare recipients, ex-offenders, and other groups with high unemployment rates. Their success is due in part to their proven Work First model (rapid placement into jobs). In equal part it is due to the craft that is taught to new staff: developing ties with employers, local and national (Starbucks, CVS Pharmacies, Amazon, Allied Security), keeping in touch with these employers on a regular basis, investing time and thought in each participant, staying with participants even after one or more job losses.
So too with Goodwill, another of the major national job programs. The Goodwills are known throughout the nation for its thrift shops, which serve as major employers. But Goodwill also has an extensive network of placement for high unemployment groups, which stands out for its employer ties and levels of service.
Here in California, the homeless issue continues to be the subject of conferences, legislative hearings, issue papers, endless meetings. But at least in terms of jobs for a segment of the homeless, what is needed is not complex. The challenge is to recognize the entry level jobs realistic for placements, focus on these jobs, and find (or develop) more job counselors on local programs who can perform with the craft of America Works, Goodwill and Amy Ruddell.
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“This is a good time for anyone in the field of job placement for the homeless” says Ruddell “Employers need workers in security, retail, logistics and restaurants in a way that they haven’t in many years. They’re willing to bring on workers they might not have when job candidates were more plentiful.
“This doesn’t mean that placement is easy even today, given the mental health, sobriety and coping challenges that my homeless/housing precariat clients often come with. Also, I have employers in Sacramento that I’ve worked with for over a decade, and they trust my judgement in sending them referrals. So my ability to serve my clients going forward depends on keeping faith with the employer and only making referrals I think can be a good fit.”
“The referrals I’m getting from Women’s Empowerment and the Mather homeless center are those individuals who are regarded as work-ready, so I know I’m only a seeing a percentage of the homeless. It’s difficult to say how large is this percentage. I continue to be surprised, though, by clients, with very checkered pasts, who are able to be placed and perform in jobs, at least for the year or more that I follow up with them.”
Does Amy have any plans to retire after 34 years in the field? She laughs, “I have no plans to retire. Job counseling has been my life. Before coming to Sacramento, I did job placements in the rural area of Plumas County in North California, and in the urbanized East Bay areas of Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The job markets are very different throughout the state, but the craft of serving employers and job seekers are similar, and the satisfaction when a placement is achieved doesn’t change.”
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbernick/2022/01/05/the-craft-of-the-homeless-job-counselor/