FirstHired.org: Beyond Employment

In the United States today, over 4.6 million youth struggle to access first time employment, while employers face labor shortages and retention challenges. Despite this, there is no bridge connecting youth to the employers who need them or workforce development expertise to employers struggling to retain their entry-level staff. 

FirstHired.org provides this bridge between first-time job seekers and employers, with an emphasis on opportunity youth. In addition to providing foundational employment skills and job opportunities to youth, FirstHired also offers the Juma University Training Series for employers. These trainings, specifically designed for supervisors managing entry-level employees, address best practices in management and retention with the goals of reducing turnover, increasing workplace equity, and improving corporate culture. Scaling through local WIBs, FirstHired has the potential to pave the way to work for first-time job seekers while upskilling hundreds of employers seeking to manage today’s diverse workforce.

Young, low-income workers face unique barriers to employment. This is especially true for those with corresponding risk factors like trauma or homelessness. Often, first-time job seekers struggle to gain foundational employment and job search skills or to connect to the training necessary for advancement beyond the entry level. The pandemic is exacerbating this opportunity divide as young adults ages 16-24 have been disproportionately impacted by a 14% unemployment rate, nearly twice that of the general population. Historically, those entering the workforce during an economic downturn akin to the current situation, are more likely to experience lower earnings, more instability, and longer periods of unemployment throughout their lifetimes. 

Simultaneously, companies seeking entry-level workers struggle with both hiring and retention. Front-line supervisors frequently lack the skills to effectively manage entry-level employees facing barriers and challenges. This can result in a revolving door of hiring and terminations.  As a result, young workers get caught in a pattern of short-term, low-wage, entry level positions and employers struggle to find, and keep, qualified staff. 

The result? Young people not connected to a career pathway are more likely to suffer from mental health problems, homelessness and incarceration, costing the US an estimated $93 billion annually.

Funding from MIT SOLVE Reimagining Pathways to Employment will allow Juma to develop FirstHired.org, a one-stop web portal designed to match employer needs with diverse job seekers and workforce development programming. By focusing on the specific needs of both youth and employers, FirstHired.org will improve workplace diversity and inclusivity, allowing companies to access previously untapped talent, while providing pathways to success for motivated young people. Future growth will include linkages to education providers and pathways. Marketing the website through local Workforce Investment Boards (WIB) will increase employer participation across Juma’s current geographic footprint and, eventually, to the entire nation. 

Employer benefits:

• Free job postings reaching first-time job seekers, targeting 4.6 million opportunity youth 

• Searchable resumes, applicant profiles, and online interviewing  

• Juma University and Juma Certified Employer designation

• Access to FirstHired.org Community Listserv and Facebook group 

FirstHired.org is designed to meet the specific needs of entry-level applicants, specifically low-income youth facing barriers to success. The site will provide access to Juma’s expertise, tools, and resources including:

• Entry-level and middle-skill job postings

• Links to education partners

• Searchable online profile 

• Online job fairs and career panels

• Mock interview practice

• Unique youth-centered skills curriculum

• A community of motivated young people

Juma has nearly three decades of experience working with young, low-income workers. Our social enterprise employs more youth than any other in the nation through an innovative “learning laboratory” model employing youth to work as concessionaires in sports stadiums, virtual kitchens, and other ventures. Juma’s enterprise managers -- many of them former Juma youth themselves -- are trained in youth development and growth mindset principles and teach the young people to approach challenges as learning experiences and setbacks as opportunities to grow. Through a series of workshops and coaching, young workers gain the skills and experience that make them valuable employees. All workshops are developed alongside the youth themselves, who participate in trial runs and focus groups to guide the final product. The Juma Ambassadors Program offers youth leadership opportunities.

Youth stories and staff experience form the basis for Juma University, a management training series designed to help employers replicate the success of the Juma job environment, reducing turnover and increasing workforce diversity and inclusion. By influencing employers to create an inclusive, equitable and diverse workplace, Juma can shape a culture that offers pathways out of poverty for millions  of young people, ultimately benefiting workers, companies and the nation’s economy.  

Low-income youth face unique barriers to employment and career success, frequently getting caught in a cycle of low-wage employment. Simultaneously, employers struggle to find, and retain, a qualified workforce. FirstHired matches employer needs with diverse job seekers and with Juma’s expertise in managing and retaining young workers. In addition, FirstHired offers youth a  job and information portal tailored to finding  employment and charting a career, including seeking and succeeding at work, choosing a profession, and accessing education. FirstHired addresses the priority to Match current and future employer and industry needs with education providers, workforce development programs, and diverse job seekers.

The cost of turnover to companies makes FirstHired a necessary service. In the retail and wholesale sectors, 60.5% of employees leave their job in under a year. In 2016, the retail sector alone lost $9 billion dollars to voluntary turnover. It is estimated that it costs somewhere between 20-30% of a minimum-wage worker’s annual salary to replace them. With 26 years operating businesses across the nation, Juma holds a unique position in the workforce development sector. We are a revenue-generating employer as well as a youth service provider, a thought partner to companies, and a coach to frontline supervisors. FirstHired.org will allow Juma to access the $87.6 billion corporate training industry and share our expertise to improve the work experiences of all frontline workers and their direct supervisors. In doing so, we help young workers connect to and maintain employment, establishing the longer work histories that make them eligible to earn higher wages and benefits. 

We will launch FirstHired.org in San Francisco, partnering with the Workforce Investment Board and the local initiative Opportunities for All. By recruiting companies through these two bodies, we will build both connections and credibility in San Francisco. Our employment partners will be given the opportunity to purchase Juma University training at a discounted rate in exchange for word of mouth advertising and reviews. Marketing and partnership development will expand to Juma’s other markets -- San Jose, Sacramento, Seattle, Houston, and Atlanta --  in year two of the project.

Full Time Staff: 29

Part Time Staff: 5

Student Interns: 5

Juma Ventures' vision is for all young people to succeed in the career of their choice, in a workforce that is equitable, inclusive and diverse. Racial, ethnic, and gender equity is embedded in Juma’s mission and we strive to ensure this is reflected in our staff, program practices and organization policies. Our Board of Directors Skills and Diversity Matrix help ensure that we have the appropriate skills, resource, gender and racial diversity at the governance level. Currently, 72% of Juma’s adult staff are from communities of color (including Juma Alumni), representing the diversity of our youth. We are sensitive to the needs of our youth in programming such as translated applications. Juma partners with organizations, such as Beyond Emancipation and Larkin Street, with similar expertise in serving young people from diverse backgrounds. Juma brings in trainers from groups like The Mosaic Project and Compass Point to facilitate this work.

Despite the 4.6 million young people between the ages of 16-24 seeking a first job, and a labor shortage in fields like retail, hospitality, logistics and manufacturing, no single website exists to bring together first time job seekers and employers. While sites listing jobs abound, they can be overwhelming to a first time job seeker with no experience applying for work. Finally, while corporate training is a multi-billion dollar industry, very little training exists for front line supervisors working with low-income young people facing barriers to success. FirstHired meets all of these needs.

For youth, in addition to job postings, the website will offer tutorials on how to apply and interview for jobs. In addition, Juma will post trainings on critical employment skills like punctuality and teamwork.

For employers, the website will allow them not only to hire young people, but to volunteer as well. Corporate volunteerism is a significant trend and Juma will provide options for volunteers to conduct informational interviews with youth, review resume, and act as a mock interviewer. 

Finally, Juma University is a unique set of trainings for employers by an employer. We are well positioned to provide education concerning the barriers young, low-income workers face and how to provide a more supportive -- and thus more productive -- workplace.

FirstHired.org will be a robust, elegant website where employers can access young workers and the training to improve employment outcomes for these workers. The site will have the capability to host on-demand as well as live webinars, interact directly with applicants, and provide "badging" to youth and employers completing Juma's curriculum.

The following linked article outlines the nine key advantages of online training:

https://elearningindustry.com/...

Juma believes in the transformative power of an early work experience. Currently low income youth face disproportionate barriers to positive employment and education and are trapped in an unnecessary cycle of poverty. Juma believes that work is the greatest social service and when work employs youth development practices it can be the critical entry point on the road to a career and livelihood. Many youth enter the workforce without the critical development of soft skills and are relegated to short term cycles of employment. To that end Juma provides youth with tailored workshops for them to foster and develop positive work traits such as professionalism, communication, team-work, critical-thinking, and conflict resolution. When young adults are equipped with the skills, competencies, and financial know-how they are prepared to enter the workforce as the leaders of tomorrow. 

To break that cycle of poverty, youth deserve the opportunity to earn a living wage while making informed financial decisions, and furthering their development of a career.  To that end Juma provides a holistic job training program within its social enterprise for youth to gain work experience, practice financial capability behaviors, and discover future job and education opportunities.

Juma exists within a supportive network of community based partners serving low income young adults. With support from our partners we connect young adults to community based resources that are able to assist with the removal of critical barriers faced toward establishing permanent employment and education opportunities.

The current pandemic required Juma to pivot to a strictly virtual model of training for our young people. We quickly learned that this model was appealing to our youth, who do not know a life without technology. 

Providing virutal Juma University will allow us to reach more employers than we could reach by doing in-person trainings (though these will remain available post-pandemic). Our target audience are large American-based corporations with a significant number of employees without college degrees that mirror the demographics of Juma youth and offer affordable products/services to a diverse client base. Companies have at least one manager on-site during work hours overseeing at least five minimum-wage workers. 

Juma seeks to grow FirstHired.org to serve 25,000 young people in the first two years of operation. We will begin by sharing the website with the young people who have been through our signature YouthConnect program. Though the majority of these youth are now well on their way to a career, they have a connection to Juma and have expressed willingness to spread the word.

In year two, we will begin marketing the website to workforce investment boards in San Jose, expanding to Sacramento in year three. Once we are established in these major markets, we will focus on expanding to Seattle, Atlanta and Houston.

Juma's primary barriers, like most nonprofit organizations, are funding and staff capacity. In fact, FirstHired is a solution to both of these barriers. By providing the opportunity for corporations to access on-demand, web-based trainings, we will be able to reach far more companies than in-person trainings would allow. 

No discussion of barriers in 2020 would be complete without noting the current pandemic. As the saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention," and this has never been truer than it is now. The prohibition on in-person gatherings was initially a barrier for Juma, one that we turned into a positive by developing a series of virtual trainings for young people. Once we saw our youth engagement increase by over 30%, we realized the barrier was more of an opening. This led us to consider the ways in which we could reach more youth and more corporations via the internet. 

A key barrier for FirstHired is that many of the young people we serve lack technology in the home and may need to access FirstHired at public cafes or libraries. We plan to connect with technology companies here in the San Francisco Bay Area to offer young people the opportunity to access donated laptops and tablets free of charge. With the growing popularity of free municipal WiFi in the Bay Area, youth are able to access Juma's content from anywhere. We anticipate free WiFi to become more common in our other markets in the coming years.

See the above response.

As our core program, YouthConnect is only five years old, we do not yet have longitudinal data on the young people we have served. In order to more effectively make our case for Juma's programming, we need to be able to follow young people for a number of years. While we know that 85% of our young people connect to work and/or post-secondary education, we seek to collect data on where they are in life and career at the five year and 10 year mark.

In addition, with the launch of Juma University, we would like to track our employer Juma University graduates to determine change in turnover rates, subjective experiences of front line supervisors, and specific workplace policy changes made as a result of our training.

Not applicable.

Since 1993, Juma has employed 8,100 youth, who have earned $11 million in wages, saved $6.2 million and generated $36.6 million in earned revenue to continue advancing our mission. Juma’s CEO, Adriane Armstrong, has dedicated her career to promoting social justice for underserved communities. Adriane holds an MBA with an emphasis in nonprofit management from Stanford University, as well as an M.A. in social psychology and B.A. in comparative studies in race and ethnicity. Supported by a strong five member executive team (Chief Operations & Finance Officer, Chief Program & Grants Officer, Chief Impact Officer, Chief Development Officer, Chief People Officer & General Counsel), Juma’s current leaders have demonstrated the ability to scale impact and forge unique collaborations. Over the past six years, Juma has grown from a $3M organization operating in three cities to a $6.7M organization operating in six. 

Juma’s strong leadership, committed funding partners and dedicated staff have led to numerous awards, including the National Youth Employment Coalition's PEPNet Award for Promising and Effective Practices, the National Organization of the Year from the Social Enterprise Alliance and the Social Impact Exchange ‘Scaling Business Plan’ competition. In 2017, Juma Seattle earned the Gold Award at the Seattle Business Magazine's Community Impact Awards for Youth Development Non Profit of the Year. In 2018, Juma Atlanta was selected as one of the five National Seed Communities of the Obama Foundation’s inaugural My Brother’s Keeper Community Challenge Competition. Finally, Juma Sacramento won the 2020 Bank of America Neighborhood Builder's Award. 

Juma embraces a collective impact approach to achieving its mission. In San Francisco, Juma has strong partnerships with complimentary local nonprofit organizations serving Opportunity Youth such as Larkin Street Youth Services, First Place for Youth, Compass Family Services and Life Learning Academy. In addition to helping Juma recruit young people, these organizations are able to provide youth with additional wrap around supportive services such as housing and transportation, and mental health counseling. Our other locations have similar partnerships.

Juma works with national employment partners across the retail, hospitality and logistics industries such as Gap Inc., CVS Health and Starbucks to connect program alumni to their next job and permanent employment. These corporate partners have been chosen based on a comprehensive set of criteria, including culture and support for employees mobility from low-to middle-skill work and towards a family sustaining income.

Moving forward, community colleges and other post-secondary training providers are a key area for partnership development. YouthConnect participants are encouraged and supported by their Program Coordinator to set continued learning goals ranging from completing a GED to enrolling in a community college or pursuing an industry credential. Through partnership we want to reduce barriers youth face re-engaging in education pathways.

Juma’s YouthConnect program is delivered in the context of its EARN, LEARN and CONNECT suite of services. EARN: Juma youth work in Juma’s social enterprise concession businesses located at Oracle Park and Chase Center for the length of a sports season (six to nine months). Here, they learn the soft skills necessary for success in the workforce and  develop core competencies in customer services, sales and business operations. LEARN: Alongside the job, youth are supported by a Program Coordinator, focused on helping them overcome personal barriers to successful permanent employment and mastery of critical skills like communication, professionalism and problem-solving. Youth also participate in job attainment skills workshops such as resume writing and mock interviews. Leveraging the teachable moment of a first paycheck, youth are supported to open bank accounts and participate in financial education workshops. CONNECT: Juma works with national employment partners across the retail, hospitality and logistics industries such as Gap Inc., CVS Health and Starbucks to connect program alumni to their next job and permanent employment. These corporate partners have been chosen based on a comprehensive set of criteria, including culture and support for employees mobility from low-to middle-skill work and towards a family sustaining income.

Funding from MIT Solve will allow us to bring our expertise online to share with employers and with youth not able to attend our core YouthConnect program.

Juma is an entrepreneurial, dual-bottom line organization. The financial sustainability of the organization is anchored by over 100 national and local institutional partners (government,  corporations, foundation,) including the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and their Families, REDF, Charles Schwab Bank, the Bank of America Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and others. In addition to institutional support, Juma’s earns unrestricted revenue from the social enterprise concession businesses located at major sports and entertainment venues.

In 2017, Juma’s Board of Directors approved the agency’s 2018-2022 Strategic Plan focused on the national rollout of YouthConnect. This was a significant commitment of the Board to support the local launch and growth of the program in San Francisco. As a group, in 2019, Juma’s National Board of Directors contributed over $200,000 and supported the annual fundraising event to drive $350,000 in revenue to fund YouthConnect programming including staff salaries, youth incentives and general program expenses. Preliminary data for 2020 indicates a similar rate of board contributions.

We have not begun fundraising for the proposed solution, FirstHired.org.

Juma's list of current funders may be found at https://www.juma.org/our-partn...

We estimate that the full cost for the development of FirstHired.org to be approximately $100,000 with an annual maintenance fee of $15,000 - $25,000. We will be seeking funds through corporate philanthropy, foundations and individual donors.

Juma's agency budget for 2021 is $3.9 million dollars.

Juma is seeking both funding and technical assistance to launch FirstHired.org. As we are youth development providers, not web developers, connection to challenge partners who can provide us with advice, consultation and support in building the website is critical.

Juma seeks to partner with a technology company who can help us design and build (or help us find someone to build) FirstHired.org. This will involve a soup-to-nuts review of the plan for FirstHired, advising on design and user-experience features, back-end technology, online training and web-based commerce.

In addition, we are new to the world of e-commerce, so assistance in marketing the website, and especially the corporate trainings, would be helpful. Finally, help finding additional funding to support this project on an ongoing basis is critical.

Not Applicable