Partner with a workforce intermediary to provide outreach, recruitment, preparation, and support services to your focus populations, and tag or flag resumes that come from your intermediary partner or communities of focus.

Connect hiring managers directly with applicants participating in training programs.

Hold “hiring day” events where hiring managers have face-to-face meetings with larger numbers of applicants. In addition to giving hiring managers opportunities to more quickly identify candidates who would be a good match for open positions, hiring days also give candidates opportunities to meet hiring managers, be considered for positions, and practice interviewing skills.

Provide supplemental application materials, including evaluation data from program staff, to demonstrate a candidate’s past performance and future potential.

Instead of using resumes to evaluate candidates, use letters that allow applicants to speak to their motivation, personal growth, and resiliency.

Develop the capacity of human resources staff to understand categories of justice-system involvement and state laws so they can match applicants to departments where there are no legal barriers.

Convene a work group including leaders from HR and legal/compliance to evaluate existing processes for conducting background checks and assess the opportunities for removing legal barriers.

Provide training or collaborate with workforce intermediaries to prepare applicants for the interview process.

Provide training for hiring managers and recruiters so that they do not rule out qualified candidates solely based on interview performance.

Consider skills-based hiring models that emphasize a person’s job skills and experience rather than their interviewing skills.

Work with intermediaries to share job information with local communities and ensure that people understand what the job is, how to apply, and how the application and hiring processes work.

Review job descriptions to ensure they are understandable for all potential qualified applicants.

Provide financial and scheduling support to managers to allow for release time, a practice employed by Fairview Health Services among others. Release time allows employees to complete training opportunities during paid work time and maintain their full-time wages and benefits.

Offer onsite training to reduce time away from work and family obligations.

Educate managers to understand challenges employees face, and adjust HR policies to provide resources and supports to overcome these challenges and avert terminations that are due to these challenges.

Provide wraparound services—including financial literacy training, childcare support, and transportation benefits—or partner with intermediary organizations to provide these services.

Assign or hire a job coach to help employees deal with barriers they face.

Focus on one pilot program initially, demonstrate its impact, and then replicate and scale it.

Ensure communications are cohesive and consistent.

Find individuals in your system that are interested in and committed to this work, and then collaborate with them to start a pilot program.

Refer to the Big Questions worksheet for discussion questions that can be used to gain clarity on anchor mission alignment with your organization’s mission, strategy, culture, and values.

Implement an awareness and communication campaign to define the organizational imperative to advance the anchor mission.

Determine connections between specific implementation projects and the larger anchor mission strategy and goals.