How many times have you landed a job because someone in your network made a warm introduction or a referral? When I think back on my career, almost every job I’ve ever gotten has come through someone I knew. Not only did that benefit me as a job seeker, but it also reflected well on the person bridging the gap and connecting a strong potential employee with a company. In fact, 85% of positions are filled through networking, which presents a challenge for many talented, hard-working people from diverse and low-income communities who may not have the time, bandwidth, or privilege to grow professional connections.
Despite recent headlines about layoffs at tech giants and other major companies, employers need talent more than ever, but too many are still looking only to hire candidates with the same traditional credentials, ignoring a vast pool of high-quality candidates. Think about the retail worker who juggles multiple jobs to make ends meet. They are gritty, hungry, and motivated—characteristics every employer looks for. But they are generally overlooked and underrepresented.
Many companies have established their intent of diversifying their hiring practices and company cultures, but to solve the workforce shortage and recruit more widely, companies need to take a big-picture approach and recognize that much of today’s talent shortage is ultimately a shortage of social capital—a lack of relationships and connections between different communities that don’t organically interact.
Networks often come from four-year universities but, more specifically, are built while singing in a cappella clubs, playing sports, or participating in fraternities or sororities. Most people from low-income communities don’t have the luxury of time to build these organic connections that lead to doors opening for the rest of their lives. Many of them go to community college for affordability reasons and run in and out of class to work and care for family members. Social capital is a luxury good.
Seeking Experience Without Experience
Take the case study of Yrel Macahilas, a hard-working young man from the Bay Area. Macahilas came from a loving, supportive family and did everything right—he went to college, studied hard, and earned a computer science degree while his mother cleaned houses for low wages. His mother then developed serious health problems, and his family had financial trouble, meaning that he spent his free time working in retail instead of participating in campus activities and making connections.
After graduation, Macahilas applied for more than 100 tech jobs and didn’t hear back from even one employer. Hiring managers told him he needed more experience, but how do you get experience without experience?
My nonprofit, Climb Hire, welcomed Macahilas as part of our 2019 cohort of “climbers.” We helped him further develop valuable skills for his chosen industry, as well as a network that would help him land a job at Salesforce consulting partner Arkus in New York, followed by tech company Twilio in San Francisco, which allowed him to triple his income so that his family was solvent. Any fast-growing startup is eager to find a Yrel Macahilas—a hard working, highly motivated, quick learner, and fast producer—but he was excluded from high-paying jobs because he lacked social capital, a situation that many job seekers face because of insular hiring practices.
Social Capital: The Missing Link in Skills-based Hiring
In recent years, there has been growing conversation around whether college degrees are predictive of job performance. If a college degree is mostly a status symbol and perhaps a sorting mechanism for wealth, why should employers insist on exclusively hiring college graduates?
As a result, skills-based hiring has been on the rise as bachelor’s-degree requirements have declined at several major companies. Between 2017 and 2019, employers reduced degree requirements for 46% of middle-skill positions and 31% of high-skill positions.
This shifting emphasis from college to skills is a positive step forward. However, removing degree requirements is more of a Band-Aid solution rather than a meaningful step toward leveling the playing field. For example, even though Google dropped the requirement 15 years ago, the vast majority of its employees still have college degrees, evidence of a need for a mind-shift change, not just a policy shift. We need this to achieve equity in the job market—by focusing on social capital and getting more proactive in building relationships and referral networks among overlooked communities.
Building Long-term Talent Pipelines for Your Organization
It’s not enough to simply pursue candidates from certain backgrounds to fill diversity KPIs. While establishing diversity goals is a step in the right direction, companies need to place efforts toward building meaningful relationships with people from these communities and understanding them on a human level in order to create the type of working environment they need to thrive. Otherwise, hiring diverse talent becomes a “canary in a coal mine” situation, as a new employee might be the first person from their community who’s ever gotten an opportunity with that company, leading to a cultural disconnect or a lack of belonging.
Once companies begin the process of targeting overlooked talent, those individuals become your best future recruiters. They tap into their own communities and peer networks, continuously expanding and diversifying the company’s recruiting pipeline.
Building Stronger Career Connections
As data from economist Raj Chetty and LinkedIn have helped us see, one of the biggest predictors of upward mobility for people from lower-income families is having acquaintances and “weak ties” from higher socioeconomic groups. This is the variable that’s even more salient when it comes to social mobility than college education, family structure, or racial/ethnic background.
Keeping social classes isolated in their own neighborhoods, schools, campuses, and social bubbles only succeeds in keeping qualified candidates hidden from employers who need them.
Programs like Climb Hire help develop cross-class relationships that mutually benefit job seekers and companies alike. We prepare people from underserved communities for the workforce by combining “soft skills” (i.e. the art of relationship building, as well as the value of giving and accepting referrals) with technical education. The rigorous training program combined with the strong work ethic, character, and determination developed from prior job experience makes them eager to positively impact their new companies from the jump.
It’s human nature to take advice or recommendations from people we trust when they make suggestions or referrals about a new product or a job candidate. It’s also human nature to naturally form connections with people who are most closely like ourselves. The challenge for employers and hiring managers is to work harder to build trust with people who don’t come from the same social backgrounds—but who share the same values and goals, and have wonderful contributions to offer. To expand opportunities for low-income, diverse, overlooked talent, we need to expand our sense of community—in ways that uplift us all.
Nitzan Pelman is the founder and CEO of Climb Hire, a career upskilling nonprofit that helps overlooked and hidden talent break into new careers by teaching them technical and soft skills that help improve their financial circumstances.
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