Filling the gap: Out-of-the-box strategies for tapping into underutilized talent

Filling the gap: Out-of-the-box strategies for tapping into underutilized talent

by Patricia Tascarella of The Pittsburgh Business Times

In the Pittsburgh metro, there’s projected to be a shortage of 80,000 workers by 2025. That number is not insignificant, and local companies have taken notice as they struggle to find top talent.

But many people are still passed up or overlooked in the hiring process, especially those with barriers to employment. It could be veterans whose skills may not be viewed as transferable. Or it could be people in low-income neighborhoods who don’t have the funds to get the four-year education required of many jobs. Or it could be young adults with physical or learning challenges, or those who don’t have a means of transportation to get to work.

These are all broad-based categories, and each situation is unique. But it can be baffling to hiring managers who are concerned about how to even start the process of hiring people with barriers to employment.

Several local organizations have banded together to tackle this issue. Whether it’s Highmark Health playing a role in launching the Pittsburgh Veteran Employer Coalition or Giant Eagle partnering with Achieva to hire people with more significant challenges or Citizens Bank working with Partner4Work and others to bring the BankWork$ program to Pittsburgh, these organizations are making inroads in finding creative, out-of-the-box ways to hire workers that may be overlooked during more traditional hiring processes.

We profile several of these organizations — businesses, nonprofits and educational entities — that have developed successful strategies to tap into these underutilized talent pools. We hope it will provide some ideas for other businesses who are looking to diversify their employee base and create a more inclusive culture.

Strategy No. 1

Ensure skill sets aren’t overlooked in the hiring process.
Lonie Haynes can handily line up the facts.
Pennsylvania has the fourth-largest veteran and eighth-biggest female veteran populations in the country, which adds up to about 100,000 veterans in metropolitan Pittsburgh.

And Highmark Health, where Haynes is vice president of diversity and inclusion, has programs and initiatives in place to capitalize on hiring from this substantial pool.

Highmark Health joined with other employers to launch and fund the Pittsburgh Veteran Employer Coalition. Through PVEC, employers of all sizes and industries share best practices for recruiting and hiring military talent, maximizing the value of veterans in the workplace and leveraging educational institutions to develop military talent.

The health care organization, among the region’s largest employers, has also taken steps internally. It has a veterans section on its career site, participates in veterans job fairs and events, and has a business resource group called VETS, short for Voices of Employees That have Served. It aims to provide a vehicle for communication, sharing common issues and establishing a support network to promote the professional development of its employees.

Haynes also has the perspective that comes from personal experience. He served in the U.S. Army for four years of active duty and two in the reserves, and he comes from a family of veterans that includes his father, four uncles and several cousins.

“Veterans are not acknowledged or utilized as they should be,” he said. “It’s not an indictment on corporations or small companies. It’s just that it takes an effort to make sure there’s an initiative to educate businesses on how veterans can be utilized in the workplace. That’s part of the work we do at Highmark and as part of a coalition that we do throughout the region. It makes a huge difference.”

Take the typical interview. Candidates are frequently asked about major contributions they made at a past job. But veterans are trained to work as a team, not to take individual credit, and it’s not uncommon for them to be “thrown off” when asked that seemingly simple question, Haynes said.

“When you interview a veteran, the question might be, what are some of the achievements or successes you had as a team and how you contributed to that,” he said. “You have to be specific and careful about the questions you post. The culture is so embedded around group and team dynamics.”

Sometimes, it’s as simple as understanding a culture and asking the right questions.

“Job titles in the military might not appear to be transferable to a business environment,” Haynes said. Consider the bomb technician. That’s not going to show up under the openings at most local companies.

“But once you look at the training they’ve had — they have strong project management skills, quantitative mathematical and statistical skills since they’ve mapped out miles and acres to prepare to set explosives, and they have strong leadership skills in working with teams and planning,” Haynes said. “You may not see anything like that if you don’t have help deciphering a military resume.”

Strategy No. 2

Focus on strengths people bring to the job

When it comes to hiring workers, it’s ingrained in Giant Eagle’s culture to think outside the box.

Everyone has different abilities, and for more than 40 years, Giant Eagle Inc. has placed an emphasis on working with differently abled populations. It’s a decision that has helped the organization to staff its stores and increase the applicant pool.

“We look at all talent pools when looking to fill open positions,” said Keri Brown, Giant Eagle vice president of people operations for supermarket and Market District.

It may be as simple as the initial communication — a phone interview is not going to work for a candidate who can’t hear but is a skilled cake decorator, for example.

Giant Eagle is Pittsburgh’s largest private company and one of the region’s biggest employers, and programs and partnerships have helped it increase outreach so it can find and hire workers with a wide range of challenges.

One program that has had a big impact is the Career Transition Project.

Launched as a pilot program in September 2013 by United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald’s office, Giant Eagle and Blind & Vision Rehabilitation Services of Pittsburgh, the Career Transition Project is an employment and training initiative that works with young people to secure work experience and paying jobs. Participating employers partner with local agencies to embed a Career Transition Professional in their offices, whose job it is to assist young adults with disabilities in obtaining employment and ensure their needs are met.

“This started under our 21 and Able umbrella of work, which started in 2011,” said Bobbi Watt Geer, president and CEO of United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania. “We want to be sure to become a hub of education and advocacy to help people with disabilities find employment and connect them to information, referrals and housing, making sure young people didn’t graduate from high school to the couch. … Working with eight employers since 2013, we’ve helped 605 people with disabilities to be hired through the program, and 1,500 have received job-finding assistance.”

Job coaches help employers identify barriers and make necessary accommodations, Brown said.

“It helps us to find the team members and match them with the jobs we have available,” she said. “We need a better understanding of the potential team member to match them with the job, and that’s where these organizations are so helpful at working with us.”

Giant Eagle has another program where it works with Achieva to hire people out of sheltered workshops, which are where people with more significant challenges do remedial jobs, Brown said.
 
“We’re not putting them into segregated work environments,” she said. “The jobs are tailored to meet the specific skills of these individuals. They’re paid the same and held to the same standards.”

Giant Eagle’s strategies are ones that would translate for smaller companies and those in other industry sectors.

“I think there has historically been a focus on deficiencies versus the strengths of our neighbors who have disabilities,” Geer said. “If we can flip that paradigm to the strengths people bring to jobs we need to have filled, it would be much better all around. It’s an important issue: everyone deserves the opportunity to be able to work. It’s a big part of who we are and our dignity and our participation in the community. And people with disabilities have an incredible amount to offer the workplace. It’s just good business.”

Other organizations also are working to promote the hiring of those with disabilities. UPMC, for example, partners with Goodwill Industries through its Project Search program in which young people between the ages of 18 and 21 with some type of learning challenge and who need assistance in breaking down barriers give up their last year of high school to become trainees, learning on site at four locations in the Pittsburgh area, although they’ll graduate from their respective schools.

“We introduce them to our culture; we teach them soft skills such as how to build and write their resume and appropriate interaction with their co-workers,” said Tracey Stange Kolo, vice president of human resources at UPMC. “The rest of the time is spent with solid, on-the-job training.”

The students do three 10-week rotations working on specific tasks and enabling them to find what resonates best.

In September 2018, United Way received a two-year, $150,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Developmental Disabilities. As part of that grant, United Way is working with Disability:IN, the nonprofit resource for business disability inclusion worldwide.
 
“What we’ve done is put together a Disability Inclusion Council, led by business leaders in southwestern Pennsylvania,” Geer said. “We have 40 employers engaged; we convene quarterly and we help them by providing consultation, webinars, putting together hiring plans, reviewing job descriptions, really helping them figure out barriers and fears so they can be more equipped to hire people with disabilities and satisfy their talent needs.”

It’s off and running. Based on self-reported data, this has resulted in 963 hires of people with disabilities in southwestern Pennsylvania, according to Geer.

“We’d love to see more employers engaged in quarterly meetings with the Disability Inclusion Council — there’s the energy that builds and breaks down the fear factor,” she said. “Having this be an employer-led initiative has incredible impact, and having internal champions to institute best practices will be important going forward.”

Strategy No. 3

Meet ‘people where they are’ once they’re on the job

FedEx Ground believes in “meeting people where they are,” said Kiersten Crosby, managing director, corporate HR service delivery, diversity and inclusion at FedEx Ground.

Recognizing that everyone brings a diverse set of experiences to the table when they’re seeking employment, the company designs programs to take specific actions to provide candidates with the best possible employee experience.

“When we think about barriers, things like transportation can be a significant obstacle for individuals in a certain market,” Crosby said. “We do what we can to ensure there’s public transportation for employees to get to work.”

Consider that FedEx Ground’s headquarters in Moon Township is not on a public bus route, and the site is generally not accessible by foot.

“We subsidize a shuttle operated by the (Airport Corridor Transportation Association) for individuals who rely on public transportation either from Allegheny County or Beaver County from public bus stops to our corporate headquarters,” Crosby said. “We also take similar actions throughout our field operations to partner to make transportation accessible to employees who rely on that to maintain gainful employment.”

Ultimately, the goal is to be as inclusive and open-minded as possible in the hiring process.

“At FedEx, we have the philosophy that inclusion makes us better,” Crosby said.

Strategy No. 4

Play a role in creating nontraditional pathways to careers
In late September, Citizens Bank teamed with Partner4Work, the Pennsylvania Bankers Association and several local financial institutions to bring BankWork$ to Pittsburgh.

The national program prepares young adults with barriers to employment to become candidates for entry-level banking positions such as tellers, customer service representatives and personal bankers, paving the way to build careers and move up the ranks. It also provides a diversified pipeline of talent to banks.

“We at Citizens know BankWork$ well across our franchise,” said Dan Fitzpatrick, president of Providence, Rhode Island-based Citizens Bank’s Mid-Atlantic Region. “We have a close relationship with Partner4Work (Pittsburgh’s workforce development organization), and we realized there was a gap with people finding real jobs in the banking industry, and so we were the lead driver. It works for us on many levels.”

As part of the program, students receive soft skills training, coaching and mentoring, information about career pathways, interview prep and other hands-on activities. Classes, offered at no cost for qualifying candidates, last for eight weeks and started Sept. 30 at the Energy Innovation Center Institute, perched between downtown Pittsburgh and the Hill District.

“We wanted to recruit students in the Hill District,” Fitzpatrick said. “Diversity and inclusion is a big issue at Citizens and for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development,” where Fitzpatrick is a board member.

Of the initial BankWork$ class of 20, just one withdrew, and, as of Dec. 3, four BankWork$ Pittsburgh graduates had accepted full-time employment with area banks. The remainder are in various stages of the interview and hiring process, with more than half already entertaining one or more job offers. EICI, the training partner, continues to work with and coordinate on behalf of the graduates to see that all are hired.

The program aims to graduate four cohorts of 25 students each in 2020, with the next group tentatively slated to start by early February, according to Kelly McGuire, Partner4Work communications coordinator.

Once an employee joins Citizens, there’s continuing training and education, even generous tuition reimbursement programs, Fitzpatrick said, that can help them move up from there. BankWork$ just provides the initial foot in the door.

PNC Financial Services Group Inc., also among the financial institutions championing BankWork$, has another program to create a pipeline of early career professionals to enter the workforce. PNC worked with the Consortium for Public Education to develop the PartnerUp program with schools and major employers in southwestern Pennsylvania as a means of investing in talent.

“We cannot overlook the amazing untapped talent that exists in our backyards,” said Brianna McMeekin, PNC vice president, talent program manager, high school programming. “The capacity to learn and the desire to grow a career direct from high school is a conscious and well-thought out choice, not a backup option to college, for our young people.”

She said the program was spurred by the Allegheny Conference’s 2016 “Inflection Point” report with sobering data on the looming workforce shortage of 80,000 by 2025.

“Everyone talks about what we’re doing to make sure we’re filling talent needs, not only at PNC, but in the region,” McMeekin said.

PartnerUp launched as a pilot in early 2018 that focused on high school seniors, the majority from diverse backgrounds, teaching them about the interview process and preparing resumes. 

By year two, the 2018/2019 school year, PartnerUp was working with 2,100 juniors and 260 seniors at nine schools. That led to 46 unique applicants to PNC, which translated to 30 entry-level job offers and 23 starting their careers at PNC this summer.

The present school year, which is in progress, has grown to 24 schools and a pool of more than 350 seniors and 2,400 juniors. Since hiring for this program cycle will take place in late April/early May, students will be considering job offers ahead of graduation, McMeekin said.

PartnerUp includes employers beyond PNC — Peoples Natural Gas Co., Comcast Business, Allegheny Health Network, Matthews International Corp. and Giant Eagle Inc. There’s also a train-the-trainer pilot model underway in Fayette County with Nemacolin Woodlands Resort and other employers in that region — 84 Lumber Co., WVU Medicine and Ford Business Solutions. 

McMeekin said PartnerUp could extend into other regions within PNC’s footprint within five years.

“It’s been very organic growth at this point, making sure we’re doing right by all of the stakeholders involved and growing in a way that makes sense,” she said. “It’s a model we’re looking to other business leaders to partner with. If we were just (working) with PNC to solve our piece of the talent shortage, we wouldn’t be successful, knowing students aren’t all interested in one company or one type of opportunity.”

Strategy No. 5

Provide training to those with barriers to employment
When it comes to hiring workers with barriers to employment, local community colleges, unions and trade schools are often the first step.

In mid-November, the Community College of Allegheny County publicly launched a $65 million initiative that includes construction of a 60,000-square-foot workforce facility budgeted at $40 million. Groundbreaking is expected to begin in spring 2020. It will house programs for in-demand fields such as cybersecurity, information technology, autonomous and process technology, machine learning, advanced manufacturing and robotics, making these careers more accessible to prospective students residing in urban areas.

Debra Killmeyer, CCAC’s interim vice president of workforce development, and Traci Nelson, director of workforce development, both stressed the importance of the college’s holistic approach that goes beyond the classroom.

CCAC works with PA CareerLink and several community-based organizations to increase access to resources for students that experience barriers. Each CCAC campus has a food pantry that any student in need of food assistance may utilize. There are no income guidelines to be eligible, although students are asked to show their ID and to register for the service.

And New Century Careers, which has successfully trained and placed thousands of workers in careers with local advanced manufacturers, is placing more of an emphasis on taking training to the job candidates.

Traditionally, NCC has offered a tuition-free daytime and full-time Manufacturing 2000 machinist training program based in its Training Innovation Center on the South Side. This spring, it plans to expand the program to Eastern Westmoreland Career and Technology Center in Latrobe, where it offers a flexible schedule of evening classes. Trainees can complete the pre-apprenticeship program in about four to six months. NCC also debuted a daytime program in McKeesport at the Tube City Center for Business and Innovation that features 125 hours of training and takes five weeks to complete.

“What drives this is the market,” said Neil Ashbaugh, NCC director of services. “There are a lot of companies throughout the Mon Valley and into Latrobe looking for entry-level people, and they can’t find them.”

The locations make it easier for candidates to obtain training. The evening classes in Latrobe also open opportunities for those who’d like to advance their careers.

“Latrobe is a perfect example of having individuals who might still be working but may be underemployed,” Ashbaugh said. “With the flexible training, they can go to entry-level jobs in manufacturing that will pay more.”
 
NCC has been operating for 20 years, partnering with dozens of community-based organizations in and around Pittsburgh, and serving a wide swath of candidates.

“We work with individuals from low-income areas or who might have a criminal background or who tried college and it wasn’t for them,” Ashbaugh said. “If someone’s willing to commit to the program, it doesn’t matter what their background is, we can find them good, lifelong careers that pay really well and have exceptional benefits.”

Ashbaugh has heard the term “skills gap,” but he believes the issue is more job or career awareness.

“People don’t realize you can start an entry-level job, get into an apprenticeship, maybe your company sends you to college or brings you into a new role because of your people skills,” he said. “You just don’t end up in a production job; you can become an owner or CEO.”

Unions also are working to ensure their job-training programs reach those who may have barriers to employment.

The Energy Innovation Center transferred the Introduction to Construction Trades pre-apprenticeship training program to the Builders Guild of Western Pennsylvania in January 2019. There is no cost to students who complete the program, and graduates are guaranteed jobs as laborers or entry into an available apprenticeship.

“It has been proven that a diverse workforce is a better workforce in so many ways, and there’s a fairness to it,” said Jeff Nobers, Builders Guild executive director. “The economy is booming, and we want to help those who want to be part of that. These are folks who, whether through general neglect or not having a robust economy, didn’t get the opportunity. And we need good people who are dedicated to pursuing a career.”

Starting with a class of 75 that was 90 percent minority and 12 percent women — about double the percentage of women in the construction workforce nationally — 72 graduated, and of that, 58 are working in a union or with a contractor, Nobers said.

While the guarantee doesn’t cover every trade, Builders Guild will work with students up to a year after they graduate “to make sure they get to where they want to be,” Nobers said.

The goal for 2020 is 100 students.

“If we could do 125, that would be ideal,” Nobers said. “We’re also doing work with the Penguins on the arena development (also known as the Lower Hill redevelopment project) so we can help the contractors and the Penguins with their community agreement in respect to minority participation.”