In a tight labor market, more companies are seeing the benefit of giving every candidate a fair chance.
Any experienced hiring manager knows that sometimes the best talent comes from unexpected places. And as businesses navigate a persistently tight job market, they’re turning to traditionally overlooked talent pools—including job seekers with a criminal record, such as those who were previously incarcerated.
“The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s incarcerated individuals,” says Abbey Carlton, Vice President of Social Impact at Indeed, the global hiring platform. “The data shows that justice-impacted job seekers have valuable skills to offer. Their overall performance is the same—if not better—than those without a criminal record, and they stay in jobs longer than people who haven’t been incarcerated.”
Moreover, business leaders increasingly view hiring people who’ve been historically marginalized in the job market as the right thing to do, she says. Although the unemployment rate among the general workforce is low, jobless rates among people with criminal records tend to be much higher. In fact, one recent study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that about one-third of formerly incarcerated people did not find employment within four years after being released from federal prison.1
“Employers care about the communities in which they operate,” Carlton adds. “We know that when people who have been incarcerated have access to well-paying entry-level jobs, they are less likely to return to prison. This positive impact goes beyond the person who is hired—it reverberates to their families and the entire community.”
She points out that Indeed’s first hire was a software engineer with a criminal record who helped the company build the foundation for the platform it uses today.
A Fair Chance
Historically, many employers actively screen out people with criminal records through their hiring policies, whether by conducting criminal background checks early in the process, asking applicants directly about past convictions or having a “zero tolerance” policy that declines any candidate with a record. These applicants were viewed as risky hires and often disqualified before even reaching the interview stage.
Today, “fair chance” employment laws provide some protection for job seekers in certain jurisdictions, and a growing number of employers are committing to go above and beyond legal requirements to ensure every applicant is given an equal opportunity. This means refraining from asking candidates about past convictions during the screening process and interviews. Once an offer is made, an employer can choose to conduct a criminal background check, but in tandem with an individualized assessment of whether or not any past conviction needs to be factored into the final employment decision.
A recent Indeed survey found that the majority of workers want their employers to adopt fair-chance hiring practices. In fact, 73% said they prefer to work for a fair-chance company, and 92% said they would be comfortable working alongside someone with a nonviolent criminal record for a single, isolated incident.
“Formerly incarcerated individuals are the most dependable people around, and they show up.” — Norris Henderson, Founder and Executive Director, Voice Of The Experienced (V.O.T.E.)
Norris Henderson, Founder and Executive Director of Voice Of The Experienced (V.O.T.E.), a New Orleans-based organization working to uphold the civil rights of formerly incarcerated individuals, says many people gain useful skills while in prison and during reentry programs. However, because they often have difficulty getting hired, many turn to self-employment—like starting restaurants or opening landscaping businesses.
But employers should understand how motivated many formerly incarcerated people are to find work and earn income. “These are the most dependable people around, and they show up,” he says. “They taught themselves these jobs—they just need the opportunities.”
Henderson himself served about 27 years in prison for a murder conviction that was later overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court. He saw firsthand how hard it can be to live a normal life and find employment after release.
“Sometimes, people just don’t see the stigma that being formerly incarcerated brings with it,” Henderson says. “So that’s what I have to explain all the time.”
Breaking Down Barriers
Employers that want to open their hiring processes to justice-impacted job seekers should evaluate their hiring practices and reduce common barriers, Carlton says. Here are four steps that can help:
- Review your background check policy
Consider whether a background check is really needed for each position. And when it is, do it after you make a conditional job offer. Fair-chance employers don’t automatically exclude people who have a criminal record. Instead, they weigh someone’s entire record against the core duties of the job using a form of analysis known as “nature/time/nature.”
“This means focusing on the nature of the crime, the time since it was committed and the nature of the job the candidate is seeking,” Carlton says.
- Focus on skills-based hiring
Justice-impacted job seekers bring a diverse range of skills and experiences, but too often those are overlooked because of their criminal records. A skills-based approach to hiring entails determining the skills needed to perform a job and then using job ads and the screening process to find people with those skills—regardless of factors such as academic, job or personal history.
“At the end of the day, finding employees with the right skills is what employers should be focused on,” Carlton says. “So it can make sense to review the qualifications you’re putting in your job ads and applicant materials to make sure you’re not excluding people over factors that may not matter.”
- Make a clear public commitment
Once a company makes a fair-chance commitment, it can reinforce its impact by being transparent about that commitment—including mentioning it in job ads, recruitment resources and communications with current employees.
For example, Carlton encourages fair-chance employers to indicate in their job postings that people with a criminal record are encouraged to apply, either by including that text in the job description or selecting this option when posting directly on Indeed. Doing so helps justice-impacted job seekers understand an employer’s practices and ensures the role will appear in the search results when a job seeker uses Indeed’s fair-chance filter.
Beyond this, hiring managers and teams should be trained on how to implement this commitment, including what they can ask job candidates, how to screen and how to make informed, equitable decisions about moving candidates with criminal records forward in the hiring process.
- Find community partners
There are many community organizations that can help companies establish pipeline programs that connect them to job seekers with criminal records, as well as provide additional support to both job seekers and employers. Community-based reentry programs offer job training and transitional employment to the formerly incarcerated while also helping them access housing, medical and mental health services and legal representation—among other services. These groups can be valuable resources.
Henderson adds that businesses that hire justice-impacted job seekers often don’t look back, because they’re so happy with the quality and dependability of talent. “Once they get a taste of what we bring to the table, it’s a new ballgame,” he says.
