Michelle Lee was in the middle of a job-hunting workshop when the subject of wardrobe came up. “I was talking about work fashion, and one teen said that he didn’t have any clothing [suitable] for job interviews,” Lee told NationSwell. “And some teens were surprised by the idea that they had to wear professional attire” when interviewing for jobs.
Lee was taken aback by their comments. As the young adult librarian at the Riverside branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL), Lee coaches local students on how to write resumes, practice for interviews and learn the skills they’ll need to join the workforce. But this was the first time Lee had thought about their attire and the importance of dressing for success.
It sparked an idea: What if the library could be a place where job seekers of any age could borrow the accessories they might need in order to impress a potential future boss?
As libraries expand beyond books and become hubs for arts, technology and social services, they are now providing sartorial support. NYPL’s Grand Central branch gives referrals for organizations that provide professional clothing for work or a job interview, as part of a program run by the economic empowerment nonprofit Single Stop. And the Queens Library and the Free Library of Philadelphia both have tie-lending programs.
So Lee submitted a proposal for a “fashion library” to NYPL’s Innovation Project, which provides funding and support for library staffers to pitch ideas for creative programs and solutions services for clientele. Lee ended up winning a grant to launch NYPL Grow Up as a pilot program at Riverside. Grow Up combines an attire rental service with a new series of “adulting” workshops that cover workplace fashion as well as budgeting, healthy living and other life skills.
Grow Up’s library features a range of neckties, briefcases and handbags that patrons can rent for up to three weeks. All they need is a library card (with less than $15 in fines attached to it). Grow Up even offers bow ties if interviewees are in need of something formal. “They can use it for a school performance or prom if they want,” Lee told the Washington Post.
Grow Up has already seen some success, particularly among female job seekers who report that the handbags are not only stylish and useful, but also practical: “You can put a lot of stuff in there,” one renter said.
If you would like to contribute to the program, the Riverside Library accepts donations of work-appropriate handbags, briefcases and ties during normal business hours.
Tag: job skills
Building a New Workforce in a World of Help Wanted
Jared Bravo thought he knew a few things about building a house. After all, he had helped his dad refinish their basement when he was a teenager and then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in architecture. But in reality, he knew very little.
Bravo, 25, works for Habitat for Humanity New York City in Queens, N.Y. As the construction site manager, he oversees the gut renovation of old city-owned housing units that are being turned into affordable housing for low-income families. He’s had to learn everything about building on the job.
“The more I’ve been onsite, the more I realized I didn’t actually do much to help fix my dad’s basement,” he jokes.
Though Bravo hadn’t intended to go into construction, the opportunity to learn a trade skill was something that, to him, proved valuable.
That understanding is lost on many young Americans, as a so-called “skills gap” looms over the construction and manufacturing industries that could hamper output over the next decade. After the 2008 housing bust, almost 22 percent of the construction force left for other jobs, leaving 900,000 positions open. Today, the outlook remains bleak. Seventy-seven percent of builders report framing crew shortages and 76 percent say that there aren’t enough carpenters, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
The lack of builders is particularly acute after this year’s hurricane season decimated 25 percent of the Florida Keys and destroyed an estimated 30,000 homes in Houston; Puerto Rico is still reeling from Hurricane Irma’s destruction.
There simply aren’t enough people to help rebuild.
An October 2017 poll conducted by the staffing firm Adecco shows that close to 90 percent of American executives believe apprenticeship programs, which tend to enjoy wide bipartisan support, can close this gap. In 2016, President Obama allocated $265 million in grants for apprenticeship programs through 2019. More recently, President Trump funneled an additional $100 million into those efforts — a move that will likely experience funding struggles as a result of the president’s cuts to educational programs and a 21 percent decrease in funding to the Labor Department.
Nonprofits and local governments also run apprenticeship programs that achieve the same goal for less within the “new-collar” job sector (a term coined by the New York Times), while trade schools are also affordable options.
The worker shortage is already causing construction delays. In the Big Apple, for example, Habitat for Humanity New York City acts as a general contractor building affordable housing units. It’s had to stretch deadlines because skilled carpenters and other tradespeople weren’t available.
But it hasn’t been all bad news for Habitat — or other groups, like YouthBuild — that work to create a pipeline of workers.
“The upside is that we’re returning and providing roads for people in the community to become laborers or construction workers that may not have realized this was an option,” says Karen Haycox, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City.
Robert Taylor, executive director for New York’s East Harlem chapter of YouthBuild, echoes these sentiments. “Not every person who comes into our program is going to be equipped to take on tech jobs that require a four-year college education, especially if you’re already reading at the fourth- or sixth-grade level … If you’re someone coming from somewhere where you’re not finishing high school, construction jobs are great to be placed into with spillover benefits,” he says.
More than half of businesses blame schools for not providing pathways to middle-class labor jobs. But Albuquerque, N.M., mayor Richard J. Berry views the problem differently: Schools are failing to teach kids about trade jobs, and businesses aren’t jumping in with opportunities to learn.
“The industry on one side said, ‘We need a better-trained workforce’ but didn’t know how to put that through an educational framework, so we told them to create the curriculum and we’ll put it into practice,” Berry tells NationSwell after speaking at the 2017 NationSwell Summit on Solutions this past November.
Through the five-year long partnership Running Start for Careers, high school students receive dual credit for classes in plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry and other technical trades. The result? A 36 percent increase in the graduation rate among students who are traditionally lower income, according to Berry.
“We had kids asking, ‘Why am I in school?’” Berry says. “You can sit them down and explain to students all day in a classroom why they need geometry, but it doesn’t click until you get them to work with Joe the Carpenter who’s building roof trusses and explains why A-squared plus B-squared has to equal C-squared, or the roof will fall down. Then, they’ll become interested and see that there are actual roads to the middle class without having to be burdened with student debt.
Bravo, the site manager with Habitat for Humanity New York City, says that the interest to learn new skills exists, it just needs to be piqued.
“When you’re working with high school and college kids, you might spark an interest in something they didn’t realize they had,” he says. “You just have to show them a different angle of what they think they know.”
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Jared Bravo works for AmeriCorps. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
The Program Giving Workers Without College Degrees a Leg Up
For Americans that have completed higher education, figuring out which skills to acquire is less of a concern when it comes to applying for a job. But for workers without a college degree, the roadmap to getting hired is a bit trickier.
That’s a narrative underscoring the growing skills gap across the country, where an estimated 4.8 million jobs were not filled in August while 9.6 million Americans remained unemployed, according to Bloomberg. As it becomes more apparent that higher education is not the only answer to unemployment — after all, 73 percent of U.S. jobs do not require a college degree — more companies are stepping up to help Americans find the necessary skills for these available jobs.
LearnUp, a skills training platform focused on entry-level positions in retail, goes as far as to pair potential hires with openings at companies including Gap Inc., AT&T, Office Depot and Staples. The two-year-old company provides training programs tailored to each job, helping applicants learn the specific skills needed to land a position.
“The average person has 15 to 16 jobs in their lifetime. You need something that keeps your skills relevant,” says co-founder Alexis Ringwald. “Our vision is to have training available for every job.”
Ringwald, who formerly launched and sold a software startup, frequented unemployment lines before starting LearnUp to get a better sense of the hardships of finding a job. The entrepreneur and co-founder Kenny Ma then launched the platform in 2012 in the San Francisco Bay area and has since expanded job postings across the country.
Since its inception, LearnUp discovered that spending one to two hours of training in one of its modules triples a worker’s chance of landing a position, Fast Company reports.
“Having a series of realistic situations is the most effective way to teach job skills,” Ringwald says.
While not every applicant receives a job offer at the end of the process, the platform does manage to actually bridge the unskilled unemployed with companies seeking out new hires. And for many, that’s time worth spending.
MORE: Teaching Low-Income Youth These Skills May Just Solve the Tech Job Hiring Gap