Transitioning to Civilian Life Can Be Difficult. So Microsoft Trains Marines in IT Before They Hit the Job Market

When military members leave the service, many struggle to find a job — often having to study for a new degree or certification in order to qualify for a position, all the while not being able to rely on consistent income.
To help solve this problem before it even arises, Microsoft is working with Marines at Camp Pendleton in California (and two other U.S. military bases), offering a 16-week certification program in Information Technology to soldiers planning to leave the service in the near future.
Sergeant Taylor Harris, one of the participants in the Microsoft Systems and Software Academy, told Bob Lawrence of ABC 10 News, “It’s great to be able to do this while we are transitioning because we still get a stable paycheck because we’re on active duty.”
Although none of the veterans are guaranteed a job with Microsoft, part of the academy is an interview training session that helps many of them secure an IT position. And at the end of the course, each of them is flown to Redmond, Washington to interview with the tech giant. Navy veteran Sean Kelley, Microsoft’s Senior Staffing Director of Cloud and Enterprise Group, told Lawrence, “70 percent of those who go through the program are working in the tech industry.”
In January, Kelley testified before Congress about what Microsoft has learned from its veteran recruiting efforts, and how the company believes that training veterans in IT can help solve the industry’s problem with finding enough people with technical skills to hire.
“Economic projections point to a need for approximately one million more STEM professionals than the United States will produce at the current rate over the next decade,” he told the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “The United States graduates about 300,000 bachelor and associate degrees in STEM fields annually. Fewer than 40 percent who enter college intending a major in a STEM field complete a STEM degree. It is clear that many people, including veterans, lack the technology skills and industry certifications employers look for to fill the tens of thousands of available IT jobs across a broad range of industries. Eight years ago when we started exploring how Microsoft could be helpful to our transitioning veterans, we were surprised to learn there were very few opportunities for veterans to acquire these in-demand skills.”
Classes like this one are helping many veterans find not only a job, but a high-paying and satisfying career. Tuition for the class costs about $3,000 on Camp Pendleton, compared to $10,000 to $20,000 for a similar certification course off base. Corporal Joseph Priest told Lawrence, “As soon as I heard about this opportunity, I jumped on it…you put a little bit aside for tuition costs, and might get a job that lands you between 60 to 80k. I think it’s worth it.”
MORE: Here’s A New Website Bringing Unemployed Veterans and Understaffed Tech Companies Together
 

How Second Chances Are Helping States Reduce Their Crime Rates

Being convicted of a crime can certainly have lifelong ramifications that don’t necessarily involve life behind bars without parole. It can mean a lifetime of unemployment.
Minneapolis-raised Kissy Mason witnessed this firsthand in her own family. “People in my family were being locked up, and then they were locked out of a right to live, a right to employment,” she told Nur Lalji of Yes! Magazine.
Seventy percent of people released from prison commit another crime within three years, and part of this recidivism rate is due in part to how difficult it is for them to find a job.
Mason was determined to make better choices for herself than those being made by her family members. But in 2006, she was involved in a domestic argument that escalated, leading to a felony conviction. Although she never went to jail — she served probation instead — whenever she filled out an application for employment, she had to check the ubiquitous box indicating that she was a convicted felon. This status also disqualified her for low-income Section 8 housing.
Instead of lamenting the situation, Mason worked to change it. She joined the campaign to “ban the box,” which was started by All of Us or None (a group founded by formerly incarcerated people that had difficulty finding work) in 2003. Since then, 12 states have removed this question from job applications. Employers can still conduct criminal background checks, but by the time they get that far in the hiring process, they’ve usually had a chance to study the applicant’s other qualifications.
Mason’s home state, Minnesota, enacted legislation banning the box in January 2014. Because of the initiative, one of the state’s major corporations, Target, has stopped using the check-off box on job applications not just in its Minnesota stores— but throughout the country.
“Sometimes people bar you from jobs forever because of one incident, and I don’t think that’s fair,” Mason told Lalji. “People should be given another chance. It shouldn’t be one time and you’re out.”
MORE: Meet A Former Big-City Police Chief Who Wants to Turn American Law Enforcement On Its Head
 

Boots to Business Gives Entrepreneurial Veterans A Leg Up

The unemployment news among veterans isn’t all bad. But while jobless rates are improving, former soldiers still face a bigger struggle landing employment than non-veterans.
Case in point: a recent study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the unemployment rate to be 6.8 percent among younger veterans, compared to 5.7 percent for the nation as a whole. Fortunately, a lot of people are working to solve this problem.
The 2011 “Hire Our Heroes” act required government agencies to come up with classes to help military veterans transition to civilian careers. One program that grew out of this mandate is Boots to Business, a training program that guides veterans through the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. Many are already benefiting from these classes, such as the more than 60 veterans hired by the MGM Grand Detroit (which has a Boots to Business program with the American Red Cross).
Rozell Blanks Sr., vice president of human resources at MGM Grand Detroit told Matthew Gryczan of Crain’s Detroit Business that when a company hires a veteran, “What you get is an individual who has high integrity, a high sense of honor and who wants to do their very best…I can’t think of a more difficult job than one that requires you to put your life on the line, and it’s not for a whole lot of money. So you’re talking about highly skilled, highly technical, well-disciplined individuals who tend to excel quickly in an organization.”
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families want to extend the program’s reach even further by offering Boots to Business: Reboot. Through it, free, two-day seminars will be held at dozens of sites across the country during July and August for veterans interested in starting their own businesses. Recently, a Reboot was held in Washington, D.C. in a very special building: the White House.
If they choose, vets can supplement the two-day Reboot program with eight weeks of online classes. At the end of those lessons, soldiers should know how to come up with a good idea for a small business, write a business plan, identify people and organizations that can help them and be able to launch the business.
Ray Toenniessen, Managing Director of Development and External Relations of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University said in a press release, “We know veterans make the best entrepreneurs and we know veterans hire veterans, that’s why IVMF and the SBA are so committed to training and educating veterans about entrepreneurship and small business ownership.”
According to the United States Census Bureau, veterans owned 2.4 million businesses in the U.S. in 2007 — that’s 9 percent of all the companies in the country. And those vet-owned businesses employed 5.8 million people, generating $1.2 trillion in receipts. With the downsizing of the military, now sounds like a great time to keep the veteran-owned small business trend rolling.
MORE: Meet The Business Owner Who Gives Vets The Skills They Need To Start Their Own Businesses
 

When It Comes to Jobs, These Counties Are Booming

After the recent financial meltdown, many Americans probably know what it’s like to search and wonder where all the jobs are. Recently the Bureau of Labor Statistics provided a little more insight by releasing a report that analyzed the number of employed people in each of the largest 334 counties.
Topping the Bureau’s list is Weld County in Colorado, with 1,864 jobs gained in the year. The Bureau sites major increases in construction as the reason for its success. On the other hand, St. Clair County in Illinois experienced the largest decline.
In order to be considered a “large” county, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that a county needed to have an average annual employment level of at least 75,000 people. The study was conducted December 2012 through December 2013, a period in which the country gained 2.3 million jobs nationally—a 1.8 percent increase to 136.1 million jobs.
Another thing to celebrate: the country’s 10 largest counties all experienced an increase in employed people, particularly King County in Washington, which includes Seattle, with a 3.9 percent increase.
Although these numbers provide more insight into the employment arena, the numbers are not exempt from error. For instance, a county that experienced decreased employment is not necessarily a negative. Unemployment may not be going up, but, rather, more people are retiring. Such is the case with three counties in Virginia – Fairfax, Alexandria and Arlington. For these three counties, the number of employed people dropped, but so did the unemployment rate. Similarly, an increase in employment numbers might be because of a migration of working age people, not necessarily a strict decrease in unemployment.
MORE: Ask the Experts: How Can We Solve the Young Adult Unemployment Crisis?

How North Dakota Made Its Incredible Economic Comeback

States scrambling to lower unemployment and boost their economies can count on a new role model: North Dakota, which is recovering from the recent financial collapse better than the rest of its peers, according to the Washington Post.
According to writer Reid Wilson, who’s been chronicling the country’s best states in an ongoing series, North Dakota has a lot to be proud of: A rise in oil production has helped the state’s unemployment rate drop from 4.1 percent to 2.6 percent since 2009, while the median income increased 4 percent and median home price increased a whopping 16 percent. Elsewhere, booming oil production has also provided a fiscal boost to states like Wyoming, Texas and West Virginia.
In naming North Dakota the winner in economic recovery, Wilson used three factors: The drop in a state’s unemployment rate between 2009 and this April; the difference in median income in 2009 and in 2012; and the difference in median home prices before and after the recession, which Wilson says he estimated using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Trulia.com (a real estate website).
As Wilson writes: “Other states deserve credit for making a comeback: The unemployment rates in South Carolina, Vermont and Utah have fallen by more than half since the worst of the recession…But no state has pumped up more in all three categories than North Dakota.”
MORE: North Dakota on Fire—One Man’s Quest to Turn Wasted Gas Into Power

Big Bets: How a 12-Month Bootcamp Transforms Low-Income Youths Into Whiz Kids

Gerald Chertavian first met David Heredia, a 1o-year-old boy from the Dominican Republic, nearly 30 years ago; the relationship would prove to have lasting impact. Through a Big Brother program, Chertavian spent most of his Saturdays with the boy and his family in Rutgers Houses, one of New York City’s most dangerous housing projects at the time. “Talking with David and his four older brothers — seeing where they were starting from and what was in their grasp, listening to their dreams and hopes…that absolutely changed my life,” he says. Chertavian had a successful career on Wall Street and built a technology firm, which he and his partners sold for $83 million. But he never forgot Heredia and other low-income youths he met that weren’t part of the mainstream economy. So in 2000 he founded Year Up, a job training program for disadvantaged young adults that guides them into careers at large corporations.
In this first episode of our Big Bets series, Chertavian discusses the challenges he faces as he aspires to take Year Up from an organization that helps thousands of kids escape poverty to one that helps millions.
Since the original publication of this story, Gerald Chertavian, founder of Year Up, has become a NationSwell Council member.
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Ask the Experts: Why Should Americans Care About Employing Immigrants?

You’ve heard of “brain drain,” the phenomenon of talented workers leaving their home countries for better jobs elsewhere. How about “brain waste”? That’s what’s happening in the United States: Skilled, educated immigrants, having arrived in this country ready to work, can’t find good jobs.
About 1.8 million of these “new Americans” are unemployed, underemployed in semi-skilled jobs or working as unskilled labor making poverty-level wages. On a purely economic level, that’s bad for both immigrants and the country: The U.S. is forfeiting  billions of dollars in economic growth potential. Also, when immigrants with advanced degrees are properly employed, it boosts employment for their native U.S. counterparts too, according to a report by the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., and The Partnership for a New American Economy, a nonprofit group co-founded by Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.
The employment of work-authorized, skilled immigrants is a potential boon for society in many other ways — but it’s an issue that often gets overlooked. So NationSwell convened an expert panel — including a policy analyst, an immigration integration reform advocate, a New York City economic development executive and an immigrant-services provider — to answer the question: Why should U.S. citizens care about immigrants’ employment, and what is being done — or should be done — about it?
MORE: Ask the Experts: Why Should Americans Care About Income Inequality?

Madeleine Sumption

Senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a research group in Washington, D.C.

NationSwell: Why should Americans care about immigrants’ employment?
Madeleine Sumption: The United States is the world’s most attractive destination for people with skills. But it also wastes these skills on an industrial scale. The Migration Policy Institute has estimated that 1.3 million college-educated immigrants are either unemployed or working in low-skilled jobs.
Skilled professionals working in low-skilled jobs forgo tens of thousands of dollars in income. For example, the average civil engineer earns almost $80,000 per year, the average lawyer $114,000, and the average physician $172,000. By contrast, low-skilled health aides earn just $21,000 and dishwashers about $18,000.
For U.S. employers, the failure to use immigrants’ skills to their full potential reduces the pool from which they can recruit, reducing productivity. U.S. consumers cannot benefit from the services these skilled workers might have provided — such as doctors’ visits or legal assistance. And taxpayers lose out as lower-earning immigrants pay fewer taxes and may even require welfare support.
NS: What should we do to fix the problem?
MS: Tackling brain waste is difficult. It requires persistence and political commitment, and the problem cannot be solved overnight. But policy options do exist.
Many foreign-trained immigrants have gaps in their skills and need support to improve their language skills, gain local work experience that helps employers understand their abilities, and navigate complicated licensing systems in regulated occupations like medicine or accounting.
Funding for pilot projects could help build the pool of promising models to reduce the costs of additional training and make it compatible with working immigrants’ busy timetables. Partnerships between community colleges, public employment services and employers can help to provide this assistance at greater scale. And finally, regulators responsible for licensing workers in professional occupations could do more to simplify the application process and assess skills more quickly, so that people trained abroad do not have to repeat years of education and training to demonstrate their skills.

Paul Feltman

Chair of the steering committee of IMPRINT, a coalition of organizations raising awareness about the talents and contributions of immigrant professionals

NS: Why should Americans care about immigrants’ employment?
Paul Feltman: The promise of America is that we’re the land of opportunity. For immigrant professionals, that opportunity should include being able to work in the field for which they have already been educated. I’m talking about meeting the same high standards for professional licensing as American-born applicants. No special treatment.
If an immigrant engineer is driving a taxicab, and it’s not what he wants to do, that’s a loss for him but also for our entire economy. Research indicates that moving a talented person from a low-wage job into a professional-level position doesn’t just help that one person provide for her family. It helps the employer who needs her skills, the community where she pays taxes, and the region in which she lives.
The other reason Americans should care is that many skilled immigrants are Americans themselves. They have become naturalized U.S. citizens and are making a permanent home here, raising their children and becoming part of the American fabric. Their success is our success.
[ph]
NS: What should we do to fix the problem?
PF: For the United States to benefit from skilled immigrants, we need to make sure three things are happening:
1. Information. It can be really hard to find information explaining how an immigrant accountant or nurse gets licensed to practice in this country. But individual immigrants, nonprofit agencies and employers really need to know what the licensing pathways are. They need to know the various options for how internationally educated applicants can return to their professions, and how to overcome common barriers.
2. Connections. People have to be able to find this information, and employers and qualified jobseekers have to be able to find each other in the labor market.
3. Action. It’s not enough to have the information or the connection. You have to be able to act on it. Often, that means making sure that policymakers understand the issue so they can advocate for clearer, easier-to-understand pathways.
Our organization, IMPRINT, works on each of these three areas. Our focus is people who are already residents of the U.S. Our goal is to make sure that if, say, a Russian engineer wants to practice here, they can get the information they need and the connections to make that information useful. Above all, we want people to be equipped to take action. The U.S. prides itself on being a place where anything is possible. We work to make that promise real.
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Nikki Cicerani

President and CEO of Upwardly Global, a nonprofit organization that provides job-search training and connects partner companies with skilled, work-authorized immigrants

NS: Why should Americans care about immigrants’ employment?
Nikki Cicerani: We should care because these foreign-educated immigrants represent an available, highly motivated talent source. While companies consistently tell us they look everywhere for their talent, this is a pool they may be missing. Furthermore, employers that give skilled immigrants their first break in the U.S. tend to be rewarded with strong employee loyalty.
In jobs where they can put their skills and experience to work, immigrants earn more and spend more. They reduce their use of government benefits and instead provide tax revenue that can be staggeringly large. Only about a quarter of the people who come to our program are working. If we get 10 percent of the 1.8 million currently unemployed or underemployed skilled immigrants into jobs where they are earning an average annual salary of $35,000, we’re generating about $6.3 billion of taxable income in a single year.
There are also important intangibles: When an immigrant doesn’t have to work the night shift to support a family, then he or she is joining the PTA and becoming involved in his or her community. These secondary impacts improve the quality of life in our cities and neighborhoods.
You have to have smart integration policies commensurate with immigration policies in order to maximize the skills and experience that immigrants are bringing. That is our message.
NS: What are you doing to fix the problem?
NC: Upwardly Global is a direct services provider for immigrant economic integration. We aim to provide culturally specific training to make our job seekers the best candidates for the job. Once job seekers — who may have recently been doing janitorial work or driving a cab — obtain professional positions, we see very high retention rates a year later. Around 90 percent are still in those jobs a year later, or another in their professional field that pays at least as much.
We are also working towards increased awareness and advocacy. Much of the current discussion around immigration reform centers on the flow of workers into the country, but there’s very little policy that addresses how to integrate these individuals into American life once they’re here. There is an integration chapter in an immigration reform bill, but it is still largely weighted toward civic integration; we’re trying to be a voice for the importance of economic integration.
We don’t advocate changing professional standards, but rather increasing the quality and clarity of information and removing unnecessary burdens for those who are foreign-trained to become relicensed and to re-enter their fields — as well as creating support systems to smooth the transition.

Eric J. Gertler,

Executive vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit that promotes economic development

NS: Why should New Yorkers care about immigrants’ employment?
Eric J. Gertler: We estimate there more than 50,000 highly skilled immigrants who are either un- or underemployed who we believe could access better jobs and contribute to the key sectors of our local economy. There is a huge need for better integration, especially in the growth areas such as health care, accounting and STEM-related work.
Very simply, it’s very important to ensure that we’re creating economic opportunity for all New Yorkers because that helps to create a greater New York for everyone. Also, from a demand side, employers are looking for skilled individuals to help them grow their companies.
Obviously this is an issue of concern to many urban areas where there has been substantial immigration. The number of foreign-born New Yorkers is at an all-time high — more than 3 million — more than 37 percent of our total, which itself is close to the peak percentage reached in 1910, when 40 percent of the city’s population was born elsewhere. [By contrast, there are 40 million foreign-born in the U.S. but this is just 7 percent of the total U.S. population, down from a peak in 1940.] In the absence of leadership at a federal level — cities need to act.
[ph]
NS: What are you doing to fix the problem?
EG: In 2012 we started a pilot project called Immigrant Bridge to better integrate these skilled immigrants, which we think is the first of its kind in the country to address workforce and financial barriers to gaining employment. There are two components. The first is workforce development, where we offer soft skills training, English as a second language lessons, interview practice opportunities or job search assistance. Through three social services organizations we have engaged more than 500 [immigrants] so far, and 90 have already found jobs in their area of professional training.
The second part is a subsidized loan program [offered through Amalgamated Bank], which can help qualified job seekers with expenses that often hold them back from pursuing jobs at higher wages, such as child care, rent, more training or to get licensed. Our focus is always on the job.
EDC has invested $1.5 million for the entire program. We are tracking the data, but anecdotally we know that our program is important and that individuals are using our program successfully. We’re pleased with the results to date, but given the small sample size, we still need to gather more data to figure out the best way to expand its impact. A lot of these programs are really new; we are testing new concepts. We are really trying to be very careful to learn and measure.
MORE: Meet the Undocumented Immigrants Who Created an App to Press for Immigration Reform

What Happened When This Mom Came Up Short on Her Grocery Bill Will Give You Hope

Andrea Gardner, a mom with five kids, was struggling to make ends meet after her husband was laid off. Like many Americans, she relies on food stamps to help put meals on the table.
Out grocery shopping one day, Andrea found herself unable to pay her $17.38 bill because the store’s EBT machine (which is used to deduct money out of a person’s welfare benefits account) wasn’t working, and she didn’t have any other form of cash on her. That’s when a perfect stranger standing behind her stepped in and paid off the entire tab.
Andrea wrote about this experience in a touching blog post titled “To the Woman Behind Me in Line at the Grocery Store” published by the Huffington Post.
“You didn’t judge me. You didn’t snarl ‘Maybe you should have less kids.’ You didn’t say ‘Well, get a job and learn to support yourself.’ You didn’t look away in embarrassment or shame for me. You didn’t make any assumptions at all.”
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“What you did was you paid that $17.38 grocery bill for us. You gave my kids bananas, yogurt, apple juice, cheese sticks, and a peach ice tea for me; a rare treat and splurge. You let me hug you and promise through my tears that I WILL pay this forward. I WILL pay someone’s grocery bill for them. That $17.38 may not have been a lot for you, but it was priceless to us. In the car my kids couldn’t stop gushing about you; our ‘angel in disguise.’ They prayed for you. They prayed you would be blessed. You restored some of our lost faith. One simple and small action changed our lives. You probably have forgotten about us by now, but we haven’t forgotten about you. You will forever be a part of us even though we don’t even know your name.”
Andrea’s story is a sobering reminder that this could be happening in your own neighborhood grocery store. In a recent article, Slate reported that 1 in 7 of Americans are on food stamps. And it’s not just people who are chronically unemployed who need a little help. Slate also reports that the fastest-growing group of people who need assistance are actually people with jobs and work all year round.
Times are tough for millions of people across the country. But it’s stories like these that show how ordinary people can play a big part in making sure families like Andrea’s don’t go hungry.

How to Get Inner-City Students Into High-End Offices

The teen unemployment rate reached a distressing 20.9 percent in March, according to Next Economy (a joint initiative between the Atlantic and National Journal) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is especially devastating for kids from poor neighborhoods, who need work and already face significant employment barriers.
But the Boston Private Industry Council (PIC) helps fight the problem by placing around 3,000 public high school students in summer jobs that help them develop the skills and connections needed to secure a job after graduation. PIC is a non-profit that has been around for 35 years.
Rayford Laconte, an 18-year-old resident of Roxbury, Massachusetts, is one of the students who found work through PIC. Last summer, PIC garnered him an internship at Genzyme, a biotech company in Boston. After the summer ended, Genzyme offered Laconte a part-time, after-school position with the company, which he happily accepted. After graduation, Laconte plans to work at Genzyme again over the summer to save money for college.
PIC places students at organizations and corporations all over the city, from Genzyme to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Joseph McLaughlin, PIC’s research and evaluation director, told Next Economy that the organization’s private-sector commitment is unique — and especially useful.
“We’re introducing urban high school students to professional environments. That has a payoff to employers as well, since they want to grow their future workforce.”
Throughout the school year, PIC also works to help students by offering resume and mock interview workshops, as well as advising students how to dress professionally and fit into an office environment.
Now that summer’s almost here, PIC and other organizations like it are especially important. Students in Boston and around the country who need work and aren’t sure how to get it could benefit from more programs like this one.

This Dry Cleaner Helps Job-Seekers Make a Good First Impression

“If you are unemployed and need an outfit clean for an interview, we will clean it for FREE.” This sign, which you may have seen circulating in some corner of the Internet, sounds like a scam. Shockingly, however, it’s real.
The placard is posted prominently in the window of two Plaza Cleaners locations in Portland, Oregon and has been since 2010, when owner Steve Young was inspired by a similar sign he saw at a New York City establishment. Since then, Plaza Cleaners workers have cleaned everything from suits and skirts to bathing suits — “Who are we to say?” joked manager Kathey Butters — for job seekers who need a little extra help before a big interview.
“It doesn’t matter what they bring in,” Butters told the Huffington Post. “My staff knows it’s not just another black skirt. Yes, we may have seen five black skirts that day, but for that customer, it fits. They feel good when they’re in it. If they could feel good in that clean, freshly pressed skirt or suit, they might sit taller or present themselves better. That little push might help.”
Over the years, Butters says customers have come in to thank them for their kindness, especially when they get the job. But for Butters, the thanks truly belongs to the paying customers, without whom they wouldn’t be able to offer free cleanings.
As for that viral photo that has been circulating the Internet — often accompanied by a caption that claims that Plaza Cleaners has helped more than 2,000 unemployed workers to the tune of $32,000 — well, Butters says that part of the story is not true. No one at the business kept track of how many customers have taken them up on their offer, nor do they know how much it has cost them. Because to Butters, Young and the other workers, it doesn’t matter. “How can you put a dollar figure on something like that?” Butters says.
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