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Inclusive hiring helps maximize access to talent for employers while ensuring that past convictions do not prevent qualified people from joining the workforce.

When distractions don’t cloud your eyes, the world is bright, and your road is clear as day. This is the newfound perspective of Karina from Los Angeles, California.

In the summer of 2022, Harvard Business School published a working paper exploring how employers conduct and leverage criminal background checks. Hiring managers at 1,000 businesses were asked whether they would consider and hire Workers with a Criminal Record (WCs) given the availability and demand for employees

Harvard Business School published a working paper outlining a field experiment conducted in partnership with a nationwide staffing platform to test approaches that more directly address the reasons that employers may conduct criminal background checks.

This past July, around the time many Americans were celebrating the anniversary of the nation’s founding, Ohio resident Brian celebrated a personal milestone: 365 days of employment post-incarceration.

The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) recently held its September Leadership Retreat. Over 140 leaders from CEO’s 12 states and 30 offices converged on lower Manhattan in New York City. It was the first time we had all been together since before the pandemic. Over three days we celebrated, learned, and were inspired.

George calls his full-time job at Center for Employment Opportunities “an answered prayer.” “Not just the job, but to be able to work alongside others,” George says. “To be able to tell them, hey, I know what it takes. Of course, you have to put in the work, but you have people working with you that want to help you.”

Matrice, a Denver native, was raised with her brother by a single mother in Kansas City, Missouri. She recalls her mother struggling to raise them alone but says they always made the best of it. Despite being a straight-A, honor-roll student, and a girl scout, Matrice says her mother was very strict. She presumes it was to keep her out of trouble.

I’ve been an information technology support specialist in Detroit for half a year now, and I consider myself lucky because I love my job helping other people solve problems. But it wasn’t easy getting here.

Jose heard about the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) while residing at a halfway house in Philadelphia. With a referral from his unit team, he soon began working with a CEO crew cleaning up the streets of Philly, earning daily pay and receiving coaching to pursue the job of his choice. After 24 years of incarceration, he says the most troubling part of reentry was the fear of recidivism.

Think of a job a person might apply to after serving a prison sentence. Does a museum professional come to mind? Perhaps it should. The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) recently teamed up with a Smithsonian Institution internship program to help make such a career path possible.

The city should work with unions and re-entry providers to create work opportunities that facilitate and track long-term success. Across New York City, the public safety crisis is most acutely seen and felt in low-income communities of color. Indeed, gun violence is ravaging neighborhoods already hit hardest by COVID-19, mass incarceration, unemployment, and low-wage work.