Hired

Hired’s vision is to empower people and families, prepare tomorrow’s workforce, and advance a more inclusive and equitable economy in the Twin Cities. Hired’s four program areas—Career Pathways, Family Stability, Adult Employment Services, and Youth Programs—help individuals and families achieve self-reliance through employment.

Hired supports individuals by removing their barriers to employability; supports young people in achieving academic goals and developing the durable and digital skills to find and maintain a job; and, with the guidance of knowledgeable employment counselors, connects job seekers to employment opportunities, especially in high demand fields with family-sustaining wages with benefits and opportunities for career advancement.

Strategic Plans: Our 2023-2026 Strategic Plan is grounded in participant/community input and has five goals: (a) skills for meaningful work; (b) expanded holistic services; (c) community voice; (d) deepen employer partnerships; (e) and organizational strength and capacity. We have detailed implementation plans and metrics to monitor progress and ensure performance goals are met.

Our Goal: Each year, we serve more than 4,000 individuals, providing individualized employment services and job training to support them in stablizing their situations, meeting their families basic needs, and preparing for and securing family sustaining employment.

Who We Serve: We serve young adults with a history of justice involvement, adults that qualify for public assistance, workers laid off due to no fault of their own, and underemployed people seeking training for new careers. We also have stabilization programs for families receiving public assistance to support them in upskilling, reentering the job market, and supporting their employment retention and success. The jobseekers we work with often have limited work or educational experience and do not have the skills ore credentials to support sustaining-wage careers with advancement. They primarily have low incomes (84%), identify as BIPOC (68%) or women (67%), are parents (72%), and face barriers such as criminal histories (8%) or lack stable housing (9%).

What We Do: We provide individualized employment coaching and skill-building opportunities at every step of an individual's journey, while helping them stabilize by meeting their basic needs and navigating systems of support. Hired has four program areas that serve: (a) youth (ages 16-24) disconnected from school/work; (b) parents on public assistance; (c) low-income un/underemployed people and laid off jobseekers; and (d) people seeking training to enter new career pathways. Beyond career readiness, digital literacy, and financial wellness services, we offer specific career pathway trainings in high-demand and partner with educational institutions and employers to provide other training, credentialling and work exposure, along with support services.

Strategic Plans: Our 2023-2026 Strategic Plan includes five goals:

1. Skills for Meaningful Work: supporting individuals to upskill, reskill, and build the durable and digital skills they need for family-sustaining wages.
2. Expanded Holistic Services: providing additional support to participants, directly and through partners, to meet basic needs for housing, nutrition, transportation, technology, childcare, and more.
3. Community Voice: centering the voices of the people we serve in all our decisions.
4. Deepen Employer Partnerships: working with employers to build more inclusive workplaces.
5. Organizational Strength and Capacity: investing in our team and systems to meet the demands of a changing workforce.

Hired specializes in workforce development, providing services across the Twin Cities Metro Region with an emphasis in Hennepin, Ramsey, and Dakota Counties. Hired has main office locations in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Brooklyn Center, and Bloomington, as well as also offering career and financial coaching and related services virtually and at partners' locations. Hired has four primary employment programs that focus on serving different groups of jobseekers:  
• Family Stability: Hired partners with Hennepin and Ramsey counties to help families gain stability, transition from public assistance, overcome underemployment challenges, and achieve living wage employment.
• Career Pathways Job Training: Hired prepares low-income jobseekers for positions in high growth job sectors—public sector, healthcare, manufacturing, construction—that offer family sustaining wages, medical benefits, and career-laddering opportunities. Our pathways programs are developed in partnership with employers and result in post-secondary and/or employer-recognized credentials.
• Adults in Transition: Hired’s one-to-one coaching, training, and wraparound support services are designed to help laid-off individuals and adults with employment barriers re-tool, regain confidence, and re-enter the workforce.
• Opportunity Youth: Hired creates authentic relationships with at-risk youth to help them overcome barriers to academic, economic, and housing stability.

Tailored for each of the core audiences we serve, Hired provides the following Services:
• Individualized Support and Planning: Building trusting relationships, helping individuals stabilize by addressing basic needs, navigating community support services, and increasing foundational financial wellness skills.
• Life and Career-Focused Coaching: Identifying participants’ current strengths and relevant skills, and enhancing job readiness through resume development, interview preparation, and digital literacy.
• Career Training, Education and Work Experience: Providing occupation-specific, technology and transferable skills trainings, credentials and/or degrees a work exposure opportunities.

We also provide career readiness, digital literacy, and financial literacy support.

Hired was founded in 1968 to build a pathway for previously incarcerated individuals to gain employment and avoid recidivism. Today, Hired is known across the greater Twin Cities as a trusted, effective resource for adults and youth facing challenges to education and employment. Hired’s mission statement reflects our heart and expertise: We nurture purpose and advance economic opportunity for all through individualized employment and career services.

To assist jobseekers with barriers, Hired uses a strengths-based approach that connects participant skills and interests to the marketplace. As the economy and workforce needs change, Hired changes its offerings and approach. We partner with the community to gain a stronger understanding of systemic impediments to success, and we engage employers in program design, planning and implementation. We embed wraparound support services in our approach to help participants achieve their goals. Hired’s vision is empowered people and families, a prepared workforce, and an inclusive economy.

Among the 4,281 individuals Hired served last year:
• 84% had low incomes;
• 68% were Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC);
• 67% were female
• 72% headed families; more than half (51%) were single parents
• 31% were youth and young adults to age 24

Hired is committed to advancing equity, and a critical role in this is reflecting the community we serve in the composition of our Board and staff. Currently, 40% of Hired’s board members and 25% of the senior leadership are people of color. Hired has 105 talented and committed staff, 42% of whom are people of color. and ten languages are spoken, alongside English.

Hired seeks to increase economic opportunity for all by assisting jobseekers facing barriers to employment with quality services to prepare for, secure, and retain jobs and careers. The 4,000+ individuals Hired plans to support through this funding will be at varying points on their career path. Our progress indicators cover the extent to which participants will:

• Achieve stability and meet their basic needs
• Identify careers that align with their skills and interests with an employment plan
• Build marketable and relevant skills in high-growth sectors
• Gain skills, industry-recognized certificates/credentials
• Secure and retain employment
• Earn a living wage

Hired will track these and other program data in a real-time database with visual dashboards and reports to fuel deeper analysis, programmatic responsiveness, and continuous improvement. The program directors will regularly review and analyze data to ensure performance objectives are on track. We will also partner with evaluators for qualitative data to be reviewed alongside data in State WF1 and our in-house Data for Impact to inform continuous program improvements.
In this new year of support, we anticipate that our outcomes will be aligned with those that Hired achieved in 2022:
• Coached 4,281 youth and adults to find, prepare for, secure, and retain family-sustaining employment.
• Supported 1,502 individuals with training and work experiences to develop marketable skills and credentials.
• Assisted 1,425 people to secure employment at an average hourly wage of $22.57, an increase of $9 over wages at enrollment with Hired.
• Provided career coaching and support to 799 youth ages 16-24.
• Supported parents in creating greater stability for 5,688 children

Additionally, we will be providing training to metro job seekers in at least six separate career pathways, which is a growth of three, over the previous year’s offerings.