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are high-school dropouts and four have earned only a G.E.D. However, due to a clerical mix-up, you don’t know which labels apply to which interviewee. All you know is that while each applicant has the skill set you seek, all 16 have “barri- ers to employment.”
Bet you start to sweat. Maybe you think to yourself, “I’ll just go through the motions, but I’ll dismiss them each prompt- ly and post this opening again.”
Is it perfectly understandable, and even acceptable, to judge them before meeting them?
I sure did, when this was the description provided to me by a county workforce center for a group I was about to spend an entire day with. The only exception to the scenario above: I was not there to interview them, only to train them and improve their core work ethic values, or “soft skills.”
Working with young people who have barriers to employ- ment is not something I do on a routine basis. In fact, it’s not something I do at all. However, it was important for me to see how far the work-ethic curriculum I initially created seven years ago had progressed after numerous revisions by my team at the Center for Work Ethic Development. It wouldn’t have been fair to test it—or to accurately assess my own chops as a speaker and trainer—had the audience been comprised of Eagle Scouts and National Merit Scholars.
I went in to the day prejudiced. That is to say, I was pre- judging the people I was told I was going to work with. I am
embarrassed to admit to the adjectives that ran through my mind as I lay in my bed the night before dreading the day that followed.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. The group of 16 was among the brightest, most energetic, impassioned and focused young people I have ever met. Sure, everyone in the group had made mistakes, and in many cases those mistakes would follow them to every job opening they interviewed for, for the rest of their lives.
Thankfully, our day together wasn’t about their past. It was about their future. I was brought in as the instructor, but it was I who learned the most. For starters, I discovered that the core work-ethic values that every employer in every indus- try demands were not new to these individuals. These young people owned up to their mistakes and each admitted that they had learned important life-altering lessons from them. They are now very determined to prove to any employer who will give them a chance that they are indeed positive, reliable, professional, ambitious, respectful, honest and deeply grate- ful for every opportunity they are presented.
I am not in HR, nor do I interview and hire a lot of employ- ees. But if I did, I can promise you that I wouldn’t be fright- ened off because of a background check. I’d rely less on what was revealed by a report of someone’s past and instead look deeper into the promise of what their eyes told me about their future. MF
Human Capital
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