To long-term jobless, auditions offer hope
WASHINGTON — Bill Lewis was under more pressure than most new hires when he began a job in information technology last year in Monroe, Conn. Jobless for a year, he had eight weeks to persuade his employer to keep him and pay his salary.
A commercial mailer had offered Lewis something usually associated with actors or dancers: An audition. It came through a nonprofit, Platform to Employment, that covered Lewis’ pay through a program that targets a major scar of the Great Recession: The 2.6 million Americans who have been jobless for over six months. Many of them have long felt ignored by employers who assume their skills, drive or technological know-how have faded.
Platform to Employment provides job-search training before arranging subsidized auditions. This eliminates any risk to employers while giving the jobless an opening to prove themselves.
Evidence from companies that have used Platform have raised hopes for people who have endured prolonged unemployment. Some have impressed and surprised employers with their adaptability.
Lewis’ employer, Kevin Kuligowski of Creative Mailing Services, discovered he was both proficient in mail-management software and knowledgeable about postal regulations — a rare combination. When the audition ended, Kuligowski hired Lewis.
“I couldn’t be happier,” Lewis said.
Since the recession officially ended nearly six years ago, economists have pointed with alarm to the plight of the long-term unemployed. Though their ranks have declined, there are still more people who have been jobless for longer than six months than during either of the previous two recessions, in 1991 and 2001.
Joe Carbone, who launched the program in 2011, said roughly 80 percent of Platform’s participants have landed auditions and that 90 percent of those have been offered permanent jobs. Since June, the program has been funded by $3.5 million from the state of Connecticut to serve 500 long-term unemployed.
Platform, based in Bridgeport, Conn., has made a tiny dent in the problem. But its approach is spreading, fueled by private donations and government grants. So far, it has placed 800 people in jobs in 17 cities, the group says. Nonprofits in Nevada, Indiana and Colorado have received federal money to set up identical systems.
Research by Barbara Sianesi, an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London, has found that in Sweden, subsidized tryouts were the most successful among six methods for getting the long-term jobless back to work.
One reason, Sianesi says, is that auditions typically put people in jobs that companies need to fill, unlike jobs at public agencies that are sometimes created just to employ the jobless. This makes it more likely that an employee will be kept on once a subsidized tryout ends.