Department of Justice and run by the American Bar Association found 44,000 collateral consequences nationwide.Īlejandro, a user of the Honest Jobs platform from Colorado, offers this account of what it’s like to face collateral consequences during a job search: “Everything was good until I hit the background checks on the jobs. ![]() When they reenter their communities following incarceration, people with records often find that they face what are known as “ collateral consequences” of conviction-legal and regulatory restrictions that limit their access to employment opportunities as well as housing, social services, professional licenses, and more. People of color lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and people with histories of abuse or mental illness are disproportionately represented in this population.īlakeman says Honest Jobs has an ambitious vision: “A society where every person with a criminal record has ample opportunity to thrive at work, at home, and in their communities.” Sadly, that vision is far from the current reality. In the United States, nearly 70 million people, or 1 in 3 adults, have some type of criminal record. He not only encourages other employers to embrace fair chance hiring, he’s committed to it himself: 61% of the company’s employees have been incarcerated.Īt JFF Ventures, we believe that entrepreneurs like Harley who have lived experience confronting the workforce challenges we seek to address are the people who are best equipped to find effective solutions to those challenges. ![]() “I have two felony convictions, spent 427 days in prison, and was rejected nearly 100 times for jobs I was qualified for,” he says.īlakeman has built a strong team at Honest Jobs by walking the talk. He says he came up with the idea to start a company that promoted fair chance hiring for people with criminal records because he wanted to solve a problem that no one else was solving-and he had a deep personal connection to that problem. We are proud of what the Honest Jobs team has accomplished and are eager to help them build an incarceration-to-employment pipeline.įounder and CEO Harley Blakeman says his mission is to make Honest Jobs “the hub where jobseekers with a criminal record come to build careers and employers come to find great talent.” JFF Ventures invested in Honest Jobs to help the company scale nationally. Believing that everyone deserves a fair chance to pursue jobs that pay family-supporting wages and offer opportunities for economic advancement, JFF Ventures invested in Honest Jobs in early 2022. Founded in 2018, the Denver-based company has partnered with more than 1,100 employers and served nearly 40,000 jobseekers to date. Honest Jobs is an employment platform for people who have been incarcerated. ![]() JFF Ventures looks for unique opportunities to advance solutions that have the potential to drive impact at scale. The impact investing arm of Jobs for the Future, JFF Ventures supports early-stage companies that are building innovative technologies to drive learning, employment, and economic advancement opportunities to empower workers in low- and middle-wage jobs. This profile is the first in a series of occasional blog posts about companies that JFF Ventures invests in.
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