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Advice for Employers and Recruiters

Want to improve your diversity by hiring those transitioning out of prison?

Steven Rothberg AvatarSteven Rothberg
April 13, 2021


I’ve been writing a lot recently about how more and more employers have come to understand that hiring candidates who are diverse isn’t just good for compliance or even public relations or even society, but it is good for productivity. Study after study demonstrate that the more diverse your workforce is, the more productive that workforce is.

Diversity means different things to different organizations, and even different people within those organizations. Until recently, I bet if you got 100 talent acquisition leaders in a room and asked them what makes a candidate diverse the large majority would answer race. Yes, one’s race can make you diverse, but there are many other reasons why you may be diverse as well. Some of those reasons would bring affirming nods to the heads of those same talent acquisition leaders such as gender, military veterans, and people with disabilities. But other reasons might surprise many of them: socioeconomic background, school, major, geography, and more.

One of the greatest yet largely untapped source of talent in the United States are those who have been involved in the justice system, which can mean as little as an arrest to a misdemeanor conviction to imprisonment for a felony. Too often, these people are denied housing and denied employment because of an incident in their past yet others who have committed the same offenses but not been arrested or convicted are largely free to live and work where they wish. Now, I can understand why an elementary school can’t hire someone convicted of sexually assaulting a minor but when we received an application for a sales role from a man who had been convicted of and served time for vehicular homicide, we walked the walk by hiring him. He didn’t end up selling nearly as much as he or we wanted, largely because his skills were better suited to in-person meetings instead of via a bunch of emails and the occasional phone call. But if we had a job well-suited to his skills, would we re-hire him? Absolutely.

There are some employers — and I’m hoping this article leads to more — who want to proactively hire those who are transitioning out of prison. Some of those employers are motivated by a need to be compliant with diversity rules, others are motivated by public relations concerns, others want to do the right thing for society, and some understand that it will likely lead to an improvement in the productivity of their workforce. So, how does an employer hire ex-convicts? One answer is to contact a non-profit like Banyan Labs.

Sean Hosman, Founder and CEO of Banyan Labs and affiliated companies, Persevere, and Vant4ge, recently shared with me some thoughts about the journey that he and his non-profit have experienced. “Starting a nonprofit is a difficult prospect, and starting two doesn’t make it any easier. Funding issues and finding financial support and the right kind of partners to make the impact you intended is a challenge. But the mission—to empower justice-involved individuals to succeed as productive members of society by teaching them coding skills and supporting them in transitioning out of prisons—is so powerful that it attracts dedicated people who are willing to move mountains to accomplish amazing things. This group is determined, and there is a lot of grit.”

“The word ‘persevere’ embodies the concept we believe in”, continued Sean. “We’re committed to success no matter what. That ideology in and of itself attracts success and partnerships with people motivated by that mission. It took us several years to get approval for the Persevere program and get support for it in prisons, but now we are seeing the results of that hard work. Now others want to adopt and implement it.”

“Banyan Labs”, according to Sean, “is a success story in the transformation of the lives of the people in it. It’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. We’re bringing hope, skills, and opportunities to fruition by providing on-the-job training to justice-involved individuals after their release. You can see part of Banyan’s success in the companies that choose to partner with us, including Indeed. Its mission is to help people get jobs, and the mission of Banyan Labs goes hand-in-hand with that. We’re working together for the greater good.”

Speaking of helping people get jobs, it might be helpful to the reader to better understand one of those people. DeMarcus Williams grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In his words, he “was convicted for two counts of aggravated robbery. I served a total of five years, seven months, and eleven days. I served the first half of that time at Morgan County Correctional Facility. Then I heard of a place that lets you go out and get a job and make actual real rate money. That’s where I served the rest of my time. It’s known as Mark Lutrell Transitional Corrections.”

Continued Williams, “while I was there Ms. Stacey Mesko-Books came to the facility and gave us an introduction to Persevere and what they were about. It caught my interest. I was one of the selected few that was able to join the first class. It was all brand new to me, but it became very simple. For me the most important things were to be patient and stubborn. Don’t give up, it might not make sense right now but keep trying and you will get it and succeed.”

“One of the benefits that I was able to see when starting the program is that if I succeed then I will always be employed, I was pretty confident that there was no such thing as too many coders. I mean it was the first time I heard about coding and I was 27 and pretty sure that there were a lot more people that haven’t heard of it, so there bound to be a lot of jobs available. Another benefit was that I would be able to build and learn a very strong skill that I could add to my skill set. Of course, I have helped others through the program. Once you join the program, we become family and you always help your family. There are people in the program that are not as advanced as others and learn slower than others, but that’s not a problem. We help those that need help and continue to be our skills together!”

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