With open positions to fill, employers are increasingly turning to untapped pools of talent. Through impact hiring practices, companies recruit talent—generally youths—from marginalized communities for entry-level positions. The process is growing in popularity as more companies look to make good on their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
According to The Rockefeller Foundation's Impact Hiring: How Data Will Transform Youth Employment report, impact hiring requires employers to rethink "how talent is sourced, measured, matched, and supported, implementing new processes and tools to improve entry-level hiring across employers." Further, employers must "make hiring decisions based on data rather than intuition."
The report states that existing talent analytics tools and technology can aid employers in matching opportunity youths—unemployed individuals ages 16 to 24 who are not in school—with jobs.
What do employers have to gain? The report suggests that, by in large, opportunity youths' aptitude and work performance is on par with other workers, if not better. In theory, widespread adoption of impact hiring would not only chip away at youth unemployment rates but also eliminate some of the systemic barriers that have kept individuals labeled as "disadvantaged" from procuring stable employment.
