A Janitorial company called CleanCraft, based in New York is hoping to inspire other businesses to be more open with their hiring processes, by hiring anyone who applies for a job there, regardless of their employment or criminal history.
Founder Ty Hookway still screens all of his potential employees so he knows who he is dealing with, but he still gives everyone an honest shot. CleanCraft has quickly grown from 40 to 400 employees.
“People think I’m crazy. I didn’t even tell my customers sometimes–I just figured I took a risk that I wanted to take, and if something happened I would pay for it myself,” Hookway says.
Hookway always had a somewhat open hiring policy but was inspired to take an even more radical approach after attending a conscious capitalism summit in Philadelphia five years ago, where he met Mike Brady, CEO of the social enterprise Greyston Bakery.
Greyston is a New York-based Bakery that takes the same approach of giving people a chance, even if they may be risky hires.
Together, they have launched the Center for Open Hiring, an organization that hopes to spark a movement where other employers take a similar approach in their hiring process.
According to the organization’s website:
“Open Hiring fills jobs without judging applicants or asking any questions. It creates opportunities for those who have been kept out of the workforce. That includes women, men, people of color, people of all faiths and sexual orientations, immigrants and refugees, those living in poverty or who have spent time in prison, and anyone else who has faced barriers to employment. When organizations practice Open Hiring, they upend traditional hiring practices by shifting spending from screening people out to investment in support of employee success.
Our Open Hiring Model includes partnerships with community programs that provide employees with the services they need to succeed. Where traditional HR departments focus more narrowly on job requirements and performance indicators, we focus on the person. We help employees find ways to remove any obstacles to job success. That could mean anything from finding quality child care to accessing safe housing. We partner with each employee to define their career and life goals and then provide access to the supports and services they need to reach them.”
According to FastCompany, 14 other companies have officially signed on to the Open Hiring movement.
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