About a quarter of the graduates of Platform to Employment couldn’t come to the ceremony Tuesday. They already have jobs.
That’s the highest early placement rate in three years, CEO Joe Carbone said at the graduation, held in an auditorium at Northeast Utilities headquarters.
Platform to Employment, a nonprofit job-coaching and wage-subsidy program for people who have been out of work for more than six months, expanded from the WorkPlace in Bridgeport to a statewide program with the help of a $3.6 million grant from the state.
Sue Alleva, one of the 103 students who just finished the program, has been out of work for two years. This is the second time she’s been out of work for that long since the Great Recession began.
Alleva, who worked in customer service, applied for the free classes because her mother read about it in The Courant.
“I was evicted when I lost my unemployment in December. I had to move in with my Mom at the beginning of the year,” she said. The federal government ended extended unemployment benefits in December, so the unemployed can only collect checks for six months.
Alleva said the program, which aims to build the confidence of job seekers, moved her from hopeless to very hopeful.
“Now I feel like I’m not alone anymore,” she said.
The nonprofit aims to serve 500 job seekers through next June, so the state’s grant pays a little more than $7,000 per student.
Platform to Employment began in 2011. To date, 80 percent of graduates have gotten a tryout with a company with the wages paid by the nonprofit, and 90 percent of those workers remain on the payroll after the subsidy ends. The wages can be covered for up to eight weeks.
So, with 72 percent of all graduates employed about seven months after their five weeks of classes end, the program’s track record is twice as good as overall re-employment rates in 2014 for the long-term unemployed.
This most recent graduating class was more educated than the workforce overall — 51 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37 percent of adults in Connecticut.
In the past 14 months, Hartford resident and college graduate David Thornton has had about a half-dozen interviews. Thornton, 41, worked almost 13 years for MetLife before the company moved his licensing document specialist job to North Carolina.
Thornton said seeing classmates get hired makes him “feel there’s hope for me.” He recently applied for job as a claims operation specialist job at Travelers, and he is waiting to hear back.
The program gives priority to older displaced workers, and 59 percent of the people in this class were age 50 or older.
Wayne Little, 61, of Southbury, first applied to Platform to Employment in August 2013 but wasn’t able to get a spot until the state-funded expansion this fall. Little, who worked in corporate sales for IBM for 31 years until March 2012, has only had temp work and part-time work since then. He worked 10-hour overnight shifts at the Macy’s warehouse in Cheshire for $9 an hour last Christmas season.
Little said he just got an interview for a conductor job at Metro-North, after taking the exam in August 2013. He also has a second interview for a school aide position. He has an MBA from UConn.
He had one interview in sales for Frontier arranged by the nonprofit, but he wasn’t selected.
Little said he thinks both his age and the amount of time he’s been out are holding him back.
While Little does have a pension that covered part of the time he worked for IBM, he dug into his 401(k), as he and his wife still have one child in college. Where before he planned to retire at 66, he thinks now he may need to work another 10 years.
Jexey Jack, a foreman at a 3M factory in Meriden until September 2013, only had three interviews in the 13 months since his layoff. One was last Monday, so he’s still waiting to hear.
He spent 17 years with Cuno, later acquired by 3M. The program did more than polish his resume and cover letters, he said.
“Five weeks ago, my self-esteem was, let’s say, 5 percent. Today, it’s 150 percent,” he said. Now he networks at church, something he never thought to do before.
He said that before enrolling in the program “I never thought that five weeks could make such a difference in a person’s life. And it’s free. I would pay thousands of dollars for this!”
Article source: http://www.courant.com/business/hc-workplace-long-term-unemployed-20141029-story.html