People with criminal records are often denied employment because of discrimination and face added disadvantages related to employment history, education and more. Christine Lovely, vice president and chief human resources officer at Cornell, Matt Saleh, Jodi Anderson Jr. and host Timothy McNutt from ILR School’s Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative, explore inclusive hiring, employment barriers and strategies to help employers view applicants beyond the lenses of risk and liability.
Individuals with criminal records often struggle to secure employment due to discrimination, compounded by gaps in work experience, education, skill development and career capital. Employers and job seekers need new tools to replace decades-old hiring heuristics that are both inefficient and inequitable.
Join us for an insightful conversation on enhancing HR hiring practices for marginalized workers, particularly those with criminal records. Christine Lovely, vice president and chief human resources officer at Cornell, Matt Saleh, Jodi Anderson Jr. and host Timothy McNutt from ILR School’s Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative, explore inclusive hiring, employment barriers and strategies to help employers view applicants beyond the lenses of risk and liability.
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Chris Wofford: Today on Cornell Keynotes, we learn how human resources is embracing technology to open pathways to employment for people with criminal records and other marginalized workers. There is critical, innovative work being done in the space at Cornell, and a new technology will make its way out into the world of work in early 2025.
It's called the Restorative Record, which is a powerful app and a tool for HR professionals and job applicants. A champion of those efforts, Christine Lovely, who is Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Cornell, joined us in studio alongside Jodi Anderson, Matt Saleh, and Timothy McNutt from the Cornell ILR School's Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative.
This is a very insightful conversation among this team. Be sure to also to check out the episode notes to learn how to incorporate the restorative record into your organization's hiring process and also learn how to connect with the team at the Cornell ILR School for further advice. Here's guest host Timothy McNutt to set up the discussion.
Timothy McNutt: There are 2.1 million people incarcerated in the United States and 4.4 million on probation or parole supervision. About 600,000 people re-enter society each year, which is about 10,000 people every week. There are 70 to 100 million Americans with criminal records, and over the years, a punitive criminal legal system has had a disparate impact on communities of color, particularly where it concerns work.
For example, there's a 30 percent unemployment two years after release from prison, formerly incarcerated individuals are five times more likely to be unemployed, and having a criminal record reduces employer callback by 50 percent. So I want to start with Christine. Christine, you've been a champion for inclusive hiring practices throughout your career, particularly for workers with criminal records, and also breaking down educational barriers. What's been your approach to this work?
Christine Lovely: Yeah first I'll, I'll just share how I became aware of this issue. It was actually at another institution and I was invited to be a part of a pilot, working with the State Department of Correction and Rehabilitation. And what they shared with me was they had individuals that were really working on their rehabilitation. They were working on their educational pursuits. They were trying to get ready for work, but they had trouble with placements for work. So the conversation went to a place of us thinking about how we could meet up with our two interests. They had interest in placing folks, and we had a need for talent and for employees.
And once I learned more about the data, with these individuals and how qualified they were and how prepared they were, but just needed an opportunity, it seems like a really good meeting of the minds took place. And so because of that we started a pilot at that institution, where we were placing individuals in positions. And at the time that I left, it was proving to be a successful pursuit. So that really taught me something about removing barriers so that individuals feel like they're qualified and they have an opportunity that they can pursue. And so from there, it's always been, for me, about, removing unnecessary barriers to folks feeling like they're not qualified or when in fact they could be qualified or even overqualified for positions, but just not feeling like there's an open door. And so, that's really been the emphasis for me, is on removing some of those barriers and making sure that opportunities are open for individuals to be able to apply and hopefully successfully obtain roles.
Timothy McNutt: And now, you've talked about this issue, you've been a thought leader in this space, but it doesn't end there. You've actually done the work, you've put in programs and when you came to Cornell, you started to bring some initiatives here. Can you talk a little bit about some of the programs that you've done here at Cornell to signal that priority that you have?
Christine Lovely: Yeah. And obviously, an obvious one is the restorative record that we're actually piloting and we're going to launch in January. So I'm super excited about that. But Cornell had already demonstrated a commitment in this space before with other programs. We had already put into place removing educational barriers, such as requiring degrees for positions that didn't really require a degree. So we removed some of those requirements from postings for positions. We removed some of those educational requirements where a degree really wasn't necessary. And also there's a Pathways program. That's really targeted towards individuals with disabilities. So, we, that's been in place, and then even before I came, we had folks on our talent team that were going to places where candidates were, and meeting them where they are, to share opportunities that exist at Cornell for them, as potential placements for them for employment.
So, and, I'm really excited to share that in September, we hired a Fair Chance Employment Specialist. Someone that's going to not only help us to launch the restorative record, but also helping with our candidates once they're placed and being successful in those roles. So really taking the lead in ensuring that any necessary resources are made available, that there's, they're not just hired and then just left to their own devices. But we want individuals that come on board at Cornell to be successful in their roles always. All of our employees, we want them to be successful. So we want to ensure that employees have what they need in order to be successful in those roles once hired.
Timothy McNutt: great. And we're going to talk a little bit more about the restorative record. You come to a university, you're an HR leader, you have goals of inclusive hiring, of expanding the talent pool, but really focusing on who's the best worker for the job. From your perch as a leader in this space, what kind of challenges do you face when you're trying to, you have an agenda, you want to move it through a big organization with lots of different viewpoints,can you share just some of the things that you've experienced or how you keep pushing those agendas?
Christine Lovely: Yeah, there's always going to be challenges when you're trying to do something new or different. And so I've been able to get past that by starting new initiatives via a pilot route, something that's being tested and tried, and that way people aren't as concerned or threatened by feeling that something is going to be just ultimately changed permanently. So if you can do a little test run of different initiatives and be able to demonstrate success and demonstrate the value that it adds to an organization, I think that's a helpful way of approaching that. And it's also helpful to talk about what's in it for them. What are they getting out of this?
And I know for us at Cornell it's, for all positions, we don't have just like a huge talent pool. And so anything that we could do to expand those pools and to include even more people in there that might be successful in a role, all the better. So, and I think everyone shares that desire. So focusing in on, the value that can be added for all of us, I think is one way that we get people to loosen up a little bit and relax and maybe try something new.
Timothy McNutt: Jodi, we've been working together since your Stanford days where you went to undergrad and you got your master's degree. You've been in Silicon Valley now for a number of years. You're steeped in that culture. Can you tell us how do you envision software driven solutions to bring innovation to hiring practices, particularly for marginalized groups who have been, who have not been as advantaged by some of the technological advancements?
Jodi Anderson: I appreciate that, the million dollar question for sure. So maybe we'll start with a bit of a philosophical approach. So Marc Andreessen, co founder of A16Z, he has this theory that software is eating the world, right. And that may sound a bit aggressive, but it's just that the most valuable, let's say, companies, or just periods in time, have been driven by, like, software enabled companies. So you think of the dawn of the internet, how many individuals that is impacting, right? It's literally changed the world, transformed the world. And there are industries, some of them still remain today, that may be resistant to that. So, so Christine was talking about moving initiatives through a large complex organization, that exists in every single industry.Many of those industries have indeed been disrupted by technology, particularly software. Now if we rewind back, I don't know, 30 years ago, 20 something years ago, before I was born, for sure. These new kind of like internet or software enabled companies were new entrants into the market. And I think it was a bit unprecedented. People didn't know what to expect. But over time, they create immense value for society and change the way humans interact with each other. So everything from, you think of the Netflix of the world, the Airbnb, Stripe, you can name it, Disney, all of them. And then some traditional industries, manufacturing, all of them are driven by software to some degree.
And so you have, you have that perspective. And one of the last remaining, let's say, industries or sectors, criminal justice industry, right? For lack of a better term. That hasn't been disrupted, right? But that still controls large facets of people's lives, right? And there are some detrimental consequences that you highlighted earlier. And so the theory there is that justice technology can be a similarly, like, disruptive force in this space, right? And that hasn't, that hasn't happened quite yet, but there's a, like a burgeoning crop of startups and other innovators who are building software enabled solutions directly into this space. And if, I think the analogy that software has it’s potential to reach a global scale, right? Billions of people are online. Everything we do is online. There's a segment of the population that's removed from all those advancements. We typically see that on the commercial side, but this thing about the incarcerated populations, they don't have access to the internet, Wi Fi, technology, like none of it. So they're missing out on all these innovations, but then they're also hindered or disadvantaged because they're not onboarded to clearly what the future is that we're all presently living in. And so I think the opportunity is there. You mentioned 70 to 100 million people who are impacted by the criminal justice system.
We have scale there, right? And I think piecemeal efforts, they'll get us some of the way, but you need those transformational ideas to really create the impact that you're looking for. So for me to believe in that, drinking the Kool Aid of Silicon Valley for sure. But, but I truly believe in it. And I think more on a personal level, like my entire life was transformed by software. Right? And that may sound a bit abstract, but you gave us some stats on the amount of people who are incarcerated, how it disproportionately affects communities of color. Same, same thing in my case, my entire family, right? So I was incarcerated as a kid, right? Faced all the same barriers that many people face, upwards of a hundred people face these barriers. So it's not an isolated incident. It shouldn't come as a surprise. And lovely, you were speaking about the work you were doing with the Department of Corrections. And I think they're coming to the light that, okay, we need to have technology in these institutions in order to enable some of the advances that we want to bring to this population, but I can never get a traditional job, right, because I would still run up against the same barriers, background check, and, they find out things about you, and then you're disqualified, or you're actually filtered out of the entire, like, candidate, kind of cycle, because you have a, let's say, scarlet letter on your pass, and so only at, software companies, particularly Reddit, Where they're like, oh, we care about like your talent, your skills, please come on board. And then I went through a background check through like Checkr, which is another like software enabled company out of Y Combinator that had a more streamlined approach, right? To conduct these background checks and allow candidates to present more information, compelling information, et cetera. But they've also transformed like that industry.
So that landed me on my first job. And then seeing that in tech was like, we needed to bring this workflow more ingrained into all the systems that are negatively impacting people's lives. And so it's my big thesis, but I think I think we're doing that actively today.
Timothy McNutt: And Jodi, when you bring these new ideas, right, with transformational impact. There's obviously organizations that are using outdated tools, outdated methods.How do you deal with that when you're coming in with something new that's going to require some training that's going to require more advancements. How do you deal with that? What's your strategy?
Jodi Anderson: Yeah, I appreciate that. I'll quote another person who's not here today, but Paul Paul Graham from Y Combinator. He had said if you peek around the corner and you see the future, that gives you an advantage. And then it's on you as the innovator to find a way to bring a swath of humanity to that future with you. And that's how you really are going to experience that, like impact, but also the value that you're going to be able to create. So I think the responsibility is on you as an innovator, despite the difficulties or challenges that you're, that you're going to foresee.
But everyone's using these systems already, right? And it used to be super expensive to build anything, but now those costs have been reduced like dramatically, right? And so because all these systems are integrated with each other already, largely out of the knowledge of the people who are using them. As like a technologist, you have the ability to integrate with every single system that someone uses, right? And to make it easier for them to take the actions that you believe in, right? That creates more opportunity for people without disrupting their day. Right? Of course you need to spend some political capital, which you and Lovely do very expertly. But on the technology side, once you get that buy in the technology is really easy to implement. In the same way you can order anything at your fingertips instantly and it comes. Right? We can do that with technology, helping people get access to employment, education opportunities and other advantages that the rest of society is taking advantage of.
Timothy McNutt: And, Jodi, a lot of your technological development is based on, obviously, research. Some of that coming from our colleague, Matt. Matt, you've been examining barriers to work for underrepresented groups. A lot of your research looks at these issues and you've, you've taken some time to think about it. One of the things you talk about is sort of nontraditional factors in, in the workplace. Can you tell us how you, how you look at those things and how that impacts the work that you do?
Matt Saleh: Yeah, thanks, Tim. One thing we come at this with, is that the existing criminal background check process and third party background check process is very negative facing. It's fear based. It's risk based. So on the one hand, that put, when a person is reviewing a background check in the context of a hire, they're looking, they're not looking at the whole person. They're thinking of the person in terms of what are their potential risks to the organization? The reality is though, these things that people worry about, they don't happen very often at all. So they aren't a good way to predict who's going to be a good employee. The thing that we've been looking at is, there are many more positive humanizing factors that a person engages in other than one, what their criminal background check shows, that are known strong predictors of whether they're going to be a good employee. Ultimately, that's what employers care about the most, right? And as we've had alluded to by Jodi and Christine, this has become a big enough problem that employers are artificially limiting their talent pools by, sometimes at the point of filtering candidates from jump. So what we've been looking at is other kind of restorative factors, things like hobbies a person might have, whether they've received mentoring or even been a mentor themselves. Micro credentials, which is a huge part of what eCornell does and things like that. And things like counseling received, anything that's indicative of the person's ability to succeed in the world and move on from what happened, often something that happened decades ago, right? That no longer has really any bearing on their ability to be a good employee. So the, kind of the upside of that is that all of these things, if people are brave enough to share them during the hiring process, they are great predictors of whether somebody is going to be a successful employee, whether a person had a criminal offense in their past is not a good predictor of whether they're going to be a good employee. That's a myth that's been debunked. So a lot of the work that Jodi's done in turning these into technological solutions has focused on, okay, what can we add to this, to the story of this person? How can we humanize this person, but also add utility to employers? Make it that they can feel more confident that they're hiring the right person rather than just focusing on some of the kind of more route, traditional things that you tend to look at. Like, degrees, and things of that nature?
Timothy McNutt: So, Matt, I'm an employer, let's say, I've got my cover letter, my resume, we do a background check. I hear a new idea like this, that say, you want me to add more factors to this process? Over complicating and already burdened, overburdened? What do you say to employers who really, are, are not, they're resistant to these kinds of change or this kind of information?
Matt Saleh: I would say that ultimately the human resource personnel that's having to make these decisions, there's still a lot of burden being put on them when they get these background checks, when they find that information on there, there are inefficiencies within that. Often one person or a small group of people are making really important decisions that affect not only an individual's future, but their future within the organization and the organization's ability to get the best talent.
So I would say that yes, it's, it's adding new factors in, but it's also applying a new paradigm to the hiring process that accounts for just how big this issue has become in the United States, right? As we were harping on the fact that this is no longer a small issue. This is something that employers have to reckon with in order to make the right hires to get the right talent into their organization. So yes, there's there, it might take some work but I think there are efficiencies in not taking a fear based risk based mindset that ultimately is literally just, cutting a big segment of the possible good employees you could have out of consideration.
Timothy McNutt: And this sort of goes back to what Christine was saying earlier that we're looking for new talent. We want to explore new ways. But if we're just going to rely on the same old methods, how do we achieve that? And that brings me to my next question, Christine, you've been a thought leader in this space. You've been an innovator. How do you think a program like restorative records or, or one of the other initiatives you mentioned can not just impact Cornell, but the field and beyond the walls of Cornell?
Christine Lovely: Yeah, I have a really good example of an opportunity that I had to share a little bit about our journey here. Earlier this year I was presenting at a conference and I was talking about untapped talent pools, and an important part of my presentation was, you know, what led me to saying that we at Cornell are going to pilot this restorative record and some of the thinking behind it. And to say that the individuals at this conference were excited about this possibility is an understatement. People were really interested because we all have the same challenge of not only ensuring that we have broader talent pools, but also more inclusive workplaces. Like we all have that in common that we want to achieve and accomplish that. And so hearing about the possibility and this at the time was just a concept. I had nothing to show at that point. It's just, this is an idea. People were really excited about it. So I envision, once we're actually in play and we're using these methods and we're using this software, is going out there and sharing it with the world and saying, this is what we've been able to accomplish here. And this is the success that we've been able to find, and you too will be able to do the same thing. So I want to take this message far and wide. I want to. Take it and be able to demonstrate now how we're actually using it and implementing it on our campus. And making this making it clear that this is a strategy. This is a talent strategy that you can utilize in your various workplaces. So I'm really, I mean, you can tell, I'm really excited about this and just look forward to helping to get the word out there about what's possible. So definitely want to take that to the next step and maybe like you have me here too, this time I can take you with me there and we can start to spread this strategy in other places.
Timothy McNutt: We, since we have an employer in the room, I can't help but ask, I know, and Matt has a study that I want to talk about in a minute, but Christine, we know 90 percent of employers run background checks. Concerns that arise include the stigma, do these candidates have the right training, We're concerned about negligent hiring lawsuits. How and then certain bias come into play? How can this restorative record help employers navigate some of those concerns whether valid or not?
Christine Lovely: Yeah, I feel like what this, what the restorative record does is it makes it easier to make the individualized assessment that we should be doing anyway, right? Like that should have been the case all along. But what this platform does is it allows it to give you a framework and to simplify that individualized assessment that you should be doing anyway, and helps us with, in many places, there are fair chance laws in place that you shouldn't be rejecting folks out of hand as it stands. And this sort of just gives you a framework to make sure that you're complying with all of that. And at the same time, it makes it for a much more efficient process. At least that's what I, I'm hoping to see. So, I'm really excited to actually get going with using the platform for this purpose. Because I will share that at Cornell, even prior to the restorative record, there was already individualized consideration being given of candidates. And we have justice impacted individuals that have always been working at Cornell already. But what this does is it allows us to open this up to folks that maybe we're a little uncomfortable or we're given some notion of automatically just rejecting groups of people. No longer will that be an impediment because we've now got this wonderful tool that we can utilize to help us with assessing folks and giving a more complete picture of what a candidate brings to the table.
Timothy McNutt: I think you hinted at it, that a lot of employers and organizations want to do the right thing. They want to comply with the law, they want new talent, but the legal landscape can be tricky. There's the Fair Credit Reporting Act, in New York there's Article 23A. Matt, I'm curious, you did a study of employers and HR groups. How are companies doing with these hiring practices? Did you learn anything about whether they're complying and just what the landscape is for hiring people with criminal records?
Matt Saleh: Yeah, it's a great question. And so that's, we did our recent employer focused research study that was trying to gather exactly this, right? So we know that a lot of mid sized, large sized employers are making fair chance commitments. But we wanted to look at is how is that translating to HR workflows? How is the traditional hiring process maybe an impediment still to doing the thing you say you want to do, right? So there's, you're a positive actor, you want to be engaging in fair chance hiring. And what we found was, Some stuff we expected, but other things that were surprising, right? You do see where that breakdown occurs in the HR workflow, right? So we know that, especially in the age of the internet, about 90 percent of employers are using background checks. In New York state, again, as Christine was saying, it's required to do an individualized assessment. You are not allowed to reject a candidate just because they have a criminal background.
So, but what we also found is that, so, this was in New York, but also nationwide. There's confusion even about what that individualized assessment looks like, right? So one thing that was really stark in the survey results that we got, which were across industries and sectors, right, we tried to cover really any employment sector you could think of in this research, but we found that things, even things like how old the person was when they committed the offense, how long it's been since they committed the offense, were not being, being considered by the majority of respondents. And these were people who had. DE&I programs in their place of work. They were, they were trying, right? But that's, in an empirical research sense, that's the best predictor possible, right? There's no better predictor than how long it's been since the offense happened, right?
So again, Oh, in a way, very surprising that that's not even part of most respondents process of doing an individualized assessment. Another thing we saw was of the 336 human resources, talent acquisition, and DE&I respondents we surveyed, only 13 percent considered any positive restorative factors, right? So things like, anything the person has done since or during with community service, hobbies, interests, counseling, micro credentials they've attained. And the other problem with that is sometimes applicants feel like those things are stigmatizing. They feel like if they share that, then it's communicating more about their experience and the journey they've been on that they might not want to. So the employers might not even have system formalized, systems in place to collect that kind of information, even though it's a great predictor of success. So again, I just want to repeat that number 13%. That's startlingly low, which kind of signifies what we're talking about, that fear based risk based mindset where you're, it's going to be very difficult for you to think of the person as a whole person, if you don't consider things like that, right? So runs the gamut of things. And, that's very much a part of what we're doing. And again, within New York state where we, where we are obviously embedded and we care about it is a particularly interesting case because it has the second most fortune 500 companies in the country. I think Texas recently passed it, right? So we have these big employers who want to increase their yield of good candidates. They want to move away from traditional hiring practices. that are artificially limiting who can work at their company. And I think it creates amazing opportunities.
Timothy McNutt: Matt, we're talking a lot about the experience of a justice impact, the job candidate and hiring strategies there. When we look at Jodi's tool and hear about what Christina's mentioned in terms of expanding the talent pool, it seems to me that there are other groups that have been excluded from the workplace that might benefit from something like this, this kind of re-imagining of the hiring process. Can you speak to that at all?
Matt Saleh: Yeah. And I think so, like, even, even if you take away like overt discrimination, there are still barriers within traditional hiring processes like employment gaps or lack of certain credentials that are, as Christine was saying, right, when you arbitrarily have like a bachelor's requirement or something like that. And there's other groups. Some of the ones we've been looking at are veterans, people with significant disabilities that might be, that might have work gaps, for reasons unrelated to their ability to carry out a job. So we are looking at how can some of these non-traditional factors be applied to other groups that typically experience labor market alienation. And again, this is something that, this isn't something that only private employers care about. Like, the state of New York cares about this, the federal government cares about this. They don't want people to be arbitrarily alienated from the labor market. It's not good for society. It's not good for employers who want to get the best employees.
So I think the last thing I want to add there is that one really exciting thing I think about work in New York state is that there's both the private side employment, but there's also that public sector employment where there's the government as a type of model employer filling, filling roles that are, I think remembering that private sector employers are part of the story, but that public sector workforce development side is also really important.
Timothy McNutt: Looks like we've got a question from our live audience. I want to go to Mark. Mark says, recruiting and interviewing screening strategies need to solicit those success factors from candidates, rather than wait for them to present them. How can employers identify such factors? Anybody want to take that question from Mark?
Matt Saleh: I think I'll jump in. I think that's a great question. And that couldn't more perfectly map to what the restorative record is, right? So what that is, is a formal set of criteria that we're encouraging applicants to bring in and also employers to consider that are based in evidence. So this, so it's doing exactly what Mark is saying. The tool is built to bring in structured empirically validated constructs that they can consider from a candidate that often are invisible in a typical resume and cover letter.
Timothy McNutt: And from what I was hearing from Christine, oftentimes these processes are not operationalized. There is not a clear tool that can be used that's embedded in the process. Is that right?
Christine Lovely: Yeah, that's fair to say. And there's often not a connection between the skills that we're asking about and the actual success in a role. So I think being careful that you're, the questions that you're asking really relate to the necessary skills for a role are, that's vitally important too.
Timothy McNutt: Jodi, when you're creating these tools, when you're thinking about this issue, I know, the experience of someone who's just just as impacted is first and foremost in your mind. What do they need to be successful? What do they need to navigate this hiring process? Can you tell us what are some of those obstacles? What do they look like? How do they appear? You, you've said in the past occupational licensing, what sort of challenges from the worker side perspective are they facing?
Jodi Anderson: No for sure, I really love that you mentioned that because it seems like an isolated problem, right? So you think all right, you the worker is navigating these challenges, but it also impacts the business. Businesses thrive and survive off of the talent that they bring in. So, I'd mentioned making sure that you're vertically integrated at every stage of the candidate journey. So you think even when you're first applying, right? And Mark was asking a question, but how do you get a candidate to give this information, right? And so, you're at a typical job board. Say it's a ZipRecruiter, or Indeed, or LinkedIn, and you're applying to these jobs. If you know that, or you think that they're not going to be inviting to you, you may abandon the candidate journey, right? And you may seek out other forms of employment, think gig work, maybe you go to a staffing agency. There are second chance, like, staffing agencies, so there are some people doing good work there.
I think Viapath and 2C for an example. But say, say you're going the traditional route, job boards. You can prompt a candidate, right? That there are resources available to you to explain your journey. And then you're giving the candidate the opportunity to come forward with that information, right? But that trust has to be built into the actual platform that they're using to apply for the job in the first place. Now, on Cornell, right, it's very explicit, right? We're doing this. We're inviting you to do this. Candidates are going to respond to that favorably. But there are other areas that they're applying to jobs. And so you can integrate solutions there too as well, like job boards. You have another scenario in the kind of like screening, right, process that happens. But the candidate knows that they're not just going to be screened out because of a record or some gaps in employment, or they don't have the right educational criteria. They'll be more forthcoming with what they do have and who they are as an individual. How do they do that? You need to create a platform for them to do that, right? Where they can understand what they're doing, the yield on that, and then the employer can also understand that and it's streamlined or operationalized across the org. You get to the part about background checks, right? And so there are over like 4,000 of these entities, right? Some of them are very old and archaic. Collect information. Some of it's outdated and inaccurate, right? But there are improved ways of doing that. You can integrate at that point too, right?
So instead of having the care unit filtered out, you can integrate with background checking companies, right? And have the solution right there. Candidate gets a request to conduct a background check. They may be a little fearful about this. Like, oh, that's the end of it. Right? But that isn't true. Right? There are a fair chance. Hiring policies that Lovely brought up. You could leverage like legislation, right, to have employers go through this process for individual assessment, but also enable the candidate with the opportunity to come forth with this documentation of their journey. So integrating with the checkers of the world, right? There's other players too, but using software as a way to not only nudge, but encourage the candidate to continue all the way down the pipeline until they're face to face with the final decision maker who's going to conduct that individual assessment that knows how to do that and then can hit that, that hire button, right, and invite them into the workforce, finally. And so that's what we're here for. Totally possible.
Matt Saleh: And I just wanted to add to, Jodi just made me think of the fact that there's, in addition to the, to the utility of the tool itself, there is also the power of just going to, I mean, when you go to Cornell's HR landing page, seeing that messaging that you're, that you are not automatically disqualified, some employers don't even know how many people there are filtering out at the point of that landing page, and a lot of human resources research shows that those landing pages are super important, right? How they message to candidates affects who applies. So even, even just the existence of an alternative tool where you know you're just not being interrogated for your past is alone can yield important outcomes.
Timothy McNutt: Christine, we talk about Now that this is rolling out and being made public. What's important to you as far as the message? What kind of message are we wanting to send to the job applicants and maybe even internally for HR, recruiting staff, folks who do the evaluations? What, what kind of messaging do we want out there in terms of what this is and why it is important?
Christine Lovely: Yeah, I think, um, we've been very outspoken about this, and here's why I give a shout out to Donna Lynch Cunningham, who introduced us, and the opportunity that we had to meet one another was because she was putting on a symposium that that really looked at the folks that are often overlooked in this process. Not just justice impacted, but other individuals as well. We've talked about some of them here today. And so I think the message that we want to have out there is that we at Cornell are walking the talk. We're not just saying that we are a place for anyone to have any study, but we're actually demonstrating that we are an inclusive workforce. And we do want to be an employer that has practices in action. that demonstrate our commitment. And I think we're doing that through this restorative record. And I'm really excited to have this be put in place. And not only just this tool, but also our practices that follow because the last thing we want is to invite individuals to become part of our workforce and then have them flounder or get lost in a shuffle. So we want to make sure that all of our employees have what they need for success. So we want that message to be broad and we want that to be part of what we all do as we move forward.
Timothy McNutt: And it seems like, Jodi, the restorative record really helps with the access point of getting into the position. But as Christine mentions, it seems like retention and advancement is really key. What are your thoughts about, once, if this is successful, somebody is on board, what's important to think about when we think about retention, advancement through an organization?
Jodi Anderson: No, for sure. That, that's probably, that may actually be more important than the former to be quite honest. Just making sure that there's career growth opportunities for the individual, once, once they get inside the workforce. Clearly we focus very, very intensely on software, but at the end of the day, it is a people to people, not problem but relationship. And so continuing to have opportunities for upskilling, reskilling, connecting individuals to community based organizations that can help out with some of the wraparound services. Of course, technology can help enable that, but it has to be built into the culture. We can nudge people in a particular direction, right? So if you're, if we're already in your human resource information system, like, we can help divert resources, we can help do some of that career mapping, right? And that can all be automated, but ultimately it's up to the employer, right? To really embrace that, to embrace technology first, but then to embrace this framework that goes beyond your particular tech stack to really enable individuals to have a thriving career and demonstrate the value that they have inherent within them.
Timothy McNutt: Matt, you've looked at a lot of this for workers with disabilities and other underrepresented groups. Can you highlight some of the challenges that you're seeing in your research that's demonstrated really what the problem Restorative Records tries to solve? Is there any other kind of barriers or challenges, whether it's retention or access to work that you've seen that is part of the effort to solve?
Matt Saleh: Yeah, so I think, like, one of the big things here, and I do think this is something that Restorative Record addresses, and there are other things we could talk about, but I think one thing that cuts across, like, for instance, applicants with disabilities and applicants with criminal records, is that issue of disclosure. When's the right time to disclose? What do you disclose? How do you make sure that you're, you're entering a supportive environment that's conducive to your career growth and, and things like that. So because we live in a society that, that we're correcting, we're taking, we're making social corrections to some of these discriminatory issues as time goes on, it puts a lot on the individual as well. And often it can be a lot of cognitive load to have to decide when you're going to bring something up and how you're going to bring it up. And it's different for every person. Right? And so, I think one thing restorative record does is it also provides a place for your way of presenting yourself to live, and even if you don't get the job you apply for, you have this that you can hopefully other employers will adopt this down the line, right? You have, you've started to think about yourself in a different way, which I think can also be powerful.
Timothy McNutt: When is the right time for an employer to see these factors, these non traditional factors in the hiring process? Is it right out front because we know based on the laws that background checks, I think in New York City happen after a conditional offer is made. So an employer doesn't actually know about the criminal record until after an offer. In some counties or, outside of New York, that information may happen very early in the process. Any thoughts for any of the panelists about when does an employer need this information for decision making?
Christine Lovely: I sitting here, I'm not really clear on the process that's been set up for us to launch in January, but I feel that regardless of where the information is disclosed, what's most important is the mindset that goes into looking at a candidate. And what we want to ensure is that at whatever point this assessment takes place, that any individual that's looking at it is looking at a complete picture of a candidate and not just a background check at the point of decision or offers made or whatever the case may be.
In order for folks to be successful, we want those that are assessing this to have an open mind and to look at the complete picture. And so that's what I think is so important and where we should put our emphasis and not so much on the letter of the law and what it says, but just how we're treating candidates. Just in general.
Jodi Anderson: I have a thought. I love that to, Lovely, because I actually agree with that. The beautiful thing about software, and I didn't go to law school, I may not cover that for all of us at the table here, but no matter what the particular law is, right, that's governing your, like, hiring jurisdiction wherever in the candidate flow or pipeline where you're legally mandated to look at the background check, perform an individualized assessment, we can configure that to happen automatically.
So whether you're using Workday or Greenhouse or Lever or iSIMS, you name it, right? Whatever background check provider you're using as well, we can automate that entire flow based on the policy or legislation that's particular or germane to the districts or the regions. So I think that's the beauty of it. Like, once you come to terms with, we need to be doing this, we ought to be doing this, right? Then it's on us as technologists to be like, okay, it happens here. It's automated. You no longer have to think about the technology part, right? It is just happening and enabling you to make the decisions that you want to make, or change the culture and the way that you want to do it.
I think you highlighted 13 percent of employers are like making good on these commitments. They want to do it, but just aren't able to do it because of the confusion. We're gonna eliminate some of that confusion. If we know what the law is, and fortunately we do, and it's layering solutions on top of that, right? Done largely in the background without people's awareness, but done in a way that's compliant, and that is equitable and adaptable.
Jodi Anderson: And adaptable. Exactly. As seamless as any experience you have on any kind of commercial application.
Timothy McNutt: And from what we're hearing too, and I think Christine, you touched on this, some of this has been happening, but it happens through informal channels or, maybe it's a reference letter from someone who's vouching for the credibility of a candidate, or maybe it's a, a certification that comes in as an attachment to the resume and cover letter. What's the advantage of having this be streamlined, operationalized, all in one place? How does that change its ability to impact? What really is the bottom line, which is hiring people with criminal records and improving the workforce?
Christine Lovely: Makes it much more efficient. I'll just put it out there. I mean, rather than having to go and look for things or ask questions, you have it right there in front of you. So, that efficiency and time saver that's related to that can't, we can't overestimate that.
Matt Saleh: Yeah. And I would just add, like, I think this is another point that Christine made, right? Which is we were coming at restorative record in a problem solving way, right? There's that moment in time, which is different in different states and different localities where you have to, have to make a decision, right?
And, and you, there you don't want to discriminate, and we know discrimination is happening, but, and you're not allowed to ask about a criminal record before that point, depending on where you are. But that doesn't mean that this isn't going to seep into organizational culture that you do consider non traditional factors and things like that. If it's on the landing page, if it's something that is part of of that, let's call that a back end process, right, that's still part of your organizational culture. That's still a change from within that I think is going to affect the entire application process, how you look at candidates. And ideally, people are hired then the employers start to see that value. They start to say to themselves: okay well, we take the criminal record out of it, we considered these other kind of skills based factors that we didn't consider before. They might change the way that they actually, you know, build their hiring platforms and things like that, or their application port platforms and things like that. So I think you have to know what problem you're solving, but then there's also going to be indirect good that comes from that.
Timothy McNutt: So we have an HR leader, an academic, a tech entrepreneur. Just two questions. And whoever wants to answer, what's next?
Christine Lovely: I've already said it, actually use it. That's what's next. And then telling our success story broad and wide that this is a strategy that can work for various industries, so. That's what’s next for us.
Matt Saleh: Yeah, I'll add real quick that that's exciting that, that it's super exciting that Cornell is doing this and then we also have, we received some buy in from the SUNY system the state university of new york system, right that there's they they give us a grant to focus on scaling it out to other SUNY schools, right? And then from there, the idea is to keep moving to private sector, whatever workforce development context. I think that the sky's the limit of where this could have utility.
Jodi Anderson: No, I'm going to have to dovetail both, both of those comments is definitely, once we solve what's happening in higher, higher end, particularly with Cornell, it's a kind of like market leader in this space is definitely on to the private markets and then integrating with every human resource information system, every applicant tracking system, every background check provider, right? Every job board that is out there, right? So just making sure that we're able to bring the solution to scale. So we can see some of the benefits that are going to happen internally, but you know, software is eating the world.
Matt Saleh: And to the other researchers out there, I mean, there's this, the amount of data that's going to come out of this as well. Like, there's other research opportunities. Employers respond to knowing that this is going to improve their bottom line, right? Like, you, we want this to be something. So this is just the first step in that regard, too. Like, there's these, this is an unprecedented opportunity to, look at change and with a research lens from within a large employer, right? And from there, then you have to start making that use case and that and explaining that utility in ways that employers respond to, right? Because that's ultimately your job when with something like this.
Timothy McNutt: That's good timing. I think we have a question from our audience. This question comes from Beth. Are you working within industries that have very restrictive hiring requirements due to regulatory requirements? The example she gives is FINRA, registered firms in the financial industry.
Jodi Anderson: I would, I would say that there's just some legislation that was dropped for this specific group, right? Like some federal legislation that they're not allowed to discriminate against individuals with a criminal record. And I think Dr. Tsai's been making some policy recommendations to like New York State in general about the restrictions that are surrounding these, like, blanket kind of restrictions for people that have records to gain access to employment. And so that regulation is what we want to build on top of in the same way that Lovely was mentioning the fair chance hiring policies and laws that exist in certain jurisdictions. We layer solutions on top of that. Same thing at the fed level. When you think about banks and fintech, et cetera, you do the same thing there. Legislation is already set. We know what employers are supposed to be doing, right? And then we build software to enable those solutions to actually be brought to the industry at scale.
Timothy McNutt: And I think, I think best question hints at that. There's a lot of industries that there are necessary restrictions. Background checking is important. Matt, you've done a lot of look at these issues around occupational restrictions. What can you say about this piece?
Matt Saleh: I think, it's, it's undeniable that policy is a huge part of this. And a lot of New York State has 500 laws just restricting what types of jobs a person can have if they have a felony conviction. Nothing about the work we do makes it that those laws don't apply, but there's also, these laws are often confusing like in New York I'll keep using New York State as an example.
That doesn't mean you can just say okay. We're in the healthcare sector. We're in finance. We're in Education right, higher education is one of those regulated spaces. That doesn't mean you can just say, okay, any felony conviction ever. You're just automatically disqualified. That's actually violating the law.
So it is a policy thing. We do have to work with our state legislators, with the, with the federal government to try to repeal some of those laws, which they're a remnant of a punitive time in the United States and we can't pretend they don't exist. But, there's, as Jodi was saying, there's new laws popping up that protect people's civil rights, right? So that, that makes it really hard to navigate if you're an employer. So one of the goals here is to not, we're not undermining existing policy, but you still have, we're helping employers navigate these, these kind of differential rules that are being shown. There are reasonable restrictions in any job, right?
But like that many of these laws are not written to be nuanced. They're just saying if you had any felony conviction ever in your entire life, you can't be an insurance adjuster. That's not a great policy, right? So I think that's part of why we take that whole Gamut in our, in our focus is like you do have to work with your policy makers to change these things, right. This mass incarceration wasn't an accident, right. It was a result of a lot of public policy.
Timothy McNutt: So where's the middle ground? I've heard, there's the blanket ban on jobs because you have a criminal record, or there's this very narrow, or there's just an elimination of background check altogether, right. If that's our spectrum, where is the happy medium? Where's the area where people can get jobs, employers can protect themselves?
Matt Saleh: I'm, I'm, I hope I'm not talking too much but, the, I think what we saw with background checks was that they, they were readily accessible. The internet, the widespread sharing of information with the federal government, states, and localities, that gave people more information.
But more information isn't always better. Right? You need good information. And so I think what restorative record is doing is it still lives in that same space as the background check, but it's giving you better, more predictive information, right? So it might supplement the background check process, or it might be something that players gravitate to because it works a little better. We will find that out.
Jodi Anderson: Well, I think one thing I would say is it depends on an employer's appetite, right? If they are looking to increase their candidate pool with this particular population or any population for that matter, then they're going to look for different strategy. I think Lovely caught it. It's a talent strategy. It's a talent strategy, right? So maybe there are laws or policies in your particular hiring jurisdiction, right? We can figure those out, map that on to whatever system you're using on the back end and enable you to make good on the commitments you have to improving your organization. And if you're averse to any of that, right? And there are no laws, then I think your business is going to suffer essentially from doing that or your organization. And so, and I think in the spirit of being competitive, right, businesses are going to start looking at companies who are implementing these talent strategies and then finding creative ways to do that. One way is through software, but it takes a people component as well and being a bit of a visionary. And I'll pass it to Lovely.
Christine Lovely: I feel like there's a happy medium and that's what we're striving to be. We don't want to ever reject any candidates out of hand, and we don't want a free for all for anyone to walk onto our campus, like, so we've got to find some way where we can be welcoming and measured at the same time. And I feel like this is creating a structure for us to have that happy medium, and that's what we're striving for.
Chris Wofford: Thanks for listening to Cornell Keynotes and check out the episode notes for more info on the restorative record, the ILR School's ongoing efforts with criminal justice and employment initiative. And more resources for employers and justice impacted individuals. I want to thank you again for listening and subscribe to stay in touch.