The Best Hire You Haven’t Made Yet
A Persevere perspective on second chance employment
Something has been bothering me and I can’t shake it.
Seventy-seven million Americans have a criminal record. One in three working-age adults. And most companies — good companies, smart companies, companies that have “Diversity & Inclusion” in their mission statement — are quietly screening them all out before a single conversation happens.
Why?
Not in a rhetorical “gotcha” way. Genuinely asking. Because when you actually look at the research, when you talk to employers who’ve taken the leap, when you see the data up close the way we do at Persevere every single day — the fear doesn’t hold up.
So let’s just walk through it. No PowerPoint.
The stigma is doing a lot of heavy lifting it doesn’t deserve.
The fear is that justice-impacted employees will be unreliable. Dishonest. A liability. That your workplace culture will take a hit or your customers will notice or something will go sideways and you’ll be standing in front of your board trying to explain a decision that felt risky from jump.
I get it. Fear is a completely rational response to uncertainty.
But here’s what the University of Alabama at Birmingham found after synthesizing 25 years of cross-disciplinary research: employers who actually hire justice-impacted individuals report strong work ethic, loyalty, and improved workforce performance. Consistently. Across industries. And the more interesting finding? Employers who have good experiences hiring from this population keep doing it. The fear disappears on contact with reality.
That’s not a feel-good story. That’s a pattern.
The retention thing is real and companies are sleeping on it.
You want to know what happens when someone has fought like hell to overcome every barrier the system could throw at them, finally lands a quality job, and gets treated like a human being with actual potential?
They stay. They work hard. They’re not taking it for granted.
The voluntary turnover data on second chance hires vs. general market hires is striking. And when you do the math on what it actually costs to backfill a position — recruiting fees, onboarding time, productivity ramp, lost institutional knowledge — that retention premium translates into real dollars. Not charity. Not optics. Actual cost avoidance.
Oh and the federal government will literally pay you to do this. Just putting that out there.
The Work Opportunity Tax Credit — WOTC — gives employers up to $2,400 per qualified ex-felon hire. That’s 40% of the first $6,000 in wages for someone who works 400+ hours. The feds are literally co-investing in your hiring decision.
Now — heads up — WOTC is currently authorized through December 31, 2025. There’s bipartisan legislation to extend it but it hasn’t crossed the finish line yet. So if you’ve been thinking about this, now is the time to move. File Form 8850 within 28 days of the hire date. Don’t overthink it. Don’t leave money on the table.
There’s also the Federal Bonding Program. Free fidelity bonds from the Department of Labor covering the first six months of employment. Protects you against employee dishonesty at zero cost to you or the employee. The federal government literally backstopping the exact risk you’re most worried about — for free.
The incentives exist because this works. They didn’t build a financial architecture around something that doesn’t produce results.
The recidivism data is the number that stops every conversation.
National recidivism rate: 68%.
Persevere participant recidivism rate: 1.8%.
I’ll just let that sit there for a second.
Employment — real employment, quality employment, employment with a career path attached — is one of the most powerful predictors of someone staying out of the system. The research on this is deep and consistent. Give someone something worth protecting and the calculus changes completely.
That 66-point gap isn’t just a Persevere story. It’s a proof point for what happens when you stop writing people off.
And here’s the market angle that I think smart companies are starting to figure out.
We are in a sustained talent shortage. The demographics are shifting. The traditional pipelines are under pressure. Companies are fighting over the same credentialed candidates from the same shrinking pools.
Justice-impacted individuals are a massive, largely untapped talent market. Motivated. Skilled — especially the ones coming through rigorous technical training programs. And loyal in ways that most hiring managers haven’t experienced at scale.
The companies treating second chance hiring as a talent strategy — not a CSR initiative, a talent strategy — are quietly building a competitive advantage. The ones still running blanket criminal record exclusions are going to look back in five years and realize they were playing checkers.
So what do you actually do with this?
Stop using blanket criminal record exclusions. Move to individualized assessment — does this specific offense have direct relevance to this specific job? That approach actually reduces legal exposure AND opens the talent pool. Win-win.
Partner with organizations that are doing the preparation work. You don’t have to figure this out alone. When candidates arrive with documented technical skills, employer references, and program completion credentials, the risk profile changes dramatically.
Claim your WOTC credits. Get bonded. Tell the story inside your company and outside of it. Employer brand equity around fair chance hiring is real and it’s growing.
I keep coming back to this on Sunday mornings. Seventy-seven million people. One in three working-age adults. Carrying records that follow them everywhere, getting screened out of opportunity after opportunity, while companies complain they can’t find good talent.
The gap between the stigma and the reality is enormous. And the employers who close that gap first — with intention, with structure, with the data on their side — they’re going to win.
That’s not just the right thing. It’s the smart thing.
And sometimes those two things line up perfectly.
Persevere (perseverenow.org) is a national nonprofit providing rigorous technology education and workforce development for justice-impacted individuals. Our participants achieve a 1.8% recidivism rate versus the 68% national average. If you want to talk about what a real employer partnership looks like, we’d love the conversation.
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