Byron Auguste: evaluation

Transcript context

…If it’s privately profitable to deviate from this practice, why not run a for-profit rather than a nonprofit? Well, there are for-profits that are taking pieces of this, and I think it’s great. I think if I were doing this as a for-profit, I would be skimming. I would be taking the folks who absolutely, overwhelmingly should have the job today — it’s just not even a close call — and creating some arbitrage there. But I think there’s a much larger opportunity. I think no one entity, no one person, no one organization, not even one sector can solve this problem alone. I really think it’s a multi-sector problem. The question isn’t, how can a nonprofit solve it? Because a nonprofit can’t solve it. The question is, what’s missing? Fundamentally, I believe — and Opportunity@Work believes — what’s missing is an actual set of valid signals that show you screen-in signals, as opposed to screen-out signals. You cannot interview everybody, but if you’re screening out because, on average, you think people with a bachelor’s degree are better, therefore, you’re screening out millions of people who can do the job — well, that’s a terrible system. An individual employer — they can’t necessarily change that whole system because the system works through hiring platforms and lots of other things. And the employers that have the biggest ability to change it don’t need to change it as much because they’re winning the poaching wars. It’s the companies that are losing the poaching wars that are actually really sucking wind on talent. They don’t have the power to change that system, but they can change their practices, and we’re working to help them. As you know, more and more top universities are moving away from requiring standardized testing for people applying. Is this good or bad from your point of view?…

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