Description

This book evaluates new programs that aim to reduce minority youth unemployment by improving high school students' marketable job skills. This book uses a rigorous methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of recent initiatives that aim to improve minority high school students' marketable job skills. Focusing on effective design and implementation, it presents extensive case study material from programs offering apprenticeship-like experiences and mock interviews administered by human resource professionals. This book uses a rigorous methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of recent initiatives that aim to improve minority high school students' marketable job skills. Focusing on effective design and implementation, it presents extensive case study material from programs offering apprenticeship-like experiences and mock interviews administered by human resource professionals. Minority youth unemployment is an enduring economic and social concern. This book evaluates two new initiatives for minority high school students that seek to cultivate marketable job skills. The first is an after-school program that provides experiences similar to apprenticeships, and the second emphasizes new approaches to improving job interview performance. The evaluation research has several distinct strengths. It involves a randomized controlled trial, uncommon in assessments of this issue and age group. Marketable job skills are assessed through a mock job interview developed for this research and administered by experienced human resource professionals. Mixed methods are utilized, with qualitative data shedding light on what actually happens inside the programs, and a developmental science approach situating the findings in terms of adolescent development. Beneficial for policy makers and practitioners as well as scholars, Job Skills and Minority Youth focuses on identifying the most promising tactics and addressing likely implementation issues. 1. Preparing youth for work; 2. Do youth in After School Matters have more marketable job skills?; 3. A comparison of the strongest and the weakest apprenticeships; 4. Which apprenticeship has the best model for scaling up?; 5. What human resource interviewers told us about youth employability; 6. A program for teaching youth how to do well in job interviews; 7. Guidelines for the future; Appendix 1: the impact of After School Matters on positive youth development, academics, and problem behavior; Appendix 2: the Northwestern mock job interview. 'Clearly written and accessible to a wide audience, Job Skills and Minority Youth is an original and valuable contribution to two fields that are ordinarily separate: youth development and employment training. One of the most distinctive and promising aspects of the program described in this book is its enlistment of representatives from 'primary' labor market firms - HR officers - to aid in training and testing disadvantaged youth. This is a bridge few programs build. The 'backward mapping' scheme laid out by Hirsch serves as both a succinct summary of the logic of the program and a clear rationale for focusing efforts on what matters most in helping to open opportunities for young people from Chicago's poorest neighborhoods and for others from comparable communities.' Stephen F. Hamilton, Cornell University, New York 'This book presents a brilliant evaluation of two programs that seek to increase minority youth employment. The integration of quantitative and qualitative a