Words by Tess Becker
Finding well-paid and fulfilling work feels like it's becoming harder and harder by the day. The cost of living in the US and around the world continues to skyrocket while the job market remains comparatively stagnate, especially in terms of wages.
To complicate things further, a report came out in January from the LA Times highlighting a massive increase in fake postings on job boards such as Indeed and LinkedIn. The presumption is that those listings are scams to get people’s personal data.
On the other side of the coin, a Wall Street Journal piece came out just two months later highlighting the failings of these job posting sites, revealing that some jobs sit for months without so much as a peep from the hiring company.
All that to say that while online adverts have lost reliability, more jobs emerge via networking and connections. According to Zippia, a career expertise website, 85% of jobs are found through networking, and 70% of jobs are never published publicly.
To cut through these obstacles and help people without connections to succeed in the business world Nitzan Pelman started Climb Hire.
The secret to success
Nitzan worked in business for many years and was involved in developing the backend for LinkedIn. She noticed that decent people were missing out on jobs just because they didn’t know the right people. So she decided to make a difference.
That difference came in the form of professional training for people - often from poorer or underserved backgrounds - to offer them a leg up into business.
“I was reflecting that every job I've ever gotten has come through a warm relationship and network and then I never thought of that as a unique form of privilege before,” Nitzan tells Smiley News.
She highlights the difference between going to a regular college such as a community or state school, and Ivy League schools such as Harvard. She also remarked how places in the Ivy League serve less as educational institutions than they do as networking grounds for people to make connections. She wanted to help people from other backgrounds to gain the same opportunity.
“If you don't come from an affluent or middle-class background where you can afford to go to those kinds of schools, then you go to community college at best. And there you're doing the opposite,” Nitzan says. “You're running into class, you're running out of class, you're taking care of family members and you're working. So the class is the focal point.”
Making it in business
Through initiatives set up as part of Climb Hire, she hopes to help people create a sense of social connection and give them tools that they would otherwise miss out on.
“I think college is a sorting mechanism for wealth more than anything else and if that's true, then there's probably a lot of hidden and overlooked talent, who are gritty and motivated and have aptitude but just are unknown. If we could identify those people and find their potential, help them learn in-demand skills, and help them build social capital alongside those skills, we could create a lot of economic mobility and solve a lot of problems for companies.”
This support comes in the form of skill-based classes and education, as well as a network of professionals already trained by Climb Hire to provide a sense of community and understanding.
Initially, Climb Hire's services cost nothing and continue to cost nothing until someone finds a job. Even then the fee is minimal, serving as a pay-it-forward model for more people to access support.
Their primary goal is to help everyone earn a liveable wage and improve their station in life. They prepare people for the workforce and help them break into industries with otherwise inaccessible positions.
“For instance, if we're going to train people up in the next big thing, for example, as an AI prompt engineer; and somebody has those credentials, but they don't have any experience, they don't have somebody vouching for them, it's just hard to break in. That's our work - to help them break in via different ways,” Nitzan says.
Charity check-in
At Smiley Movement, we like to elevate the work of charities across the world. Here are three charities whose causes align with the themes in this article.
Path Home. This organization helps families facing homelessness in Portland, Oregon. Find out more and support them here.
Hope South Florida. They help people affected by homelessness across the tri-county South Florida. Find out more.
National Coalition for the Homeless. They aid homeless people around the country through their many branches. Support them here.
