Even as Fair Chance Hiring gains momentum, today’s hiring systems offer scattered and unclear signals about which employers are actively hiring. Job seekers whose applications may reflect a record of criminal-legal system interaction often face uncertainty about which roles are realistically accessible to them.
This is one of four case studies featured in our latest report on Fair Chance Hiring.
Drawing on his personal reentry experience, Harley Blakeman founded Honest Jobs to redesign these pathways by building connective infrastructure that aligns information, workforce supports, and employers around the qualifications and potential of job seekers.
“I’m formerly incarcerated, and I know firsthand how hard it is to find a job with a record. I’ve heard the same struggle from thousands of others, and it was clear to me that the system itself is broken.”
— Harley Blakeman, 2025
Launched in 2018, Honest Jobs initially focused on building relationships with employers and connecting candidates directly with those committed to fair chance hiring. Harley and his team quickly realized the limitations of this approach: job postings were sporadic, and relying on direct engagement with employers proved resource-intensive. Many hiring systems automatically filter out applications reflecting a record, requiring extra effort to identify accessible roles.
This realization led to a shift in strategy. “We realized then, we could better serve job seekers by creating transparency through data instead of relying on direct employer participation,” Harley explained. By focusing on data, Honest Jobs could map opportunities more systematically and ensure that job seekers had a clearer view of where they could realistically apply.
Structural barriers in hiring
Harley’s experience and the development of Honest Jobs highlight a larger pattern: challenges faced by job seekers are not just individual obstacles – they reflect deeper structural barriers embedded in today’s job seeking and hiring systems. These barriers make it difficult for qualified candidates to find and access opportunities that match their skills and circumstances.
- Scattered opportunities. Job postings are spread across company websites, public boards, and niche platforms, making it difficult for candidates to identify and compare openings that match their skills.
- Risk-averse hiring. Many hiring processes default to filtering out candidate applications that are flagged for a record of prior criminal-legal system interaction, rather than assessing flagged cases to ensure qualified candidates are not overlooked.
- Unclear policies. Even when companies advertise a commitment to “fair chance hiring,” job seekers often cannot tell which roles are accessible to applicants whose profiles may reflect a record, or which companies have successfully hired candidates with similar profiles.
- Fragmented workforce supports. Services, from probation and legal guidance to housing and workforce programs, operate independently, leaving individuals to coordinate a complex web of supports on their own.
These structural gaps place the burden on workers who are navigating complex systems, limiting access to meaningful employment. By highlighting the design of the system rather than the limitations of individuals, Honest Jobs frames these challenges as opportunities to improve infrastructure, information flow, and tools that connect people to work.
The innovation
Honest Jobs currently operates as an intermediary platform that centers workers’ skills and experience while addressing the fragmented nature of job seeking and hiring systems. The platform organizes information, connects workers to opportunities, and aligns supports so job seekers can focus on pursuing meaningful employment rather than navigating fragmented systems.
- Centralized job listings. Honest Jobs operates as a centralized system that gathers job postings from company career pages and public boards, creating a steady stream of openings that does not rely on building and maintaining employer buy-in. This centralization of scattered job opportunities gives candidates consistent visibility into roles that may match their skills and circumstances.
“As soon as we started pulling these jobs, people began getting hired there. It made me realize we could pursue a different model that was more efficient and impactful…We could better serve job seekers by creating transparency through data instead of relying on direct employer participation.”
- Data-driven matching. Honest Jobs uses outcome data from more than 200,000 job seekers to identify which employers have historically hired applicants whose profiles reflect a conviction. The platform applies Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines when considering records in employment decisions and uses natural language processing to detect potential misalignment between the nature of a conviction and responsibilities of a job. This data-driven approach enables job seekers to assess compatibility and focus on opportunities where they are more likely to be fairly considered based on qualifications.
- Support for workforce and reentry professionals. Probation, parole, and workforce staff can track client applications, refer candidates to jobs, and see which employers hired candidates with similar profiles. By centralizing an additional layer of coordination and support, Honest Jobs shifts the burden of navigating complex systems from individuals to a shared platform while keeping job seekers at the center of the process.
By connecting historical outcomes on fair chance hiring with current job postings, Honest Jobs enables to candidates to better focus a job search on opportunities where they are most likely to succeed, reducing wasted effort and uncertainty. Employers gain access to a broader pool of qualified candidates and can improve retention, while Honest Jobs handles the matching and coordination infrastructure. Workforce and reentry professionals can track applications and support clients across agencies and geographies, further redistributing navigation costs.
Honest Jobs tracks each placement and professional touchpoint, adding additional datapoints that strengthen insights. Companies with strong records of inclusive hiring can attract more candidates, while those with limited experience have an opportunity to observe the value of adopting fair chance approaches. Over time, this feedback loop supports individual placements and promotes systemic change across the labor market.
Through this intermediary model, Honest Jobs transforms a fragmented and opaque employment system into a transparent platform that expands opportunity and reshapes how employers and professionals engage with candidates with diverse skills and circumstances.
Evidence of effectiveness
Honest Jobs has demonstrated that a worker-centered intermediary can address structural barriers in hiring while expanding opportunities across diverse employer contexts. The platform currently lists more than 300,000 jobs across approximately 1,500 partner companies – including Wayfair, Coca-Cola, and Chipotle – and supports more than 210,000 job seekers nationwide, covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
In correctional settings, Honest Jobs works with Orijin PBC to make job listings accessible on in-prison tablets, enabling individuals currently serving a sentence to explore opportunities and build skills before reentry. Probation, parole, and reentry professionals have adopted the platform’s free case management tools, while paid versions are used by probation departments in multiple states, nonprofit organizations, and even under a federal contract in New York.
Job seekers using Honest Jobs find employment up to seven times faster than through conventional job boards, with starting wages averaging $36,440 per year, reflecting access to higher-quality roles. Employers benefit from a broader, qualified talent pool and, in some cases, improved retention when hiring through the platform.
These outcomes show that Honest Jobs not only improves individual employment pathways but also creates incentives for employers to adopt inclusive hiring practices. Each successful placement contributes to a growing evidence base, helping reshape the labor market for workers impacted by the criminal legal system and demonstrating that structural change is possible when systems are intentionally designed to connect skills with opportunity.
Emerging Models in Fair Chance Hiring
Innovations with potential for structural change can produce measurable improvements in employment outcomes. We have defined four emerging models that demonstrate how fair chance hiring can move from a special effort towards a sustainable, mainstream norm.