Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of money. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to another rock star from New Mexico.

Can you tell I love living here? Rose Velasquez. Our title is helping justice involved individuals get living wage jobs. Rose Velasquez is the CEO of Hiringhub, an executive recruitment firm specializing in helping high performing companies find top talent. With over a decade of experience, Rose is passionate about matching individuals with roles that align with their true strengths. She believes the right job can transform lives and drive organizational success. A native of Arizona, Rose relocated to Albuquerque in 2002 and built her career around empowering job seekers and employers. Her commitment to building passionate, productive teams has made her a trusted partner for southwestern organizations, ensuring every hire strengthens a company's culture and long term success. One of the things hiring hub is best known for is its second chances placement.

Rose, welcome to the show.

Hi, Paul. Thank you for having me.

I am so thrilled to have you here. And full disclosure, sometimes I interview complete strangers, but Rose is not a complete stranger. Rose is a awesome participant in the SBA Thrive Albuquerque cohort, and I happen to have the honor of being the business coach for that. It's an accelerator here in Albuquerque. So we know each other. So if we're talking like there's some familiarity here, that's why. Rose, give us a sense, this whole piece around hiring some folks who've had some run ins with the justice system. Like, where did that come onto your radar? Most recruiters aren't thinking that way.

Like, when did you start to, like, say, okay. I like doing recruiting, but there's this whole group of justice involved individuals that aren't being well served, and I wanna do some of that work.

Right. Right. Actually, it was never on my radar either. It how I fell into it was a couple of years ago, we were awarded the city of Albuquerque contract for all of their temporary staffing. And one of the first requests we got from the city was, you know, we're gonna need 80 workers for sanitation. Anybody who dials 311 to say, somebody graffitied on this wall or somebody dumped a mattress over here, they would be doing cleanup. And, you know, New Mexico has lower wages than some other states. And in a city contract like that, they mandate exactly what you pay and exactly what you bill.

So we started to recruit for that, and I realized I am having a terrible time finding people that wanna work for 14:25 an hour to pick up trash. So I went back to the city of Albuquerque and their HR department. And at the time, they had a very progressive HR director that was willing to look at doing different things. And I said, would it be okay if we did second chance hiring in these positions? And so they hadn't done that before because the city had a regulation. I think at that time, you couldn't have had a felony within 3 to 5 years, and then there were only certain positions they would consider them for. So he thought about it, and he came back and he said, as long as the crime doesn't affect the position. Obviously, we can't put somebody who has been embezzling in the accounting department. He's like, let's let's go ahead and try it because just the city, like everybody else, has had a terrible time finding good candidates and hiring enough people.

So we started that program a couple of years ago, and it has been hugely successful. Nice.

And at that like, when was this? When are we talking, you had this conversation?

So it was fall of 22. So we've been doing it for about 2 years now.