10 minutes
Why customized employment exists Learn what customized employment is, whom it serves, and how it differs from fitting a person into an existing job description.
What you’ll be able to do Explain customized employment as a negotiated match between a person's contributions and an employer's unmet needs, and identify the people for whom the usual hiring process does not work. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What is the most useful reading? Document a next step for Why customized employment exists: Think of one person you support who has been described as not job-ready, and list three things they reliably do well. Competing for a posting, or negotiating a role The ordinary route to a job is a competition. A posting describes a fixed set of duties; applicants present themselves; the employer picks the best fit. It works well for people who can present themselves and who match a posting. It does not work at all for people who do neither, and a service system that only offers the ordinary route will conclude, file after file, that those people are not ready.
Customized employment reverses the direction. It starts with the person: what they reliably do, what conditions they need, what they want. It then looks for an employer with tasks that are not getting done, or getting done badly by people whose time is better spent elsewhere, and negotiates a role made of those tasks. The employer gains real productivity. The person gains a job that fits. Neither is doing the other a favor.
Two directions The usual process Customized employment What the employer gets
Posting first. The person is measured against it. Interview, résumé and presentation matter a great deal. Support, if any, comes after hiring. Works for people who can compete; screens out people who cannot.
Person first. Their contributions and conditions are established through discovery. An employer with matching unmet needs is identified. A role is negotiated. The job description is written last, from the negotiation. Support is part of the design.
Tasks done that were not being done, or that were pulling skilled staff away from skilled work. A reliable person in a role built to be reliable. Often, lower turnover than in the posted job the tasks were carved from.
Not job-ready usually means not ready for the usual process. It says very little about whether the person can work.
Rewrite the barriers as conditions What you can change You control whether a file describes what a person cannot do or what conditions they work well under. The second is what an employer needs to hear.
What to watch for Do not send a person to an employment service with a file that says not ready. Send a description of what they contribute and what they need.
Your next step Take one file that says not job-ready and rewrite the barriers section as working conditions.
Carry this forward The usual hiring process asks a person to compete for a fixed job description. Customized employment builds the job around what the person can contribute and what the employer needs done.
It exists because some people will never be the best applicant for a posted job and will be an excellent fit for a job that has not been posted.
It is a negotiation with an employer, not a favor asked of one; the employer gets real work done that was not getting done.
A tabs comparison, a statement, a scenario decision and a knowledge check.
Think of one person you support who has been described as not job-ready, and list three things they reliably do well.
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