ATU688 – Employment Pathfinder Updates with Steve Sutter

Hi, this is Steve Sutter and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 688 of Assistive Technology Update, it is scheduled to be released on August 2nd, 2024. On today’s show we’re excited to welcome Steve Sutter from Credibility back to the show to tell us all about the updates to Employment Pathfinder. Let’s go ahead and get on with the interview. For longtime listeners of our show our next guest might not need an introduction. Steve Sutter and CreateAbility has been coming on our show to highlight their creative solutions since well before I was even the host and we’re super excited that he’s made the trip across the street to talk to us again today about updates to Employment Pathfinder and other exciting updates from CreateAbility. Steve, welcome back to Assistive Technology Update.

So great to be back. Thank you.

So great to be back. So great to actually have you in studio too. I don’t always get to talk to folks face to face so this is really always a treat. Steve, for our listeners maybe who haven’t been around for a while or haven’t kind of heard you before, could you tell them just a little bit about yourself?

Yeah. Hi, I am Steve. I’m a geek engineer that one day realized I need to stop working at Hewlett Packard and help people with special needs using technology in the domains of independent living or education or vocation. And that started in 1997. And back in those days you had to use [inaudible 00:02:02]. There was no Yahoo or Google on your 1200 BOD modem with all the squawky sounds, and it was a very different space to try to develop technology back then. Now we have this playground of wonderful tools from Apple, Google, et cetera, and our apps really shine as a result of that.

Yeah. It is a completely different world and we’re so glad for all the work that you do. So I guess just to start us off, before we get into Employment Pathfinder and everything, could you give us just an overview of kind of CreateAbility and what all that you do?

Sure. Well CreateAbility is trying to do just that, trying to create the ability for people to be as independent as possible. And we use the word flourish, which isn’t often used in this population, not just surviving the plan, whether it be in remote monitoring at home, is it vocational prompting tools, or is it some kind of emotional support, but helping the individual really flourish as a result. And we do evaluations. A lot of our work is funded by the federal government, three different agencies at the federal government, and as a result we get really specialized in taking data before the intervention and then after, so we could measure what it was like before and after. And as a result, we’ve been able to move the needle in really profound ways where it actually impacts the quality of life of the individual as it actually helps the people in their support sphere around them. And that’s our goal is to really help that process.

Awesome, awesome. And one of the ways you do that is with Employment Pathfinder. So I guess before we get into the updates to Employment Pathfinder, maybe tell us just a little bit about it.

Sure. Well, the purpose of Employment Pathfinder was to really help those in the role of counseling or helping the individual get a job, get the right fit for the right job. And they come with a variety of different names, I’m going to use the name employment counselor, but it has a variety of different categories. In that whole process it’s really tough and of course people are overworked, there’s staffing shortages in every different role within this whole sphere. And what Employment Pathfinder tries to do is help that individual get a better fit into the job that they want and make it sustainable. Because when you’re able to help a person get a job that has an intellectual disability, it changes the world. It changes their life. It not only gives them something in their pocket that jingle, but they know that they are now a contributor to society.

They feel that. They feel like they’re not just a receiver, a benefactor or something. They really are a contributor to life. And boy, it changes their world. But there’s barriers along the way. Some of those barriers are soft skills, some of those are maybe not having the best fit available. And we all have done this where we need to shave off the corners of the square pegs to put it in the round holes of the different jobs that might be available. But Employment Pathfinder has been able to expand that arena of potential jobs because we make it easier for the job poster, the employer, they can actually post jobs that are matched with the individuals using an AI based tool. And this is all funded again by NIDILRR, the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, Rehabilitation Research. And in that research we’ve been able to add soft skill assessments because that turns out to be a lot of the different reasons why people lose a job, they’re not able to stay in the job.

Sometimes the job changes and the individual doesn’t have enough flexibility or training in other areas to be able to make that jump. Sometimes it’s just other things that really affect that we could have been able to know. So what we do is we produce a job report that shows a gap analysis and the strategies, the tactics, or the enabling technology you could invoke to bridge the gaps in these important areas relative to the job that this person might be matched in. That’s at a high level. What we’ve been able to see is incredible impact, an average of 10.5 hours per employment specialist or employment counselor in the placement of these jobs.

Oh wow.

The employee, or job seeker before they’re an employee, takes a greater role and they love that. They use an app or a website, then they answer assessment questions after watching videos to try to down select what area they might be interested in. And in those areas that they chose that they might like, oh, small animal care that might be appropriate for a veterinary clinic or a pet store. They may like hospitality services, there’s lots of hotels in the arena. And what it does is it helps highlight those areas of deficit as well as strength. So the deficits flow through to the job report to show what kind of support we’re going to need in that role because we know now what we’re signing our job coaches up for, and then the strengths come through into a resume generator. So it helps the employment specialist be able to generate a resume based on that individual’s strengths.

Nice. And as a former job coach, employment consultant, I never was even sure what my title was when I kind of did it because people just used them interchangeably. That is just an amazing tool like you said, for kind of all parties involved. Because I know a lot of employers don’t realize this population’s out there and they want jobs, and most employers have ones they can’t seem to fill. Or just ones that maybe have high turnover or just ones they’re having a hard time getting folks who are really going to stay. And as a job coach, as someone helping somebody find a job, for one thing I love that this includes the individual job seeker in the process because I know when I used to do this, which is a decade ago I think, maybe a little bit longer, when you try to get that person involved in the process, you start realizing that maybe they haven’t been involved in a lot of the processes that have controlled their life up to that point.

So true.

Yeah. And especially with employment, it’s like, no, no, no, no, no. My job is to help you find a job that you’re going to like and that you’re going to keep. And for some folks it’s almost hard because no one’s asked them that before of what do you want to do? So involving them in the process is such an important thing. So I’m very glad that you built that in there because so many times it seems like that’s kind of put by the wayside.

You’re right. One of the areas that a lot of individuals, a lot of employment specialists or providers that delivered these kinds of supporting services, they struggle with how do I transition our organization from serving, aka doing it for them, to supporting, in other words helping them gain the independence to do it. And the answer is in baby steps. Let’s walk before we run. Let’s make sure that we start out in a job that might have some opportunities for transitioning. Maybe it starts out in custodial, but it could transition into warehousing. Maybe it starts out in the moving luggage or cleaning different areas of the hotel that could transition to more of a customer satisfaction, customer serving role.

So I think now there’s those such as in a restaurant, there may be 30 different types of jobs. There’s the front person that greets you, there’s someone who buses tables, there’s someone that takes your orders, there’s some that prepares the meals, et cetera. And then there’s all the backroom operations as well. So we have these videos in these assessments in these different categories, so you don’t have to get 100% to know that you’re a good fit for a job.

Sure, yeah.

It could be a 30% fit, but you shine in this one area and let’s make sure that the job we’re considering has that as a component of the job, and it gives them a position of strength to start from and then grow from.

Nice, nice. Well, I sit here and get all talking into this and all my good old job coaching days, but I guess the main reason we had you on today is what are some of the updates to Employment Pathfinder, some of the new really cool things they can do?

Well, the big thing that’s really been able to help is incorporating some AI in that resume generation. It turns out that a lot of people in the employment specialist role, they don’t get to spend as much time with the individual as other people might in that person’s life, such as residential staff might know Johnny really, really well. People in the day programs might know Maria really, really well. But it gets to that position within let’s find them a job, it’s like, I don’t really know a lot of history. So the resumes started out looking the same. It was like, well, boy, Bobby shows up with a can-do spirit every day, and only needs one bathroom break per shift, and is consistent and he never calls in sick. And all the resumes started to look like that. As a result of Employment Pathfinder, those strength areas actually roll through and they actually become statements that maybe the employment specialist was not aware that they’re really proficient in an area that really is relevant for this job, let’s highlight that.

But creating that kind of resume takes time, takes research, and now we’ve helped to automate some of that position, some of that role. The fit analysis is another strong area, so before we only had the job report that showed the gap analysis and how to fill those gaps, how to bridge those gaps. Now we’ve extended that capability but also added a job matching. So when the employer fills out, like they would with Indeed or ZipRecruiter or Monster and all those say that they’re free, they’re really not. You can post the job. You just never find out who’s applying for that job, you have to pay them. This is truly free. So they go to a special website, which you just simply tell CreateAbility, and later we’ll get into how to contact me, we’ll get into setting that up for the employer as free.

They then post their jobs. Then our matchmaking algorithm, kind of like when a dating matching app that looks at the max distance that this individual needs to travel and will actually put in information about that individual, but it’s protected. So we never give any of the information to the employer about the contact or anything specific about the individual, just what they’re good at, why this is a match, and we give them a reference ID that’s a random number. Then if the job coach or the employment specialist feels like this is something we need to make an introduction to our candidate, then they can relay all that information.

Oh cool.

But we’ll use the real address to find out the real address distance using Google tools to be able to find out how far it is. If that exceeds your max distance you want to travel, then that’s not a good match. Your benefit package, you might have one where the individual can’t make more than let’s say $2,000 per month or it’ll affect their benefit package. We don’t want to do that. So let’s list that and see how that plays into the equation. What shift preference do you have? What category of types of jobs? Is this retail, restaurant, is this hospitality like we talked about. There’s even new emerging areas such as teacher assistance, and it’s really becoming a wave. Is really popular in states like California, but emerging in other areas. So with all this combined together, we pull it all together and produce this match and a percent match and why it’s a percent match, and then the employment specialist and the job holder, the employer, can decide, yeah, let’s interview. But a lot of people don’t have the right interview skills or we are not sure what they are.

So one of our assessment tools is, okay, now we’re ready. What are your comfort level? Do you know how to dress appropriately for an interview? Do you know how to act? Do you know how to look the person in the eye when you’re responding to questions? All those things are important. And one of the tools then is assessing those skills?

Nice.

So altogether, what we have then is a tool for the individual to individually, independently assess what their interest levels are and some of their background job readiness. In other words, are they sitting at home all day in their jammies waiting for you to find them a job, playing video games or do they have a schedule? Do they have a routine? Do they have some consistent level that could be transferable into a real job? Can they stand more than three hours at a time? That’s often required and can be tiring for this population. So all those different factors of onboarding background information as well as job interest areas, and then skill assessments in those key areas of interest gives this really comprehensive package to the employment specialist to work with in that job matching journey. The job specialists, what they love about it is people stick in these jobs. You don’t want that candidate to be in front of you six months later with a few bruises and black balls on their report card because now that didn’t work. We want them to have the best fit right away, and they stay. They’re sustainable in these positions.

Well that just helps everybody all the way around. Steve, I got to ask just kind of for my own curiosity, where’d the idea come from for Employment Pathfinder?

Oh. So even though we’ve been doing this for 26 years, we learn something every single day, and it’s through working with counselors, with employment specialists, starting out with giving them some tools and then saying, “How could we make it better? What else could we do to improve the process?” Because our technology, it has to fit, it has to dovetail into their current process otherwise we’re just trying to sell something that may not ever really work out. So learning what those are, where those areas where they struggle and areas that we could automate or semi-automate, we’re never taking the employment specialists out of the equation, never trying to robo counselor anything, but just give the counselor and the job seeker tools to help in that process. So it was you who are listening probably are the creators really of this. Then we write things up on here’s what we’ve done, here’s what we’d like to do. Make those into proposals for federal funding, that helps offset the development costs so it helps lower the sales price as well for these surfaces and comes out with a win for everybody.

Wow. Heck yeah. It definitely does. It definitely does. I’m sure you’ve got quite a few of these, but can you tell me a story maybe about someone’s experience using Employment Pathfinder, either from any of those different angles of all the folks that it kind of benefits?

Yeah. Well, here’s a unique story that I think really helps summarize some of the benefits. There’s an individual that I’m calling Bobby. Bobby had autism and still does-

Of course.

… Lifelong. But he’s really precise, really great at certain things and very, you might say retentive about those things and they’re transferable as really being precise and thorough in everything that he does, but had some social skills and really struggled getting a job. There was a federal laboratory that required some processes for the testing of some new federal FDA kind of process medications and procedures that would help people in healthcare, and it required being consistent and repetitive and very, very precise. And they would never have found that Bobby shined in these areas and was a good fit if they didn’t have some way to assess that. And the net net was, the end result was they were using scientists pulling them out of the labs to do these procedures because they had to be done so precisely, so repetitively and consistently. Well, Bobby now saves that organization $200,000 a year because of the opportunity costs of pulling scientists out of the lab doing scientist things to do technician kind of work, and now Bobby’s one of their star technicians.

That’s just an example. One of the different examples of how an individual may have a variety of things that they’re capable of, but our classic, you might say, class ceiling has been the three Fs. Is it food, filth, or flowers? Let’s put them in a custodial position. Let’s put them in a food service position. Let’s put them in some kind of a menial task kind of position. By and large, a lot of these individuals can help bridge and fill that job gap that all organizations are having. There’s a percentage of jobs not just in stock room, but in product fulfillment. People that are running point of sale terminals that never had any people skills before, but now they’ve learned them. People are now able to handle customer service jobs in hospitality, front desk operations at different hotels. As well as even in education, helping kids get ready for the field trip, helping them get all their work turned in and appropriate and making the classroom all set up. They can help in all these different areas. We just as a population didn’t consider them until now, but now they really can fill the jobs. Now, fast forwarding a little bit, there are some areas in the US that this is working so well that they run out of applicants.

What? Oh, that’s nice.

There’s actually more jobs available for this population than they have qualified candidates for the job. So that’s a wonderful problem to have too, but we’re not there everywhere. So we take organizations, help train them, onboard them wherever they’re at in the equation, try to make this process dovetail into their current process and then come up with a solution where we check back in with them, see how it’s going, retrain, lots of turnover. So we retrain when there’s turnover.

Sure. That is awesome. Because you’re taking Bobby for example, and his strengths that maybe are kind of seen as a behavior in some areas is a strength in this area, and then being able to match them with a job that needs someone with those strengths. Well, Steve, did we miss anything new on Employment Pathfinder? I feel like we went through a ton of stuff, but I want to make sure that I don’t miss any of the new or kind of important things going on there with it.

That’s the highlights. There are some details such as now runs on Chromebooks as well as Apple and Android products. So a lot of school systems have kids in transition, in that junior, senior year, a lot of school systems [inaudible 00:24:04] iPad or Chromebook it seems, and some Android of course. So it runs on all those different products as well as it can be viewed as a website as well. It runs on anything that way, it runs on phones or tablets. So next steps for us are to look at in the job. And maybe a future podcast we can go into more things there. But our knowing these areas of deficit directly translates into what some of the prompts might be, some of the cues and some of the timings that might need to be in place to help that individual really be sustainable in that job.

Nice, nice. If our listeners want to find out more about Employment Pathfinder, about all the other great things that CreateAbility kind of has out there. What’s a good way for them to do it?

Our website is createabilityinc.com. I can be reached at steve@createabilityinc.com. Our website is organized. You might click on the solutions tab and it gives you an overview by category that you can dive into and drill down to the level you want. We also have a chat feature in the bottom right-hand corner where you can have a live chat with a real human being and find out a quick answer to the area that you have a question or concern. And then we have a knowledge base that’s available 24/7 for those who have already purchased products, they can go there to get a quick answer to a question.

Awesome, awesome. We’ll put links to all that down in the show notes. Steve, I can’t thank you enough for coming on, for telling us just the great updates to Employment Pathfinder. Super, super cool, just program all the way around, and I love that it’s just building out and growing more and getting more and more user-friendly for all the folks involved. And we can’t wait to have you back on some time to give us updates on everything else. So thanks again.

Thank you.

Do you have a question about Assistive Technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at 317-721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or In TRAC. You can find out more about In TRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show is produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update, I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.