Employer Practices Pilot Project

The Employer Practices pilot project supports efforts in Southern Maine to improve employment outcomes for recent immigrants and foreign-trained professionals through engaging employers in becoming better equipped and confident in hiring, promoting, and retaining more immigrants and refugees. This includes a particular focus on mitigating “brain waste” by ensuring foreign-trained professionals find job placements or career pathways that align with their credentials, training, and expertise.

The core of the initiative is in developing a conduit between the workforce development agencies of GPWI (on behalf of immigrant job seekers and foreign-trained incumbent workers) and local employers. We take a multi-faceted approach to bridging the gap between immigrant job seekers/employees and employers. Our approach is to identify and address needs through a systemic lens, targeting both root causes and immediate needs for each of these populations.

This is a two-year funded pilot project, made possible by the WES Mariam Assefa Fund.