Justice Champion Spotlight: Jonathan Gonzalez, Indeed

Note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is Indeed’s social impact focus?

The focus of our work is on helping job seekers who are facing barriers get jobs. For those barriers, we prioritize education and training; criminal records; disabilities; and a bucket we call “work essentials”, which is all the things it takes to get work and stay connected to work. To be more specific, our main focus is on skills-based hiring in particular. We acknowledge that formal educational credentials, like a college degree, can be a huge barrier to finding work, staying connected to work, and creating a path to economic mobility. We’re looking at all the levers we can pull to get employers to embrace skills-based hiring and to get job seekers to be able to find opportunities by emphasizing their skills at the forefront.

Can you talk a little bit about why Indeed became invested in the social impact side of this work? 

Our mission is to help people get jobs. That’s what we do. But when we unpack that, we recognize that lowering barriers for people who are seeking jobs can prove really valuable for the rest of the population. I think of it like the curb cut effect – I studied urban planning, and we learned that when you have curb cuts at the corner, it makes it a much more pleasant, easy to use, and overall positive experience for not just the folks who benefit because they’re in a wheelchair but for all sorts of other folks who might just benefit from having a lower barrier to the sidewalk. So that’s the approach and thinking that we take when it comes to building out a website and a search engine that serves job seekers facing barriers – acknowledging the benefits that are in it for everyone.

What do you see as the role of businesses in driving criminal justice reform? 

There’s an outsized role for businesses to play in this. Private investment is incredibly important to drive public good. That’s the top line answer. More specifically, businesses are employers, and employment is a key tool for stability and mobility in our world. So employers  play an important role in addressing the effect and impact that justice-system involvement has altogether. Importantly, businesses can acknowledge the realities that folks face when they become justice-system involved, and that, in turn, can translate to them being more equitable, sympathetic, and empathetic employers and hirers. 

On the private investment component, when we look at what our criminal justice system does – and what it has been designed to do – there’s a role for private investment to really drive a shift in ensuring that system is actually helping create public safety and improving public welfare. We’ve seen the results and the data time and again, and what we’ve found is that involvement in the criminal legal system can really limit folks’ ability to seek and pursue economic stability and mobility afterwards. If we can really understand that, and turn employers into hirers who are more sympathetic and empathetic towards those realities, that would create real positive change. 

Can you talk a little bit about Indeed’s work on Clean Slate legislation in New York? Why was that a priority? 

There are things that Indeed can do on our platform that can be really impactful – we can create products, we can develop features, we can make the experience really useful for folks. But there are also things that need to happen off the platform altogether in order to help people get jobs. This is one of those things;we understand that there’s a role for us to play in lending our voice to these important issues in order to drive systemic change. 

We understand the outsized role that something like automatic record sealing plays in advancing an individual’s ability to get a job. That’s what it was about for us – understanding that if we can support folks from a public policy perspective and make it easier for them to get a job, that’s what we’re going to do.

Clean Slate falls under our goal of lowering the barriers to finding work and staying connected to work. In order to work, there are certain prerequisites that must be met, and having a criminal record unfortunately often serves as a barrier to meeting those prerequisites. Sealing those records can play a really, really important role in an individual’s ability to access employment by taking the question of a person’s irrelevant past off the table altogether. That’s what this is about.

What advice would you give businesses who are looking to start engaging in social impact work, specifically on the criminal justice reform side? 

I think it’s so important to listen and develop partnerships with organizations that are steeped in and rooted in this work – finding those people, and then really paying attention to and seeking their advice. In tandem with that, think about the impact of whatever product or whatever services or whatever thing it is you offer in the marketplace, and how that can serve folks with criminal records and create criminal legal system reform. That conversation should be undertaken within your workplace. The last part is thinking about where, even if you don’t have expertise, your voice could be very valuable. For us, for example, it was clear that there’s value to be added in speaking to the benefits of responsible Clean Slate policy.

One thing that it’s important to remember, for Indeed specifically and for other businesses who want to engage, is that we’re new to this. We just went public with our support of Clean Slate in New York; for a long time, we hadn’t taken public positions on policy. We know that we’re not experts on this. As a result, we know there’s a lot to learn, and there are a lot of conversations that we’re navigating as a company to make sure we can take a position, underscore the value to the business, and advance the mission. Given that, humility is paramount.

If you could change one aspect of the criminal justice system, what would it be?

I think the underlying premise right now is that involvement in the criminal legal system should lead to a life of punishment. I think if we could redesign it so it isn’t punitive, but instead in earnest restorative, that would make a tremendous change. 

When you aren’t working, what else do you enjoy doing?

I have an 11-month-old puppy named Bella – she’s literally sleeping under my feet right now. I enjoy playing with her, going to the park, anything to expend her energy. I like to go to the gym but I’m also big on relaxation – I make sure I get my eight hours of sleep, and sometimes honestly my day will revolve around that.

What’s a fact about you that would surprise people? 

I used to foster service dogs in training, but I’m a very very neat person, so I think people might be surprised that I actually got a dog.