Rachel Torres is the administrator and national director of Job Corps, which helps young people develop the tools they need to to pursue employment opportunities in various industries.
Torres is a seasoned professional having served on several prominent executive committees including the chief diversity officer for the Department of Education and the chair of the Department of Labor’s Diversity and Inclusion Council. Her mission to design and implement department-wide strategies to increase diversity and inclusion has been fulfilled in many ways, which she shares with rolling out.
What are the needs of the workforce and the skill sets that are increasingly in demand?
After the pandemic, this is something we’ve been really looking at. For the first time, I had employers knocking on our doors and saying, “We are looking for workers.” We have employers in the hospitality, healthcare, construction industry, and more. … We are here to say partner with us. We are training these students. We will provide foundationally and then we expand some of them into more advanced training.
How do you get students excited and engaged in the program?
One thing that works really well for us is that we are self-paced. You can come in any time. We have a system where they try to determine what their interests are, and the area that they want to go to. They are able to do job shadowing on things they want to try or if they can revert to something different, they have that option also. One thing that was so amazing is to find women in non-traditional work. Women students are carpenters and welders. We [also] attract a lot of young men
How do you recommend discussing with the companies how they represent inclusion and equality?
It goes back to the interview questions you asked when you came in. Can you tell me a bit about what you’ve done in your organization to make sure equity is applied to your day-to-day operations? One thing about it is I want to remind folks of equity. Equity doesn’t always have to do with race. It could be how you’re treating me if I’m in the older generation or with a disability and it’s a lot that it revolves into. With this program, we are trying to prevent the word high school dropout, which has a negative connotation to it. All those things go into seeing where the company is and has to offer, even down to the language they use.
