WORKPLACE : Employment Service Helps Youths Dress for Hiring Success

Your average high school student from a poor family may not even own clothes decent enough to apply for a job in. So YES--the Youth Employment Service in Costa Mesa--is asking local businesses for gift certificates so needy youths can get a haircut or a pair of new shoes before they go out on a job interview.

YES is a private, nonprofit group run by two part-time staffers. Last year, it says, it helped 584 youths between the ages of 14 and 22 find jobs.

But another 800 who came looking for work went jobless. Part of the problem was the recession, which sent the unemployment rate for youths--which is usually quite high--soaring.

But another problem was that a lot of these youths, perhaps as many as one-third of the 800 who went without jobs, are what YES classifies as “hard to place.”

Some of them are Mexican or Vietnamese immigrants and do not speak English very well; some are simply poor and either do not realize they have to dress neatly to get a job or do not have the clothes for an interview.

“You can’t go in wearing torn jeans and a shirt with axle grease on it and expect to get hired,” says Jim de Boom, a consultant for YES.

YES is asking Newport Beach and Costa Mesa hairdressers, barbers, nail salons and shoe and clothing stores for gift certificates to be given to youths at the discretion of the program’s executive director, Lynn Graham.

And YES is soliciting one last thing: a Polaroid camera and film so it can shoot “before” and “after” pictures of youths who got jobs.

Those pictures will go up on the walls. That way, new youths will know how to dress in order to land a job.