The Table: interview coaching for the hiring chair

Why this works The case has already been made. Here it is with dates on it.

• 81 percent of HR professionals: workers with records perform the same or better than peers (SHRM and Charles Koch Institute, 2021).
• 82 percent of managers: quality of hire as high or higher. 85 percent: cost per hire same or lower (SHRM, 2021).
• Johns Hopkins: 500-plus hires with records, retention 3.5 points better than other employees over 40 months (2017).
• Nehemiah Manufacturing: turnover near 15 percent in an industry running 35 to 70 (company reporting, HBS case).
• Northwestern military study: enlistees with felony records showed no higher involuntary turnover and were promoted faster (Minor, Persico and Weiss, 2018).
• Your labor market: Hamilton County unemployment 2.7 percent (BLS LAUS, May 2026). The unfilled seat is the risk.

Your fears, answered Liability. Customers. Safety. And the one nobody writes down.

• Liability (38 percent of employers): the individualized assessment is your defense, and blanket exclusions are the actual exposure (EEOC, 2012).
• Customer reaction (33 percent): tested publicly by JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, Microsoft and fifty-plus coalition employers. The boycott never came.
• Safety (27 percent): managed by job-related screening and consistent policy, not by blanket fear. Weigh the actual offense against the actual job.
• Being the one who vouched: replace the lone voucher with a process. Documented assessment, standard expectations, free federal bond. Nobody carries it alone.

The legal rails Twenty minutes that replace the fear of saying the wrong thing.

• Ask: essential functions, with or without reasonable accommodation. Do not ask: disability, diagnosis, treatment, medication (pre-offer).
• Ask: convictions, consistently, weighed individually. Do not ask: arrests.
• Ask: about the service and the work. Do not ask: discharge type, deployment mental health.
• Lawful: current illegal drug use questions, consistent testing through a medical review officer. Unlawful trap: auto-failing prescribed treatment medication (MOUD). Fix that policy before it fires.

Practice the moments The disclosure moment, the accommodation request, your own opening. From your chair.

The hire The incentive stack, as it actually stands in August 2026.

• Federal Bonding: ACTIVE. Free fidelity bond, first six months, up to 25,000 dollars in some states. Five minutes to arrange (bonds4jobs.com).
• WOTC: IN HIATUS. Lapsed December 31, 2025. Keep screening and keep Form 8850 documentation, retroactive reinstatement is pending in Congress, but do not build the business case on it.
• Indiana OJT reimbursement through WorkOne: active, typically 50 percent of wages during training.
• Indiana HIRE: active placement and support for justice-involved candidates.
• Wellness Council of Indiana: the state's Recovery Friendly Workplace designation, a public signal that costs you a process, not a check.

Build your interview Four steps to an interview that actually predicts.

• Structured interviews top the corrected validity rankings, about .42 (Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens, 2022).
• Structure is concrete: same job-related questions for everyone, anchored rating scales, scoring as you go (Levashina et al., 2014).
• Adding the scores mechanically beats combining them by gut (Kuncel et al., 2013). The scoresheet is the upgrade, and it is free.
• The builder walks you through it and prints a one-page guide. What you build stays on your device, like everything here.

Open the interview builder

Make it stick Retention is a design problem, and the design is short.

• Normal expectations, one named point person, a real 30-day check-in.
• Supervision and treatment appointments are appointments. Handle them like anyone's standing physical therapy.
• The MOUD-versus-drug-testing policy conflict is the most common quiet failure in second-chance employment nationally. Audit yours this quarter.
• Their story is never yours to tell. The practice is nothing to hide. Hold both at once.

Why the sentences Why we ask you to write one sentence

Deciding to do better does not change behavior very reliably. Deciding in advance exactly when and what you will do is a different thing, and it works: across 94 independent tests, naming a specific if-then plan produced a medium-to-large improvement in follow-through (d = .65) compared with holding the same goal without one. A 2024 update aggregating 642 tests found the effect holds. So each module ends the same way: one situation you will actually face, and the sentence you will say when it happens.

Gollwitzer and Sheeran, Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes, 2006; update Sheeran, Listrom and Gollwitzer, 2024

Specific beats sincere. "I'll be fairer" is a wish. "When a candidate discloses, I will thank them and go back to the work" is a plan.

See and print your commitments