Why employers partner with Azgari Foundation
The short answer: you will get trained, motivated, mentored entry-level candidates at no placement cost, and your community gets a young person launched.
Status, September 2026: our first cohort is in training. The first graduates are expected in late 2026. Employers can register interest now.
What you receive
Every Azgari Foundation graduate has completed 16 to 24 weeks of structured, hands-on training, depending on the program, in one of five tracks (marketing, bookkeeping and accounting, IT help desk, web development, or administrative support) at 15–20 hours per week, under volunteer educators drawn from industry. They arrive with work product: a portfolio, a credential or certification pathway, or documented projects, depending on track. A marketing-track graduate can show a content calendar they built and a paid campaign they ran. A bookkeeping-track graduate can show reconciliations and AP/AR work in QuickBooks Online. An IT graduate can walk through tickets they triaged and resolved in a ticketing system. A web development graduate can open a live site. An administrative-support graduate can describe the calendars, records, and vendor workflows they managed in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
What a partnership looks like
A hiring partnership with Azgari Foundation has no fixed structure to sign up for. It starts with one conversation and scales to whatever fits your business. The base version: you tell us about an open, paid role, we tell you which current or upcoming graduates fit it, and you interview and hire (or do not) on your own terms. Partners who want more can host mock or live interviews for practice, offer paid work experience or a short project during a student's training, or have staff volunteer as guest instructors or portfolio reviewers. None of these are required to hire a graduate. Everything routes through one channel: clientsuccessteam@azgari.org or the contact page, staffed by the team responsible for partner and sponsor relations.
What you have to do to hire a graduate
Employers often assume there is a program to enroll in. There is not. The steps on your side are these.
- Send us the role. Title, main duties, pay range, hours, location or remote status, and your rough start date. A job posting works. So does a paragraph in an email.
- Review the candidates we send. Within a few business days we tell you whether a current or upcoming graduate fits. If one does, you receive a short profile, a resume, and a link to work samples. If none fits, we say so rather than sending someone who does not.
- Interview on your normal process. Phone screen, panel, skills test, whatever you use for any other candidate. Graduates have practiced interviews with their mentor, but they are not coached to your questions.
- Make your decision and your offer. The offer, background check, I-9, and onboarding run through your own HR process. The graduate is your W-2 employee from the first day. Azgari Foundation is not the employer of record and does not sit between you and your employee.
- Tell us how it goes. A short check-in a few weeks in, and an honest word if the hire is not working. The mentor uses that to support the new employee and we use it to improve the training.
Nothing is signed with the Foundation. There is no exclusivity, no minimum, and no fee at any step.
Which roles fit
The tracks map to specific entry-level titles. Marketing graduates fit marketing coordinator, social media coordinator, and content assistant roles. Bookkeeping graduates fit bookkeeper, accounting clerk, accounts payable or receivable clerk, and billing specialist roles. IT graduates fit help desk technician, IT support specialist, and desktop support roles. Web development graduates fit junior web developer, front-end developer, and web content or CMS specialist roles. Administrative graduates fit administrative assistant, office coordinator, front desk, and executive assistant roles. Roles that need a degree by policy, a professional license, or several years of prior experience are not a fit, and we will say so.
The retention and skills-gap argument
Entry-level turnover is where hiring budgets leak: repost the role, re-screen, re-train, repeat, and absorb the productivity gap in between. Gallup estimates replacing an employee typically costs one-half to two times their annual salary once recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity are counted, with entry-level and lower-skill roles at the lower end of that range. On a $30,000–$45,000 salary that is still a large number. Two things push the other way for our graduates. First, they chose a specific field and completed months of unpaid training to enter it before drawing a paycheck, a self-selection signal no keyword-matched resume screen replicates. Second, the mentor relationship does not end at hiring. Graduates keep access to their Azgari Foundation mentor and to our team, so your new hire has a support system your onboarding process does not have to build from nothing.
That support matters against a backdrop where employers report entry-level applicants are not consistently job-ready. In NFIB's July 2026 small-business survey, 85% of owners actively trying to hire said they found few or no qualified candidates. A graduate who has spent 16 to 24 weeks closing that gap in a specific track is a different applicant than an unscreened resume from a job board.
The economics
Staffing and recruiting agencies exist to solve this problem, and they charge for it. SHRM's 2025 Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report puts the average cost-per-hire for non-executive roles at $5,475 nationally, driven by recruiter time, job-board spend, and agency fees. Azgari Foundation charges nothing. No placement fee, no retainer, no percentage of salary. Funding comes from individual donors, foundations, and workforce development grants. A successful placement is the outcome the Foundation exists to produce, not a line of revenue. What we ask in return is participation: a paid role at a fair wage, a fair shot in your normal interview process, and honest feedback whether the hire works out or not.
The mission case, stated plainly
There is also a reason to partner that has nothing to do with pipeline economics. Azgari Foundation serves young adults ages 16–25 who are aging out of foster care, exiting the juvenile justice system, or otherwise disconnected from school and work. By definition this population is missing the informal networks (a parent's connections, a family friend's referral) that place a lot of entry-level hires. A hiring partnership gives that network to someone who would not otherwise have it, at the moment they need it most. Azgari Foundation is a young organization. We do not yet have placement statistics or long-term outcome data, because the first training cohort began in 2026. What we can point to is the design of the program and the specific, verifiable things a graduate has done by the time they are job-ready. For employers who report social impact alongside hiring decisions, a documented partnership with a 501(c)(3) serving this population is an accurate description of a hiring choice, and can be described that way.
None of this changes the fact that the hire has to work for your business first. We are not asking employers to hire out of charity. A bad hire helps no one, including the graduate. The pitch is that a well-trained candidate from a population employers rarely reach through normal channels is worth a look on the merits, and the mission context is a secondary reason to say yes when the fit is close.
Frequently asked questions
Does partnering cost anything?
No. There is no fee to meet candidates, no fee to hire, and no ongoing charge. You pay the wage for the role, as you would for any other hire.
Are we obligated to hire if we take a meeting?
No. There is no exclusivity, no minimum hires, and no contract. Some employers hire once and stop there. Others build a recurring pipeline across multiple tracks. Both are normal.
Is this staffing or direct hire?
Direct hire. Azgari Foundation makes introductions. We are not a staffing agency, employer of record, or intermediary. If you hire a graduate, they are your employee from day one, under your terms.
Can we hire a graduate part time or on a trial basis?
Yes, if the role is paid. Many graduates are also finishing school or working another job, and part-time or temp-to-hire arrangements are common first steps. Unpaid trials are not something we place graduates into.
What if we do not have an open role right now?
Tell us what kinds of roles you typically fill and how often. We can reach out when a graduate matching that profile is approaching completion, rather than you having to time a request to our training calendar.
Do you have data on how past placements have performed?
Not yet, and we will not overstate what we have. Azgari Foundation's first cohort began training in 2026. There is no multi-year placement or retention track record to cite. What we can speak to is program design, curriculum, and what a graduate can demonstrate at completion, and we will be direct with any partner about the stage the organization is at.
Start the conversation
Email clientsuccessteam@azgari.org (+1 251-512-2290) or use the contact page. We will tell you which graduates are approaching completion and what they can walk in able to do. We do not guarantee a fit, but you will know quickly whether there is one.