Year Up Professional Resources (YUPRO)

Year Up Professional Resources (YUPRO)

• Rank: 38
• Headquarters: Boston
• Top staffing segment(s) served: IT
• 2020 US staffing revenue: $10.3 million
• Compound annual growth rate: 22.0%
• Website: yupro.com

A Mission to Close the Opportunity Divide

“Job placement with social impact” is the mission of the Boston-based placement organization Yupro. Yupro partners with businesses seeking a solution to building an early career, diverse talent population, supporting historically underrepresented talent where a family-sustaining wage and career progression are paramount to the placement.

Through upskilling and career readiness coaching of “Opportunity Talent,” Yupro is uniquely designed to support training provider talent to address the social need to address the opportunity gap - that became much more pronounced during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yupro’s clients are mission-aligned, and understand the importance of creating and committing to Opportunity Talent employment, where a skills-first approach to hiring is key. And it’s that understanding and commitment that helped Yupro go from startup to thriving amid the pandemic - with 2020 revenue of $10.3 million and a compound annual growth rate of 22.9% between 2016 and 2020, the organization ranked No. 38 of 52 on SIA’s 2021 Fastest Growing US Staffing Firms list.

“Our clients … showed their commitment to our talent through job retention, in a time that our talent community desperately needed financial support and security in their career opportunities.” says Yupro CEO Michelle Sims. This allegiance on part of the client has resulted in a win-win situation for the customer, Yupro and the talent. “This is a population of adults who have barriers to education and employment and are now facing having to take care of additional family members or even the mental stress of what it meant to stay isolated,” says Katie Breault, Yupro’s senior VP of growth and impact.

The Yupro solution. The company was founded in 2014 by non-profit Year Up Inc, the largest nonprofit workforce development organization in the country, to support job placement of Year Up program graduates and other nonprofit, training provider graduates.

Yupro offers job placement expertise for entry-level and middle-skill talent in business operations, financial operations, information technology, software development and support, and sales and customer service. It also provides on-the-job career coaching and access to social service resources such as transportation and childcare to support retention and productivity. “We also offer upskilling training as an IBM SkillsBuild partner, so our entire talent community has access to free certifications and professional badges through IBM SkillsBuild,” Sims says.

Closing the opportunity divide through partnerships. As a result of the pandemic and the continuing war for talent, Yupro has had many opportunities to build on its explosive growth of the last year, including expanding its mission through partnerships with a growing list of workforce development organizations that are mission aligned with Yupro, so they may offer job placement that includes career readiness coaching, and access to upskilling to further its commitment and mission to advance Opportunity Talent in the workforce.

The impact. At the end of the day, Yupro is making a social impact in challenging organizations to think differently about their access to talent while building a skills-first approach to early career talent. “We are an important part of the human capital ecosystem that just needs to be built better,” Sim says. “Talent want to work for organizations or volunteer for organizations that will make a social impact for BIPOC talent in particular.” And while there may be several companies or organizations out there that want to make a social impact, according to Breault, “they may just not know where to start and we’re here to help them figure out that piece as well.”