About the Role
The Citywide Employment & Partnership Manager will lead employer engagement, direct job placement, and workforce partnership development for the Youth Exploration & Career Navigation Hub. This position plays a critical role in helping young people access immediate employment opportunities while also building long-term relationships with employers, industry partners, workforce intermediaries, and training providers across New York City.
Responsibilities
- Cultivate, manage, and grow mission-aligned employer relationships across high-demand industries.
- Identify new employment opportunities, internships, apprenticeships, and career exposure experiences.
- Serve as a primary point of contact for employer partners.
- Build relationships with workforce intermediaries, training providers, and industry associations.
- Coordinate employer engagement activities, panels, site visits, and hiring events.
- Conduct Positive Youth Development trainings for employer partners.
- Lead direct job placement strategy and execution for Hub participants.
- Match young people to employment opportunities aligned with their goals, readiness, and interests.
- Support application, interview, hiring, and onboarding processes.
- Conduct follow-up with participants and employers after placement; provide short-term retention support.
- Co-facilitate the Hub's Career Readiness Certificate Program.
- Integrate Youth Advisory Council feedback into ongoing curriculum refinement.
- Prepare candidates for interviews, including mock interviews, resume support, and professional communication coaching.
- Monitor labor market trends, hiring needs, and emerging industries.
- Advise Hub staff on employer needs and workforce trends.
- Help identify promising career pathways and sectors for participants.
- Work closely with Senior Citywide Career Navigators to support participant success.
- Strengthen citywide referral and partnership networks.
- Build alignment between the Hub's employer-engagement strategy and broader citywide collective impact efforts.
- Represent The Door and the Hub in workforce-related meetings and partnerships.
- Participate in YAC-led hiring panels for Hub staff.
- Track employment outcomes and employer engagement metrics.
- Maintain accurate records and reporting systems in Salesforce.
- Contribute to grant reporting and continuous improvement efforts.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
- Minimum 3-5 years of experience in workforce development, employer engagement, recruitment, talent development, job placement, or related field.
- Strong relationship-building and business development skills; partnership building is a core requirement of the role.
- Knowledge of NYC's labor market and workforce ecosystem, with familiarity with entry-level employment, sector-based pathways, and quality job standards.
- Experience working with employers across multiple industries.
- Experience supporting young adults facing barriers to employment, including young people navigating systemic barriers.
- Excellent communication and presentation abilities.
- Demonstrated success building and sustaining employer relationships, including with both large corporate employers and small/mid-size businesses.
- Commitment to youth-centered, trauma-informed, and equity-focused practice.
- Familiarity with apprenticeships, sector partnerships, and workforce pathways.
- Experience facilitating career readiness workshops or other group-based instruction.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office and willingness to learn Salesforce and other data management systems.
- Bilingual (English/Spanish/French) skills preferred to support diverse populations.
Skills
- Employer engagement
- Direct job placement
- Workforce partnership development
- Relationship building
- Business development
- Partnership building
- Labor market analysis
- Career readiness programming
- Data management
- Communication
- Presentation
Location
- New York, NY
Work Type
- Full Time
- 35 hours per week
- Occasional evening and weekend hours as needed
Experience Level
- 3-5 years
Education Level
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
Salary/Compensations
- $70,000.00 - $80,000.00 Salary/year
About the Company
- The Door has served as one of New York City's most trusted places for teens and young adults for more than 50 years.
- The Door's mission is to empower young people to reach their potential by providing comprehensive youth development services in a diverse and caring environment.
- A nationally recognized model for holistic youth support, The Door reaches up to 10,000 young people annually through a wide range of free, co-located services.
- Youth ages 12 to 24 can access health care and health education, mental health counseling and crisis intervention, legal services, career and education programming, housing supports, services for runaway and homeless youth, arts and recreational programming, and nutritious daily meals, all under one roof.
- The majority of youth served are navigating systemic barriers, including disconnection from school or work, housing instability, and involvement in foster care or the justice system.
- Within this model, The Door operates a robust Career and Education Services Department (CareerED), including general work-readiness training and 14 sector-based workforce programs aligned with high-demand industries such as construction, green jobs, healthcare, information technology, retail, culinary arts, theater production, and commercial driving.
- These programs combine technical training, industry-recognized credentials, paid internships, and job placement support, in partnership with institutions such as CUNY and leading employers.
- In Fall 2026, The Door will launch NYC's first Youth Exploration & Career Navigation Hub (the Hub).
- The Hub addresses a longstanding citywide gap: while NYC has invested heavily in education, workforce, and youth services, the broader system remains fragmented, difficult to navigate, and not designed around how young people actually explore options, make decisions, and move forward over time.
- Over 106,000 young people ages 16 to 24 are disconnected from school and work in NYC, and there is currently no place where a young person can walk in and receive personalized exploration, navigation, and warm connections to best-fit opportunities citywide.
- The Hub is a welcoming, youth-centered space where young people walk in, get paired with a dedicated Citywide Career Navigator, explore their interests and goals through trust-based coaching, and receive warm referrals to best-fit education, training, and employment opportunities across NYC.
- Onsite, the Hub also offers a Career Exploration & Readiness Continuum: four immediate-entry, stackable pathways (immersive Virtual Reality career exploration with Transfr, a 9-session Career Readiness Certificate Program, the 6-week Transfr Trek cohort, and the 7-week Mesa Alumni Lab cohort) that allow young people to build skills, confidence, and clarity at their own pace.
- A defining feature of the Hub is its commitment to ongoing support and returnability: young people are never exited from the program, never rejected, and always welcomed back without stigma when a pathway does not work out.
- The Hub operates on a "No Eject, No Reject" philosophy.
- The Hub is youth-informed and co-designed.
- Its model was shaped by a comprehensive research and design process that included 8 youth focus groups engaging approximately 75 young adults across diverse NYC populations (foster care-involved youth, runaway and homeless youth, young people in GED programs, CTE seniors, and Eagle Academy alumni), nearly 50 interviews with cross-sector leaders, assessment of 9 national Youth Engagement Centers, and a literature review of 50+ reports.
- Youth voice is not a one-time planning input; it is a core accountability mechanism.
- The Hub will operate a paid Youth Advisory Council that plays an active, ongoing role in shaping the Hub's design, implementation, and continuous improvement, including naming programs, co-designing curricula, participating in staff hiring panels, and providing ongoing feedback on participant experience.
- The Hub is explicitly external-facing and citywide.
- Unlike traditional onsite programs, the Hub's mission is to connect young people to best-fit opportunities anywhere in NYC, not just inside The Door.
- This requires strong cross-sector partnership building with workforce providers, community-based organizations, intermediaries, school networks, postsecondary institutions, public agencies, and employers across the city.
- The Hub is also closely aligned with the Pathway Gap Collaborative, a 75+ organization cross-sector effort building shared infrastructure and tools to strengthen youth pathway navigation citywide, and the broader emerging collective impact effort to improve youth economic mobility across NYC.
- Every Hub team member is expected to actively build, sustain, and grow citywide partnerships in support of the young people they serve.
Equal Opportunity
- The Door is an Equal Opportunity Employer
- The Door is committed to building a diverse workforce and strongly encourages individuals with lived experience and those reflective of the communities we serve to apply.
