Seminar: Understanding Digital Literacy for Job Search for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals

Abstract

Formerly incarcerated people, also known as “returning citizens,” face a number of obstacles during reentry, and job search is one of the critical issues. While job search can be difficult for most people, returning citizens face additional obstacles due to their criminal records, gaps in employment, and inexperience with the search process. These challenges are compounded by the fact that, increasingly, job search involves digital elements, and returning citizens – especially those returning from long sentences – have limited digital literacy.

In this talk, I will present the outcomes and findings from three studies that sought to understand returning citizens’ engagement with digital technology, specific challenges that they face during job search, and potential interventions that could alleviate those challenges. I make recommendations on how to design tools for job search to support returning citizens. I conclude by sharing how these recommendations propel a path forward to my current research.

_Biography

Ihudiya Finda Williams is the lead principal investigator of REACH Lab at Virginia Tech. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan on the topic of digital literacy development for formerly incarcerated individuals. More broadly, her research examines digital technology use among populations with low resources, highlights the injustices in existing systems that they use, and explores tech-enabled solutions to challenges they face. Ihudiya has completed research internships at Adobe Research and Microsoft Research. Prior to her Ph.D., she worked as a software engineer and product manager at Xerox, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the U.S. Department of State. Her work has been supported by the GEM Fellowship, Generation Google Scholarship, Microsoft Research Dissertation Fellowship, and the Rackham Graduate School Merit Fellowship. She is an alumnus of Rochester Institute of Technology and Harvard University.