A recent analysis by the Houston District Office for the Small Business Administration (SBA) found women-owned small businesses in Houston are outpacing their male counterparts when it comes to SBA-guaranteed lending. Leaders say it's a good start, but additional efforts are still needed to ensure women founders receive adequate funding. The SBA Houston District Office, which encompasses 32 southeast Texas counties, examined lending to female founders between 2010 and 2019. The organization found these women outpaced men in terms of the number of loans, average loan amounts and the total volume of dollars. Here's what they found: Total dollars of SBA Loans to women have increased 191%, compared to only 103% for men The average size of an SBA loan to women increased by 109%, compared to only 67% for men The total number of SBA loans to women have increased by 10%, compared to only 6% for men Authors of the analysis argue that while these findings are encouraging, there's still a nearly 10% deficit between the number of women-owned businesses in greater Houston who received SBA loans (31%, 2020-2021) and the number of women-owned businesses in the U.S. (40%, according to U.S. Census data).  SBA's Houston office said it implemented several initiatives in an effort to close that gap, including "matchmaking" sessions with women founders and SBA lenders. Authors said that participating lenders noted women were sometimes asking for less money than they actually needed. Shayla White, Executive Director of the Greater Houston Women's Chamber of Commerce (GHWCC) Women’s Business Center, said it's a trend she's observed in her work, as well.  “We have experienced that women are more conservative when asking for funding as they want to make sure that they can pay the loan back," said White. "Our advice is that women founders seeking capital from lenders ensure that they have a strong business plan that they can communicate with confidence. Do your research to describe the growth and sales strategy and develop realistic financial projections.” SBA's Houston office also has measures geared specifically toward lenders to ensure they're more inclusive. Abigail Gonzalez, Economic Development Specialist and Public Information Officer with SBA Houston, said it's an especially crucial effort for Houston.  “When it comes to outreach in a city as diverse as Houston, each community faces its own unique challenges," said Gonzalez. "It is not enough to be aware of perceived barriers without also being intentional about helping entrepreneurs gain access to resources. That is why we created the Inclusive Lending initiative, which brought together SBA lenders, community partners, and entrepreneurs to highlight challenges and opportunities in various underserved groups, including Black, Hispanic, LGBT, disabled, and women-owned businesses. The initiative includes a seminar specifically for SBA lenders to shed light on unconscious bias and highlight the importance of being intentional about diverse outreach efforts so that people of all backgrounds are being served." SBA's Houston office shared other resources outside of the SBA to look for funding, including: Harris County Small Business Grant Recovery Program 2021 (harriscountybusinessrelief.org) SOAR - TruFund Small Business Grant · COVID-19 Assistance Programs KKR Small Business Builders  See the 10-year look at SBA lending to women-owned businesses in greater Houston. 

By the summer of 2021, the Houston region had recovered 58% of the roughly 361,400 jobs shed in spring of 2020. Despite this gain, largely in areas including leisure and hospitality; professional and business services; and trade, transportation, and utilities, the region’s recovery lags behind the national rate of 75%. If Houston’s current growth trends hold, economists project the region's labor market will likely experience a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels as early as December 2022. So for the balance of 2021 and well into 2022, companies will continue to seek workers and Houstonians will go on searching for good employment.  Over the summer, the Partnership’s Houston Back on Track job recovery initiative explored how the pandemic affected Houstonians looking to re-engage in the region’s workforce. Today’s job seekers have a mix of education, work background, and life experience. Despite being tenacious, hopeful and motivated, they find navigating job search and application systems challenging.  LinkedIn has the potential to be instrumental in this recovery and helping connect job seekers with employment opportunities. Widely viewed as a professional networking platform for white collar workers, LinkedIn holds the promise of being the lynchpin between Houston employers with needs across their businesses and talent regardless of education or work background – including workforce newcomers, entry-level workers, career-changers, and jobseekers excluded by automated resume selection processes.  Going Social for Job Searches Accenture and Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work initiative recently explored the phenomena of “hidden workers” in the workforce and their potential for filling much-needed jobs. These people are ones who want to work but are shut out of the workforce for one reason or another or those employed but could work more hours under the right circumstances, such as veterans, caregivers, and immigrants and refugees, among others. The Partnership’s research supports these findings. Harvard and Accenture note that, with repeated rejections, workers are apt to grow frustrated and stop looking for work. The study showed that 40% of employers use social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to seek talent for "middle skill" jobs but less than 30% of hidden workers in the middle skills space use social media to seek employment. Additionally, only 42% of hidden workers in middle skills space know how to effectively use social media to increase their employability. Platforms like LinkedIn can help workers such as these promote themselves and their skills, learn about industries, and draw the attention of recruiters.  The Power of LinkedIn  LinkedIn allows users to provide information about themselves through profiles, build a network of connections, and share and engage with comments, photos and videos, and articles in a news feed, and search for and apply for jobs. Likewise, companies can share information about their organizations and opportunities, and recruiters and talent acquisition managers can use the platform to seek talent.  Profiles contain space for a banner photo, a headshot, a personal statement, work history, educational background, skills, volunteer experience, accomplishments, references, and interests – all of which combine into a personal sales piece that can be a go-to for recruiters and talent acquisition managers. “I've seen situations where candidates have sent their resumes across and the recruiters go straight to LinkedIn,” said former recruiter Schirell Sidney. “I have seen some recruiters that may not be as likely to call a person if they didn't have a LinkedIn profile.”  Sidney now works as a senior program manager with United Way of Greater Houston and will help Houston’s jobseekers use the platform to connect to good careers through the Houston Back on Track initiative.  Recruiters can search for talent with specific skillsets; users who have these skills listed on their profiles will appear in search results. Regina Mellinger, founder, owner, and president of the staffing firm Primary Services — a Houston Back on Track employer partner — said staffers and employers can work backwards and use the listed skills and previous work experience of high-performing employees to seek out new talent with similar skills and employment backgrounds.   A jobseeker can use their profile’s summary area to address a career change or resume gap, use the designated areas to list courses and certifications, even highlight volunteer work and passions. Important real estate on their profile also includes the profile picture and the cover photo. Use those to further extend the personal brand message, said Jill Chapman, a senior performance consultant for Insperity.   Users can follow companies that interest them and individuals they aspire to be like to learn about companies, organizations, and industries; this can be particularly beneficial for job candidates who are new to an industry or area of work. Chapman said interacting with these profiles and participating in industry discussions shows employers that a candidate is involved and interested in the area. An Opportunity for Dialogue and Learning  The platform may also help streamline communication between recruiters and candidates or other jobseekers. Recruiters can send direct messages to job candidates or potential candidates and users can message recruiters or other users to ask questions about an industry, company, or opportunity. Mellinger and Sidney acknowledged that LinkedIn’s internal messaging service can be frightening at first because uses may be wary of talking directly with recruiters. However, a user’s current employer cannot see messages and recruiters are happy to answer questions and discuss opportunities. Microsoft’s LinkedIn Learning platform provides additional advantages for jobseekers. The online learning platform offers a rich selection of courses and modules of varying lengths in a wide range of areas of professional development. Not only can users use the platform to learn and build skills, but they can add completed courses to their LinkedIn profiles. Learning through – and posting about – these courses can show how a candidate, and especially a career-changer, is working to bridge a skills gap, Chapman said, and signal to potential employers a candidate’s valuable growth mindset and ability to learn, take on new challenges, and develop professionally. Sidney believes posting these courses can also help unsure jobseekers build confidence – the sharpened skill gives them something to brag about.  “Anybody that’s afraid of LinkedIn has got to give it a try because they've been missing it, they are missing out,” she said.   The Partnership's UpSkill Houston initiative works to strengthen the talent pipeline employers need to grow their businesses and to help all Houstonians build relevant skills and connect to good careers that increase their economic opportunity and mobility. Learn more here. Houston Back on Track is a job recovery initiative that helps connect workers displaced by the pandemic to coaching support, wraparound services, and short-term education they may need to help them get to the ‘front door’ of companies with good opportunities for long-term employment in in-demand roles. Learn more here.