inployable represents the world’s first employment network for people with Down syndrome and it’s centered around Linkedin. It involves hacking the social media platform to deliver a brand experience that overcomes technical barriers to match employers hiring for relevant positions with candidates from the Down syndrome community. It also includes the use of data from Linkedin to reach those same employers with tailored messaging offline through elevator screens in their corporate headquarters.

North America is facing a historic labour shortage—with over 6.8 million open jobs—and employers are in desperate need of hard-working and reliable employees. Despite this, over 50% of people with Down syndrome struggle to find meaningful, paid employment.

Individuals with Down syndrome have been victim to outdated stereotypes and misconceptions about their capabilities, which ultimately has led to their community being ignored by potential employers. Their abilities in the workplace are underestimated, despite the community having a long-standing history of being valuable contributors in a variety of different sectors. Individuals with Down syndrome have been known for bringing a unique set of skills to the workplace including loyalty, dedication, attention to detail, positive attitude, and contribution to culture, among many others.

The Canadian Down Syndrome Society (CDSS) exists to empower the Down syndrome community by closing the gaps in support, information, and resources that make life more challenging for people with Down syndrome.

As people with Down syndrome become adults, employment is important in building independence and a sense of dignity. Being employed means much more than earning an income; it means learning new skills, the opportunity to build lasting connections with others, improved self-confidence, and a sense of self-worth.

Misconceptions aside, employers that are open to hiring people with intellectual disabilities remain uninformed about how to reach and connect with these candidates. From the initial moment in the recruitment journey, all the way through to training a new employee with Down syndrome, our research found that employers were in desperate need of information, resources, and a designated place to connect and recruit.

Introducing inployable: the world’s first-ever employment network for people with Down Syndrome on Linkedin.

A collaboration between the Canadian Down Syndrome Society and LinkedIn, Inployable helps prospective employers easily discover potential employees and access resources like training processes, inclusive hiring practices, interview adaptations and everything required to successfully hire an individual from the Down syndrome community.

To make a first-of-its-kind employment hub for candidates with Down syndrome, we partnered with Linkedin, the best-in-class platform for fostering a professional network.

We had to work around certain limitations of the platform which doesn’t allow you to aggregate job seekers from a certain community in one place. So we used hyper-targeted social posts to invite members of the Down syndrome community to fill out a brief form on inployable.com and get added to inployable’s network - basically a company page on Linkedin where potential employers could find them. This had the added benefit of giving people with Down syndrome instant job experience and ensuring they ranked higher in job searches.

Our partnership with Linkedin provided a rich trove of data so we planned to take candidate skills and match them against vacant job and employer data, as well as target employers across Canada hiring relevant positions with tailored messaging.

The campaign launched during Canadian Down Syndrome Week, via a long-form video featuring people with Down syndrome advocating for their right to work, driving employees and employers to visit the hub and connect.

Since LinkedIn favors traditional workplace experience, we added over 25 skills to the platform (repetition oriented, morale booster, loyal) to accurately represent the strengths of the community and make them more discoverable.

For candidates who required more support; we made live coaching sessions available to guide them through resume creation, and choosing the right employment opportunities.

Using data from Linkedin, we mapped out the headquarters of major corporations across Canada who were hiring for relevant positions. We partnered with Captivate elevator network to serve ads inside their office buildings, allowing us to reach hiring managers where they work with messaging on elevator screens that called out their company by name and introduced them to suitable inployable candidates.

Since its launch, inployable has seen incredible success. As a small Canadian charity, budgets and resources were slim, but inployable achieved the following:

Created a space for connection:

- 700+ companies followed our page within the first 2 months

- The companies were from 164 different industries

- 91% of our followers work directly in HR

- “inployable is one of the fastest growing company pages on LinkedIn” Sean McConnell, LinkedIn Business Development Lead

Inspired individuals with Down syndrome to seek employment:

- 17% of inployable candidates have already been hired, getting us closer to our goal of zero candidates unemployed

Raised awareness about the community’s ability to contribute to the workforce:

- We achieved 149,000,000+ impressions for the campaign and based on our $7,500 in PR and media support, this equates to 19,867 impressions per $ spent.

inployable was a collaboration with Linkedin - a major social media platform. It involved building a first-of-its-kind employment network and required an innovative approach to overcome platform limitations and ultimately created a new utility that catered to an underserved community. It also used data from social media to target relevant companies offline with hyper-relevant messaging that reached them in their place of work.