Larry Robbin shares how his immigrant roots shaped his workforce journey. Hear his take on breaking employment barriers, strength-based discovery, and building business relationships—insightful for both new and seasoned professionals.
Podcast Transcript
ALEXIS FRANKS: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, all you workforce warriors across the country. My name is Alexis Franks, and I am your Director of Membership for the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals. And in today’s episode, we are going to be honoring a trailblazer programs and initiatives that have really shaped the workforce community today and continue to inspire future generations of workforce leaders. We’re going to talk through stories of impact and innovation from an industry leader and a longtime friend of NAWDP. From JPTA to WIOA, WIA, and now the Stronger Workforce for America Act, we’re going to explore some legacies that have been built by workforce development professionals, uncover some strategies and partnerships that have really transformed the lives of those in our community, and we’re ready for this conversation to discover how we can be excellent in workforce development. So today we have with us, Mr. Larry Robbin. Larry, welcome to you.
LARRY ROBBIN: Thank you so much Alexis, it’s a pleasure to be in the podcast with you and Doug and NAWDP.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Yes, thank you so much for joining us. And Larry is the Executive Director of Robbin and Associates, so we have just a couple of questions for you today, Larry, we won’t keep you for too long, but what we’re going to do is pass you the mic, as we say on this podcast, and just talk through a couple of questions about the things that you’ve seen, the changes that you come through, and how we can learn and gain a little bit of knowledge from you. So if we’ll start out, can you tell us a little bit Larry about how you got into workforce development?
LARRY ROBBIN: Well, you know, the hidden contradiction of being in workforce development is that we preach career planning every minute of every day to the customers that we work with. But almost no one in workforce development is in their job in workforce development because they followed a well crafted career plan. I mean, you don’t see a 10 year old playing in the sandbox saying, When I grow up, I want to be a workforce development professional. As a matter of fact, ironically, being a workforce development professional does not appear on most of the career assessments that we use in this field. So you get to things like voc rehab counselor and social worker, things but not really embrace what a workforce development professional is. So to make a long story short, and it’s a little difficult with this story, but I’ll do my best. I think workforce development because of the influence of my grandfather. My grandfather came to this country as a non English speaking immigrant with a very severe disability. And when he was in Poland, he had run his own business, and when he got here, he faced a brutal job search. There was a lot of discrimination around all kinds of things, and he was out of work for a very, very long time, and it taught him a real important lesson, which was that there was a lot of discrimination in hiring that went on that was really unfair. So as he got a job in the sweatshops of Chicago, he vowed that if he ever ran his own business again, he would make that business philosophy to hire people that nobody else would hire. So by the time I was born, he owned a very successful restaurant in downtown Chicago, and everybody that he hired to work in that restaurant had multiple and severe barriers to employment. So I grew up in a workforce development program, because if you’re part of a family owned business, the motto of family owned businesses, if you’re old enough to walk, you’re old enough to work. I just started working very Actually, it wasn’t working. It was more like getting my hands on any food that I could possibly but what that did, the reason that was such a life changer for me, was I looked at the people with multiple and severe barriers to employment that by all kinds of metrics should not have been employable, and should not have been successful in the workplace, and here they were becoming very successful employees, and many of them on career paths within the hospitality industry. So that had a profound influence on my life, and I started volunteering in a workforce development program when I was in high school, and that program worked with people who were coming out of the criminal justice system, second and third generation, primarily folks, and that, again, had an incredible influence in my life. So what else would I be in besides workforce development. So the cards were already on the table, You know
ALEXIS FRANKS: Very true.
LARRY ROBBIN: That’s how I got into it.
ALEXIS FRANKS: It was set up, right? Nice for you. We appreciate that. That’s a long term in in ways that we would not normally think of being in a workforce development environment. You know, that leads you to wanting to really help and impact other people. So I appreciate that you really set the picture for us there. So Larry, what have been some of the developments that you’ve seen over the years as you’ve worked through different workforce programs?
LARRY ROBBIN: Well, the field is constantly changing, so it’s very much a work in progress. Some of the things that I’ve seen, some of which are positive, some of which are negative. Number one, we’re dealing with more severe barriers to employment than we’ve ever dealt with in the workforce development field. So when I was starting in the field, homelessness, for example, was not a major barrier to employment. There were people who were homeless, but there were small amount of them, and there were resources to help them. We also didn’t have the impact of drugs like fentanyl and some of the other the opiates that created incredible problems that wrecked families and kept people unemployed. So we had a lot of evolving barriers to employment, and also the gap between what people could do and what the world of work was looking for was starting to grow. And as that gap started to grow, one of the things that it created was it created a problem where, in the beginnings of workforce development, for my pathway into it, if people got a job, that was the goal, we didn’t count anything beyond that, once they were employed success. Right now we know that we can have people who have two and three, sometimes even four, jobs and still can’t get out of poverty. So it’s become much more difficult to serve them, because minimum wage jobs are not the incentive that they once were to help people get into the labor force, and also the the barriers that people have to deal with on that pathway are more multiple and much more severe. So I sometimes say, we don’t do case management anymore. We do caseload management. I just let me say one other thing that I think is really important that is changing great deal, and that is the world of work itself. So workforce development as a field is based on the ability to predict where the labor market is going. When we talk about careers, we talk about. Well, this is a growth opportunity. This is not a growth opportunity. And we basically help people get into pathways that are based on our ability to predict what will happen in the world of work. Well, in the last 20 years, chaos is the best way to describe the world of work. There are more changes happening, faster, more unpredictable things. I mean, when I think about it, you know, 20 years ago, was I looking out of the horizon of workforce development and the economy and saying, Oh yes, I can see the rise of the gig economy. Nobody saw it. Nobody saw it. And it means that we have to realign our thinking into this new era. And I call it skill building for the chaos economy, so that we have to think, how do we help people plan for chaos and for the unpredictability of the labor market. So I think that’s a huge challenge that wasn’t around what I started in this field.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely and honestly, the changes that you’re talking about, we’re still seeing the effects of those today, even in especially with a post pandemic economy. Economy, you know, we’re having to readjust mindsets about hybrid work and all of those things, and people are they’re dealing with a lot more barriers. So it’s changed the way that we provide services. And it’s good to hear that we’re adjusting, and we’re making those changes as they come. But it’s at you’re absolutely right. Sometimes we just cannot foresee what’s on the horizon and where we have to be able to adjust and move quickly. So I really appreciate that.
LARRY ROBBIN: That’s very well said, Alexis, and you know, I have to say, at the risk of being called a heretic in workforce development, I think it calls into question some very basic fundamental things that we do in workforce development. So, for example, I question the validity of seeing our work through a career framework. The one career lifestyle doesn’t exist, and not only that, but the unpredictability of what careers will grow, what careers will go away, is so fast and so powerful that it calls into question whether we as workforce development professionals are doing people a disservice when we make it sound like, yeah, get this training you. There’s a lot of demand. You’ll do really well, when, in fact, we cannot say with the same amount of sure, you know, sureness, as we would have said at one time, whether that pathway will exist and be there for a while. That’s why in a lot of my training, I talk about preparing people to survive the chaos economy. Because I think that’s where we’re at.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely, absolutely and more people are just into learning. There’s such a shift in the way we think about learning. There’s so many different skills you can pick up very easily because of access to education. So you’re absolutely right. I think many more individuals are more multi career focused than just one career framework. You’re absolutely right, and we want to be ready and prepare individuals exactly like you said, for the economy that we don’t we may not know is coming. So Larry, I appreciate what you said so far. I think my next question for you is, what do you think are some of the most important interpersonal counseling and communication skills that a workforce development professional should have?
LARRY ROBBIN: Well, I think that there’s a power dynamic that goes on in workforce development, even though, if you don’t think of yourself as a, you know, being on a power trip or whatever, for most of the clients and customers that we serve, they view us as a, know it all, kind of Oracle, source of all information. And they see themselves as people who don’t know a lot about the world of work or don’t know a lot about their future. And I think one of the really important shifts that people have to put themselves through to be successful with the people that we’re serving is you need to figure out how to become their student before you can become their teacher. And this has important dynamic and residual effects all along the relationship with the individual. So if somebody comes in, and I start my assessment from kind of a perspective of going on the barrier hunt, looking for what’s wrong with this person, which we have a terrible history in our field of putting the barrier thinking in the forefront of what we do. So you’ll see somebody do an assessment with a youth that has left school before they’ve graduated, and one of the first questions I’ll ask them is, well, when did you drop out of school? Now that doesn’t make that young person feel very proud. It doesn’t get at any of their strengths. It doesn’t get at any of their attributes. As a matter of fact, it puts them down and makes them be more convinced about their unemployability than they were convinced about it when they came in to see us. If we started that assessment with the question like, what’s an example of something you do better than a lot of people. You know, we would get an entirely different perspective on this person, right? Example, we might find out that they are the person in a group of friends who knows how to repair skateboards and and bikes and things like that at the best, they’re the best at that that will never come out if we lead with barriers, that will only come out if we lead with strengths. And I think this last year, I did a five part series for the NAWDP advantage, on how to assess from a strength based perspective. Right, and it puts strengths at the center of the relationship. And what we’re looking for. We’re looking for employability, but our history of our field is to look first for unemployability. I think that’s backward and doesn’t serve us or the people we serve very well.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely and honestly, you’re talking my language now, because assessments has always been a huge piece of how we build that plan for a customer that’s coming in for services. And I think some tend to have the mindset of the assessment is the checkbox. We just need to get this done, to get them into a program. But you’re absolutely right. Learning about a person is really the best way to start and being that student and really understanding their thought process, their values, the things that they hold dear, and though that takes you into okay, how can we now establish a career pathway for you? So that is really a great takeaway for some workforce professionals that might be listening now is to be that student that’s awesome and really learn more about the person that we’re trying to serve.
LARRY ROBBIN: I wish we would call get rid of the word assessment, because the word of assessment is filled with values and filled with judgments and filled with us knowing more about the person than the person knows about themselves. And I wish we would replace that word assessment with the word discovery. Yes. So we have used a process that we work out with people called discovery. And what discovery is about is discovering your hidden talents, your hidden strengths, all those things that you may not be aware of, that, in fact, will be very beneficial to you. As you go into the world of work, we’re going to discover those working together, and you’ll find them. If you look at try to find them. I do a training called digging for gold, how to find hidden assets to employment and the hard to employ. And there are things that people can bring up. For example, I remember this one guy in my volunteer work when I was talking to him about his life experience and things like that, and said, Where’s some place that you learned a lot of things that you think would be helpful to you when you go to work? And he said, without dropping a beat, he said, Well, that would come from the 15 years I was incarcerated. Wow. And I went, Oh, really, how would that? Well, he said, Well, let me give you an example. I learned how to follow instructions. I learned how to get along with people that I couldn’t stand. I learned how to deal with conflict resolution, I learned how to control my temper. I learned all these different things that I think would be very helpful in an employment situation, and that’s kind of turning straw into gold. Here we think of 15 years of incarceration, we don’t think of anything positive coming out of that, but this person was able to see that that experience, in fact, enriched their lives.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Right, right. That’s a great example. And you never know, or you never think, that an individual that comes in for services can frame it that way, and even if they can’t the if we can help them to frame their past life experiences as transferable skills for employment, I think we’re that’s more of a service to them than asking an assessment question on a piece of paper. So yeah, I love that. I love that discovery phase that you talked about.
LARRY ROBBIN: If you don’t mind, can I give you one other one of my favorite examples?
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely!
LARRY ROBBIN: So when I asked one young person about what’s an example of something you do better than other people that you know, he said, let me show you. And he pulled out his cell phone, and he showed me a video on his cell phone, and the video was of him walking, and he was holding the leashes of four dogs, two on each side. It was two or three on each side, and he was they were walking down the street in like military precision, and when they got to the corner, he dropped all the leashes. The dog stayed exactly where they were. He crossed the street, and then he proceeded to call the dogs by name, one at a time, they crossed the street and they sat in the exact same position they did when they walked with him. I said, This is unbelievable. We had dogs. They laughed at us if we tried to get them to do a trick or follow instructions. How do you do this? And he said, Well, some people say that I get along better with dogs than I do with people. It’s probably true. And then we started this whole exploration about working with animals. And he was really. Really had this incredible skill where he could be very intuitive about figuring out how to communicate with all kinds of animals. And so that led to an internship at the Humane Society, that led to a part time job in a veterinary clinic. And the vet said, listen, they have a veterinary Assistance Program at community college. If you go to that and you take it and you complete it, I’ll pay for it, and you’ll have a job with me the day after you graduate. And this came from somebody who didn’t have a GED.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Wow, wow. That’s awesome. That’s another great example just taking that skill that they may have already had and turning it into a career that’s awesome. And you actually segue to a really good question, because that’s a huge part of what we do, is that connection to the employer, and how we build those relationships to be able to not just send a resume on behalf of our customer, but really connect them with someone that would be successful and thrive in their business. So I think my question would be, what can workforce professionals do to create more successful relationships with those employers?
LARRY ROBBIN: Well, I think, you know, I’m fourth generation private sector business owner in my family. Both sides of my family were business owners going back four generations. And I think one of the things that workforce development doesn’t quite understand about the business community is that we are outsiders to that. We are not embedded. We are not part of their community, and we want them to do things for us without figuring out what else we can do for them. So if you ever want to get an employer to work with you and win over that employer and develop a strong relationship, one of the most powerful things you can do is figure out who you could connect that employer with that could be a customer of that employer. So for example, in my private sector work, excuse me, I have a printing company that is one of my clients. One of my other clients is a restaurant. The restaurant let me know that they were going to redo their menu, toss out all the old menus and completely redo the menus for the restaurant. When I connected them with that employer, and I said to the employer, you don’t have to give them a discount. You don’t have to give me a commission on this. But I think you, you, the two of you would work out as in a partnership that would help both of you. When they started doing business together, that changed their whole dynamic. And they never forgot me. They always started coming back to me for things and for people that I could help them with. So how do we increase the profits of a business by helping them get customers?
ALEXIS FRANKS: That’s an out of the box way of thinking about it. I think a lot of individuals were so focused on our programs and the work we have to do and offer, but this, you’re really talking about just building a relationship and helping business owners and simulating the economy a bit. This has nothing necessarily to do with our programs, but it can at least help us to align with the needs of the employer and help increase their business as well. So I love that out of the box thinking definitely.
LARRY ROBBIN: And just one other thing about that, you know, I think we do a disservice to our own thinking about the working with employers in the business community when we think of every business as an employer, the vast majority of businesses in America have very few employees to no employees, and those people have never been paid any attention to by the workforce development field. If we meet an employer at a networking event, and employers are sole proprietor, they’re a car mechanic, and they own their own business, and that’s all they have. In our mind, it goes, Oh, you can’t hire from me. I’ve got nothing to offer you, and we lose that connection. As opposed to thinking, you know, I wonder if this employer would be interested in an internship. I wonder if they would be interested in Job shadowing. I wonder what the what else we could afford to them, that they would be, that would be profitable for their business and prove the worth that we provide to them by our partnership. So don’t think of employers. Think of business services.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely, absolutely. I think in my own journey, I started in business services as a business services representative, and that was a key piece of just realizing how I could be successful, was just understanding that businesses have needs. They are they’re in our communities, and they may not, in one instance, in one circumstance, need our services, but they’ll have something else and another way that we can support them. We may have to dig for it a little bit and find out, but they definitely have a need outside of just hiring individuals, and that need could come up at a later time if we’ve already got that relationship. So I think that’s very important for all professionals to hear too.
LARRY ROBBIN: And that’s a really excellent point, Alexis. One of the things we should start thinking about is, what can we offer to businesses that would be beneficial to them and help build this relationship? So every workforce development program that I know of has space. They have classroom space, they have meeting space, they have places where they can run classes. What if we talk to businesses and say, you know, one of the things we offer the businesses that work with us is free use of our space. Now, businesses are paying a lot of money to rent hotel rooms and pay for spaces, for product demonstrations, for employee training, for presentations with for potential employees. If we come to them and say, we’ve got space, you need space, let’s talk that Forge is a very different relationship with that employer. And I’ve been a couple of situations, been able to bring in chambers of commerce that were renting office space, make them a part of the America’s job centers, and have them get the use of that space at no cost to them whatsoever. But it meant that they interfaced with lots of our customers going through that America’s Job Center, which led to a lot of hiring on their part.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Right. Absolutely, that’s a great another great example of engaging with businesses in our communities too. And Larry, I know we’re running a little bit low on time, but I did have one last question that I wanted to ask. If you had the opportunity to share any piece of advice with anyone that might be new in the workforce space and trying to figure out maybe what their next step is, how they can have real impact, what would you share with them?
LARRY ROBBIN: Oh, I’m glad you ask such easy questions. Well, the one thing I would encourage them to do is make sure you participate in these really wonderful offerings that not up is doing. They’re amazing. You and Kim are putting together all kinds of free and sometimes was a small fee, trainings and workshops and webinars. Learn the workforce development field. Don’t learn it by the type of organization you work for. Don’t learn it by population. Don’t learn it by job title. But learn the field, and once you understand more about the field, you can make decisions about where within that field you will feel most you know the best match for you, but so many people go into one thing and workforce development, and think that’s workforce development, right? Anything but workforce development. So keep your eyes open to the incredible diversity and the array of things you can do within the workforce development field. And you know what happens in our work? The biggest danger right now, the biggest barrier to employment right now, is burnout on the part of workforce development staff. I know you’ve done enough of this work. You know what I’m talking about here.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely.
LARRY ROBBIN: And one of the things I say to people, before you decide that you want to get out of workforce development because you’re burning out on workforce development, you have to make some decisions, am I burning out on workforce development, or am I burning out on my organization, I am burning out on my job. I’m burning out on the population that they have me working with. I’m burning out on some other aspect of the work. And think about whether there’s another place in workforce development that would be more accepting and more welcoming and more supportive for you, but is still within the workforce development context. So learn the field.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Absolutely, I love that. I love that. And here on Workforce on the Mic, we do have mic drop moments. Larry, you’ve given us so many today being the student when we’re working with customers learning the field, and don’t just leave. We need workforce professionals to stay. So I think you’ve given us a lot of key takeaways and mic drop moments on our episode. So we thank you for that, and we thank you for all of the work that you’ve done in the workforce development field, the knowledge that you share, especially in our relationship and being able to work together and see the articles you’ve published and the training that you provide. We thank you for being a trailblazer in the workforce field, and we hope to keep you around as long as possible so we can keep learning from you.
LARRY ROBBIN: Well, that’s very kind of you, and I really am moved by what you’re saying. I would, I think it’d be, to be honest, it hasn’t always been the easiest journey. You know, this is very difficult work, and on the other hand, it’s incredibly rewarding work, yes. So it’s got that mix of yin and yang, if you will, that you use, you put out a lot, but you get back a lot well. So I think the way that I’ve been enriched by watching people’s lives be changed in this work and NAWDP, has certainly been a part of enabling me to do that. You know, I was the first national trainer for NAWDP, many, many years ago, when our offices were in caves the old days. But it really means a lot to me that you would say that, and I want to wish you and NAWDP the best for the future.
ALEXIS FRANKS: Yes, thank you so much. Thank you again for joining us today, for the conversation. We appreciate you. We hope to have you back soon. Thank you, Larry, and we’ll wrap up our episode for today.
LARRY ROBBIN: Thank you so much. I really I look forward to coming back
