Elevate Rapid City: How Could We Guarantee a Job Interview?

After a couple of years of historically low unemployment numbers, Rapid City businesses were having trouble filling job opportunities.

Elevate Rapid City set out to address this issue by partnering with local nonprofits that serve communities facing barriers to economic mobility. The goal was to find a way to provide easier access to skills training and employment opportunities that provide a livable wage and benefits.

“Meeting with them and hearing about the struggles and barriers they face when seeking employment opportunities sparked an idea: What if we could guarantee a job interview? Help them get a foot in the door and provide assistance to help them have a successful interview,” said Reese Niu, Elevate Rapid City’s former workforce planning director. 

The organization developed a series of micro-credentialing courses. They also successfully recruited a number of businesses willing to guarantee job interviews for candidates who completed the courses. They partnered with Western Dakota Technical College to create three courses. The first two are industry training courses for the health care and construction industries. The third is a soft skills course that focuses on areas crucial to employability, including teamwork, effective communication, time management and more. In order to get a guaranteed interview, participants have to take both their industry course and the soft skills course.

“We chose the health care and construction industries because there are many entry level positions needed, but there is also a lot of different ways to upskill and get into higher positions,” Niu said. “We wanted to make sure that the economic mobility piece doesn’t stop with the entry-level position but that there is still a lot of room to grow.”  

From the beginning, Elevate Rapid City recognized that job training alone would not be enough. The organization intentionally partnered with nonprofit organizations that already had strong relationships with the target population and could provide the wraparound supports necessary for participants to succeed.

With so many business and nonprofit partners involved in this initiative, Niu said the key to success is being flexible and open to feedback. The program has changed several times during development, but the changes made the program stronger because they were driven by feedback from those with boots on the ground working with their target communities.

What began as a one-stop-shop concept grew into a broader online resource hub designed to connect job seekers with training opportunities, employer partners and support services. Data collected from 137 participants underscored the importance of this approach. Approximately 75% relied on public transportation, 82% lacked access to a smartphone and roughly one-third had been impacted by the criminal justice system. These realities reinforced the need to address barriers beyond workforce training alone.

To support participants more holistically, Elevate Rapid City leveraged additional funding through the community foundation to provide stipends for various essential needs. The organization also worked to improve accessibility and participant engagement by enhancing mobile functionality, simplifying registration processes, updating website language to be more welcoming and providing additional training to local libraries that often serve as critical access points for individuals without reliable internet or devices.

Throughout implementation, the organization embraced a philosophy of continuous improvement driven by feedback from participants, employers and community partners on the ground. Niu stressed the importance of combining data with firsthand experience. 

“Research and data is great, but there is no replacement for the knowledge you’ll gain by shadowing case managers, talking to people utilizing these services and actually seeing from their perspective what is needed when you are building this type of program,” she said. As of February 2026, the program had generated measurable economic impact while the Elevate Rapid City team continues to refine its model based on participant needs and employer feedback. 

The willingness to adapt has led to continued program growth for Elevate Rapid City, who have expanded beyond the original industry offerings by launching a customer service training track in partnership with a local credit union, creating a direct pathway to employment opportunities. A manufacturing track is scheduled to launch summer 2026 with multiple employer partners, and a financial literacy course is being added to help participants strengthen their onboarding readiness and long-term financial stability. 

The initiative has also produced value beyond its original target audience. Chamber members and employers have increasingly viewed the platform as a no-cost onboarding and workforce development tool that can help support new hires and strengthen workforce readiness.

As the program continues to expand, Elevate Rapid City remains focused on strengthening employer engagement, reducing barriers to participation  and creating pathways that connect residents not only to jobs, but to long-term economic mobility. The organization views this work as an evolving effort that will continue to grow alongside the needs of the community and the opportunities identified through data and partnership.