Apparo’s Tech Therapy® assists ZABS Place in finding an application to help showcase graduates’ work skills for job placement.

Sponsored by Ally Financial

ZABS Place(opens in new tab) is a nonprofit thrift boutique in Matthews, NC, serving as a thriving hub for young adults with special talents in the Charlotte area. They offer individualized training to empower these individuals, equipping them with valuable job and life skills to become key contributors to society. Their goal is to train young adults with special needs to harness their talents and support their transition to rewarding careers;\, realizing their dreams of leading meaningful lives.

ZABS Place partnered with Apparo for guidance in how to better demonstrate participants’ real-world abilities to potential employers given that traditional hiring methods often fail to capture the strengths of individuals with different learning and communication styles. Staff have been manually tracking participant progress and creating visual documents to support job searches. While effective, the process is time-intensive and limits the number of individuals they could serve.

A Strategic and Technical Approach

Through Apparo’s Tech Therapy program, skilled volunteers from Ally Financial worked alongside ZABS Place to evaluate the full employment journey, from intake to job placement. Together, they identified the need for a centralized, flexible system to track skill development and generate digital portfolios.

Having one platform would enable ZABS Place to optimize their process that leads to the creation of digital portfolios that highlight each participant’s abilities in a more dynamic and accessible way. These portfolios include:

• Skill development data and benchmarks
• Photos and videos of participants at work
• Clear insights into strengths and growth areas

This approach offers employers a more authentic, data-driven view of each candidate’s potential, going beyond what a traditional resume can provide. In addition to the platform recommendation, the Ally Financial volunteer team delivered implementation tips, sample timelines, and staff training recommendations, helping to ensure long-term success.

Building Toward Scalable Impact

ZABS Place currently supports 20 to 25 job placements each year and has achieved a 100% retention rate in 2025, demonstrating strong alignment between participants and employers. Once a new platform is implemented, the focus is not only on increasing placement numbers but also on improving match quality and expanding long-term impact. As ZABS Place grows, including its merger with Cakeable Café, a scalable solution will help extend its reach and effectiveness.

Bentzion Groner of ZABS Place summed up the experience, “When we help our ZABS talent look for jobs, they don’t thrive in a system of typical resumes and interviews. We create digital profiles to bring their skills to life for employers, but the process is very manual. We needed a lot of help. The volunteer team from Ally was fantastic because they addressed our issues holistically by reviewing all of our processes that lead up to the digital profiles. It wasn’t just about what technology do we need, but about understanding our goals and gaps. Then they helped us understand the right way to use technology to solve our challenges throughout all of our processes and tie them together. Before this project, I didn’t think this was feasible. It’s so very helpful to believe that this is possible and now have a detailed plan on everything we need to make it happen.”

Learn more about Apparo’s Tech Therapy program here.