They do not start out looking like blue-chip candidates for Corporate America.

Some of them are like Stanley Narcisse, whose criminal record threatened to sidetrack any career plans for the 29-year-old father, who now works as a service-desk technician for Ariad Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge.

But most participants in Year Up, the Boston-based job-training and education program, tend to more closely resemble Margarita Polanco, Paola Walter, or Raul Williams.

Both college dropouts, Polanco, 23, now manages clients’ mutual funds for Bank of New York Mellon in Everett, while Walter, 22, is a senior fund accountant with State Street Global Services. Williams, 25, was stuck in low-paying, dead-end jobs before winning an IT internship with Consigli Construction Co. in Milford, where he was hired full time in March.

Founded in 2001 by investment banker and social entrepreneur Gerald Chertavian, Year Up tries to help inner-city adults ages 18-24 bridge the so-called “opportunity divide” through training, discipline, and motivation, even in a jobs-challenged economy.

The yearlong program, which turns away half of its applicants, prides itself on being selective and demanding. “Our message is: We won’t lower the bar for you, because State Street and Fidelity won’t either,” says Casey Recupero, executive director of Year Up’s Boston office. “We’ll set it high, but we’ll also give you the support you need to succeed.”

The 1,300 students currently enrolled per year nationwide — 320 in Boston — earn a modest stipend and college credits. The first six months focus on workplace etiquette and professional training in information technology or finance followed by a six-month corporate internship. Applicants, who typically hear about the program via word of mouth from program alumni or city youth workers, must have a high school degree or GED equivalent. Requirements include a written application essay and personal references, but most important, according to Recupero, is a demonstrated motivation to succeed.

To date, Year Up, which operates in 10 US cities and looks to expand, boasts 5,000 graduates and aims for a 75 percent graduation rate. Of those who finish, at least 85 percent are expected to secure full-time employment — at a minimum of $15 an hour, or $30,000 per year — or enter a full-time degree program.

The program sees itself as a bridge between companies and communities. “We’re bilingual. We speak corporate, and we speak neighborhood,” says Recupero.

Corporate supporters like State Street, Partners Healthcare, and Harvard University have learned to take what Recupero calls “a more nuanced approach to recruiting” by putting as much value on job experience, talent, and character as they do a college degree. But in the end, the success of the program depends on the success of its graduates.

“One, their success makes it more likely an employer will take the next Year Up grad,” Recupero notes. Secondly, he adds, having 1,400 Boston-area alums moving up the management ladder “gives us an army of people changing people’s minds” about old models of education and opportunity.

Stanley Narcisse

“If you’re looking for a sob story, that’s not where I’m coming from,” says Narcisse, over lunch one day this month. Still, at an earlier, crucial juncture in his life his future looked bleak, he admits. A rap sheet for drug possession and check fraud when he was in his early 20s “was really coming back to bite me.”

Growing up in Dorchester after his parents emigrated from Haiti, Narcisse graduated from Brighton High School but got caught up in street life. Serving probation and making financial restitution kept him from doing serious jail time, and he took courses at a community college to enhance his job prospects. But when he became a father and lost a job to a CORI report because of his felony convictions, he knew a major life change was in order.

A friend told him about Year Up. “I wasn’t sold on their way of doing things,” he admits, “but I thought it could be a means to an end,” a way to get ahead and leave street life behind for good.

“Having a rap sheet was a concern for Year Up — but not a disqualifier,” says Narcisse, who trained in IT knowing that finance wasn’t an option, owing to his record. Ironically, his first internship was with a leading Boston law firm.