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September 26, 2006
Choose the Most Receptive Environment for Developing Your Career
Debra L. Angel and Elizabeth E. Harney, authors of "No One is Unemployable: Creative Solutions for Overcoming Barriers to Employment," advise those of us with disabilities to seek opportunities within the most receptive environment for developing our careers.
This strategy involves uncovering situations which offer reduced competition from just-as-qualified, non-disabled candidates. Pursuing that strategy, according to the authors, will increase the likelihood that you’ll land an entry-level career job that is right for you. A job is right for you when it empowers you to work at what you want to become in terms of a vocation.
Specifically, what can that strategy (if you agree that it has at least some application to your situation); mean to you in terms of deciding which job search tactics to use? Here are some options:
- Concentrate your job search within the hidden job market where 80 percent of the available jobs become available but only become known to 20 percent of the job seekers because they hear about them through personal networking.
- Avoid industries and jobs where your particular disability can be a major real -- or perceived -- barrier.
- Be resourceful in locating companies which are already familiar with the value of physically disabled employees. Visit with the HR directors of large companies to find out if they currently employ people with disabilities and ask what types of positions they hold.
- Consider positioning your job search as a research project. A barrier to one employer may not be a barrier to another. So, identifying the employer’s perception of various barriers occurs throughout the job search process as you approach new employers. For each prospective employer, try to turn a perceived barrier he or she sees in you into a selling point for why you should be hired. If a specific employer is not receptive to you as a job candidate because of your disability, move on. There are other opportunities waiting.
- Remember that companies are in business to make money. If you can prove that you can make the company money, your disability will likely be ignored as a perceived barrier.
- Consider creating your own job. That involves showing a hiring manager how you can fill a specific need within an organization or company -- a function he or she hadn’t thought about before but makes business sense because what you are offering to do for pay is to help that individual ease a pain or attain a gain.
Approaching your job search from both a research and marketing perspective enables you to change where you look for the best employment opportunities for you at this stage in your career. It gives you flexibility. It gives you freedom.
Which one of these tactics resonates with you because you’ve used it yourself or believe it’s the best fit for you as prepare to market yourself? Tell us about it.
Most of us on eSight either have specific experience in overcoming barriers to actually break into the mainstream job market or we have a desire to do so. In each case, we have an obligation to our fellow eSight members to describe what we have learned or desire to learn.
That’s the purpose of the eSight Networking Forum: to bring together those who have “done it” and those who want to “do it” so we can learn from each other.
We're all looking forward to your thoughts.
Posted by Jim Hasse at September 26, 2006 12:52 PM
Comments
Also don't dismiss the merrits of volunteer work, it's a good way to brush up on skills and depending upon kind of agency you volunteer with you may be able to see different kinds of jobs that you might not have entertained as a career before. You also make good networking contacts in volunteer work, managers, department heads, even volunteers who work with you can be possibly asked for references but also if they know of any leads. People like to do each others favours, this gives them an investment in you and your future and most people generally like to help someone else.
Posted by: Liz S at September 27, 2006 06:06 PM
And I know this works because I've done it on a few occasions, how I became involved with eSight.
Posted by: Liz S at September 27, 2006 06:07 PM
About five months ago, I decided I was in the wrong place to look for work. The extremely high employment rate and the high percentage of manufacturing positions did not fit my skills. So...I am going to re-locate. With some savings, the sale of my house and use of the internet, I have a new place to live near Minneapolis. I have challenged myself to go to a place where I can start fresh, walk new paths, accept and provide new challenges as well as trusting my own instincts to leave the old and seek the new. I know this is not possible for everyone but I'm going to do it come November. Don't think it's not hard work. I needed a realtor, a bank in the city I choose to live, sidewalks near my new apartment, grocery store and pharmacy nearby, a neighborhood where good public transit exists and the beginnings of a network of people willing to help me blaze a new and snowy trail. My homework for the move is complete. My networking to find work is not. By faith and self-determination I'm plunging into new possibilities and yes...it's a little scary..sometimes a lot scary since I've not visited the area, have no idea about how to get to the store...but I can and I will do this with or without the support of friends and family. I need no one's permission!
Posted by: Helen Jo Taliaferro at October 5, 2006 08:10 AM
I spent 20 years in the Army and they retired me, because of my visual impairment (I have tunnel vision). Since then I have completed a BA in communication, with internships in radio, public relations and rehab. I am currently pursuing a MS in Community Counseling and WILL achieve a Ph.D. in either communication or counseling psychology. Eventually I will become an advocate for the disabled focusing on veterans and the visually impaired.
I am posting here trying to develop the network I will need to become a successful advocate. Can any of you fine people provide some advice for a visually impaired veteran with a dream?
Thanks for your time
Vern
Posted by: Vern at October 5, 2006 10:59 PM
"Make yourself an expert in an area where experts are needed. If you are an expert and if you are needed, then you will have a much easier time."
this is a some great advice and takes a bit of work but it will be time well spent. If I discover my voice, my passion and then find an outlet for them the congruent melding of their intrinsic value for the quality of my life and the value to the company becomes something with which no other job candidate can compete. How is that for leveling the field?
Posted by: bmayse at October 26, 2007 07:55 AM
It occurs to me that the problems that a person with a disability has finding a job are comparable to the troubles a wman or a minority person has in finding a job.
Finding a job is WORK, so a person loking for a job should act as if they do have a job: Get up early, get dressed for work and then sit down at you rdesk and do something related to finding a job, or go out and do something. If you want to be successrul - look successful - act successful. Everyone should know that you are looking for a job. Everyone. (Send a note to your Christmas card list all over the country.) Tell the clerk at the bookstore, the coffee shop, the library. If you are going to anb employment office get there BEFORE 9:15. Why? Because some employee may have called at 8:45 from an employee who has to have surgery and wil be out for 6 weeks. The people in HR are not going to go into file cabinets looking for peopl,e they have on the list "is something turns up" when they have you standing there and ready to go. 9:30 is too late. They have already called some from the list who will be there in 45 minutese.
When you DO get the job show up at least 15 minutes early every day. No matter what. Which means that you will be there 30 minutes early.
Area of employment: Restrick your area of employment AFTER you get a specific offer. Then based on facts you may decide that is too far away. (Or you may decide that it is"the only game in town" and take the job despite the distance involved.
When going for an interview: Beforehand find out as much about that company as you can. The internet. The reference desk of the library. You should know that this part of a oarge corporation that has offices in 6 cities in this country, is international, and has a h ome office in Geneva. Show interest.
When unimployed take any job you can tet - as long as the work hours permit you to go on other job interviews. Then, a prospective employer can call your currect employer and see what kind of an employee you really are. Besides, if you alrady have a job you will not feel so desperate - now will you look so "hungry."
Oliver
Posted by: Anonymous at April 11, 2008 01:15 PM
My comments in my previous "Comments" was not bassed on personal experience. I was a dentist for 40 years and ran my own practice - so I had to hire *and fire) people.
The main source of all that (the other "Comments") was from our kitchen table. My mother was personnel manager for The Hearst Corporation for 15 years. She was constdantly adv ising appoicants on hoe to get a job - and the how to keep it.
Oliver
Posted by: Oliver at April 11, 2008 01:26 PM