Make Sure Your Job Postings Reach Job Candidates With Disabilities
| Summary: To create a more inclusive workplace, your company's job announcements must reach job seekers with disabilities. We asked recruiters to tell us what tools would best help them do that -- and found a few are already available. | |
Author: Nan Hawthorne |
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What Do You Do If You Can't Ask Them? Recruiters Dream Big Tools: On the Web Tools: In Your Hometown Be Prepared Related Links Related Content What Do You Do If You Can't Ask Them? There's lots of content in eSight Careers Network's Employer Connection about why any smart company needs to hire qualified job candidates who happen to have a disability.
says, "I'm looking for motivated job candidates. That motivation is, in my opinion, the most important qualification a job seeker can have." When we responded that disabled people, in general, are very motivated workers, he agreed enthusiastically. "This is a bottom line issue, too," he continued. "When you lose a worker, you not only lose money on lost productivity and new training for a new hire but you also lose all the value that employee's experience with the company represents. Employers lose a lot of money, if workers don't stick around. Disabled people make very loyal workers." Steve Kendall, MR Atlanta West, explains, "Companies are continually being reviewed to see if they are hiring people fairly and often want to hire people who qualify as an EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) candidate" But, for professional job recruiters, there are really only a couple priorities: to get their companies or clients the best candidates and to fulfill a specific request for more representation of candidates with disabilities for any and all job openings. Kendall continues. "The dilemma, (however), for most recruiters is that, when they have clients wanting to hire people who qualify as EEO candidates, they can't ask the question without being open to a lawsuit for illegal hiring practices. We cannot ask someone if they are qualified due to being disabled, a minority, over 40 years old etc." The solution is to make sure job seekers with disabilities have access to your job announcements. You can hope they are in line with everyone else to find out about your openings through classified ads, job sites, placement services, professional networks and job fairs. But you can't rely on it. You must make a special effort to reach this pocket of job candidates. Very few recruiters, whether for paid jobs or volunteer positions, appear to have any idea about how to reach qualified candidates with disabilities. Through no fault of their own, they don't know "where the disabled people are." Disabled people, after all, are not - well -- centralized. We are a diverse group of individuals with disabilities that require radically different adaptations and accommodations. Even within a specific disability such as blindness, there are incredible variations in terms of type, severity and need. Disabled people also come from every other subset of humanity: gender, age, race, ethnicity, affectional preference, education, religion, ability, interests, politics, income, values etc. We do have disability organizations, but we are even more likely to form relationships with groups which address other interests: political parties, hobbies, places of worship, classes, professional organizations or sports activities. How do you find people who are everywhere? We asked several job recruiters on recruitersnetwork.com and at the ACCESS 2001 job fair in Seattle, Wash., to think about the perfect tool to help them get their job opportunity information out to people with disabilities so they can reach the broadest pool of qualified candidates as possible. Go to Top of Page
would, by definition, go to disabled job seekers specifically would solve the problem of making sure disabled people have access to the jobs you open. Such a tool dedicated to disabled candidates would attract even more recruiters, if it had some added features. Robert, the recruiter for Washington Mutual at the job fair, dreamed of a site that would connect all the disability job sites -- allowing him to submit one job announcement and have it posted on all. Others said their ideal site would include articles about disabilities, jobs, and accommodations -- written specifically for recruiters. Recruiters felt that they would be more comfortable going into a conversation with a disabled candidate and then presenting him as a candidate to a hiring manager, if they were prepared with details about specific disabilities and what adaptations can be made to make certain jobs accessible. For instance, one said, "I think I'd like some information where I can learn about the candidate and his disability, so I know what he can do. Maybe if I could talk to a rehab counselor or something." Her eyes widened when we suggested asking the candidate himself. "Well, yeah, that would work," she admitted. "And it would be easier and faster!" Recruiters from Safeco Insurance expressed a preference for advice that is "not sugar coated." Referring to eSight's article, "Use Job Fairs to Recruit Visually Impaired Candidates, Enhance Corporate Success," one of the quartet stationed at the Safeco booth explained, "It wasn't rude, but it was direct. When disability information is too 'nice,' it doesn't help me feel comfortable. I feel much more at ease talking to blind people now that I know not only how to do it, but how not to." It was interesting to us that a rather large percentage of the recruiters we met did not even think in terms of a useful referral tool such as the one described above. It may be that they had not thought about people with disabilities using sites such as Monster.com. Or maybe they assumed disability would not be revealed through the database entries of disabled job seekers. These recruiters puzzled over whether there were any local organizations for or comprised of disabled people they could contact. These recruiters were not wrong to include such resources in their plans. It's just that, relying only on such local organizations limits their recruiting potential among people with disabilities. We spent a little time researching and found several existing resources that match some -- if not all -- of these recruiters' definitions of ideal recruiting tools. Go to Top of Page
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See some of the job posting sites, some of which offer information, as well as the following.
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Related Links: Note: Accessing a link will bring up a new browser window. Close this new window to get back to this article Find the Hidden Workforce: A Recruiting Guide Tailored to Today's Challenges This is an e-booklet with tips and techniques from industry leaders about recruiting to various segments of the hidden workforce, including people with disabilities. |
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Copyright 2001 eSight Careers NetWork