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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 12:52 PM | Comments (7)