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RecruitABILITY
Using RecruitABILITY
Recruiting
Tips
Employment Tips
Tips for
Recruiting Employees with Disabilities
Overview
American companies are short of workers. There are 9.6
million unemployed, working-age people with disabilities who would prefer to be
working. You are probably reading this because, like most other companies in
America, your company can’t afford to ignore a poorly-tapped labor pool of 9.6
million willing workers.
The good news is that there really are 9.6 million
unemployed Americans who want jobs. The bad news is that recruiting them isn’t
all that easy – particularly finding the ones with the right skills for your job
openings.
Companies that are proactive about recruiting people with
disabilities, companies that proactively do “targeted” recruiting, find that
this minority group is quite different from others that they have targeted in
the past.
Unlike racial and ethnic minorities, people with
disabilities are more difficult to target. They do not as readily congregate in
groups. With few exceptions, you are unlikely to find high concentrations of
people with disabilities in particular neighborhoods, churches, cultural
organizations, etc. Similarly, particularly on a local level, there are few
media sources (magazines, TV programs, radio shows, etc.) that effectively reach
a broad audience within the disability community.
Given that, how can your company develop a recruiting program that will
enable you to successfully attract applicants with disabilities?
A truly successful recruiting program is
going to be a multi-faceted one. While there isn’t a proscribed “recipe for
success”, there are many ingredients that are typically a part of successful
programs – and we will describe them here. Which ones you choose to use (and
what proportions you choose to use them in) will be determined by your own
resources, commitment and creative planning!
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Getting Your Bearings
Particularly if you are new to the whole area of recruiting
people with disabilities, you are going to want to learn both about the issues
that people with disabilities face in the labor market, and the strategies that
other employers have used to successfully recruit them.
Peer Learning
– Don’t
overlook opportunities to tap into the experiences and knowledge of other
companies. Many companies are more than willing to share the strategies that
have helped them to successfully recruit people with disabilities. Find out what
local companies have been recognized for their success and then find out what
works for them.
In some locales, groups already
exist to encourage this kind of exchange between employers. Business Leadership
Networks exist in over 30 states and are intended to be employer-to-employer
forums on disability-related issues. (See:
www.usbln.com) You might also find this kind of dialogue by affiliating with
local Industry Liaison Groups (See:
www.jhuapl.edu/NILG/index.htm) or the Diversity-related activities of the
Society for Human Resources Management (See:
www.shrm.org)
Volunteering - In order to gain more
insight and strategic positioning for your company, you may also find it useful
for you or others in your company to volunteer some time with a Community Based
Organization. Most CBOs readily welcome interest and involvement from employers
– as Members of their Board of Directors, participants on Advisory Boards, and
or as program-related volunteers. Some CBOs follow the “Projects with Industry”
model. Their key programmatic strategy is “Business Advisory Committees” –
representatives from local business and industry that help them determine the
nature and focus of their services. There are over 100 Projects With Industry
throughout the country and most of them belong to INABIR - the InterNational
Association of Business Industry and Rehabilitation (See:
www.harles.com/inabir.htm)
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External
Resources
In general, people with disabilities have historically
faced a variety of barriers to employment. Because of this, many organizations
and services have been established to help individuals surmount those barriers.
In your efforts to successfully recruit people with disabilities, it is in your
interest to take advantage of these resources.
Community Based Organizations (CBOs)
- CBOs are organizations that provide employment and/or training to people with
disabilities. They come in all shapes and sizes and they will have varying
capacities to meet your workforce needs. Generally, CBOs also have limited
penetration within their disability communities. (Less than 20% of employees
with disabilities attribute their recruitment to the services of a CBO).
However, they do provide some of the highest concentrations of disabled job
seekers that you are likely to find and they can often provide you with other
related services and supports.
It goes without saying that you
should develop solid contacts with disability-focused organizations within your
recruiting territory – particularly those community-based organizations that
provide training/education/employment services.
As a first step, you should develop
an inventory of CBOs in your recruiting territory. You might consider a
standardized format for this that would include:
-
How
many people with disabilities do they place annually?
-
What percentage of those have the
kinds of skill sets that you are seeking?
-
How do they screen assess their
clients?
-
What other services will they
provide you with? (i.e. Some CBOs can also provide you with job accommodation
support, in-house disability-related staff training, etc.)
-
What post-placement support do
they offer you and/or the employee? (i.e. Many CBOs provide post-placement
retention-focused support.)
-
What mechanisms does the CBO have
to be kept alerted to your recruiting needs and to keep you alerted to
prospective applicants?
-
What other companies you can
contact for references on their services?
You might want to consider using
the CBO assessment tool developed by Mainstream Inc. (See:
www.mainstreaminc.org/employers.html)
Within the next few months,
RecruitABILITY will be developing an online inventory of CBOs throughout the
United States.
Educational Institutions
- Every year, a talented new “crop” of students with disabilities
graduate from high schools, colleges and universities. Don’t overlook this great
source of emerging talent.
In a very proactive move, some
larger companies have begun to use employees with disabilities to take the lead
role in recruiting disabled students.
Virtually every educational
institution now has a “Special Needs Office” that provides supports to students
with disabilities. That is a great place to start. Contact someone there and
discuss with them how you can best target students with disabilities on their
campus. Sometimes you will be directed to the Campus Career Center, sometimes
the Special needs office will work with you directly and sometimes, like the
University of California Berkeley, there will even be a Career Center just for
students with disabilities.
In addition to direct recruiting,
don’t forget to discuss Internship opportunities. Internships have proven to be
an excellent way to prospect talent and to groom future employees. Make every
effort to include students with disabilities in your Internship program.
Job Fairs
-
In many communities, Job Fairs that target job seekers
with disabilities are held annually. These job fairs can give you immediate
access to current job seekers. They can give you an opportunity to heighten your
profile within the disability community and they give you an opportunity to
strengthen your ties to local CBOs. If there isn’t such a Job Fair in your
community, consider partnering with other companies or CBOs to hold one. A
manual for planning and holding disability-focused Job Fairs is available (free)
from: Email:
dunlap-carol@dol.gov
Online Recruiting -
The Internet has
opened a new world of recruiting opportunities for companies, large and small.
Take full advantage of the opportunities that it affords you to recruit people
with disabilities.
Assuming that you have a “jobs”, “careers”, and/or
“diversity” section on your company’s website, make sure that it is “disability
friendly” in both format and content. Ask your Webmaster to ensure that your
website meets at least minimum standards for web accessibility. (If they don’t
know where to start, point them to “Bobby” Standards at
www.cast.org/bobby/) Whether through pictures or text, communicate your
proactive interest in candidates with disabilities.
If you are using online services to post jobs and/or
search resumes, determine whether or not those sites are accessible to people
with disabilities and what efforts they make to include people with disabilities
in their talent pool.
Of course, we hope that you will also use the new
services of RecruitABILITY and help us to
make it your best online, targeted recruiting tool!
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Proactive Projects
One of the most successful approaches that I have seen for
recruiting people with disabilities has been the development of what I call
“Proactive Projects”. Going beyond “general” recruiting strategies of a company,
these are specific and deliberate initiatives to bring people with disabilities
into their workforces. They are typically done in partnership with a CBO or
Educational institution. They have the advantage of concrete and measurable
results, they can often be duplicated in other departments/branches of a
company, and they tend to quickly heighten the level of disability expertise
within a company. Proactive Projects can assume may forms; here are just a few
examples:
Contracting - One large
company contracted its in-house print shop to a CBO. The CBO ran the print shop
and employed people with disabilities to do so. The host company then recruited
from that pool of workers for job openings in other parts of their operations.
Similarly, another company contracted a heavily clerical part of their operation
out to a CBO that already ran a clerical training program – again directly
recruiting employees from that talent pool. (See: State Compensation Insurance
Fund
www.scif.com/news_info/sfcommu.htm
Training - A company with a
chain of hardware stores collaborated with a CBO and a community college to
develop and run a 6-month training program for cashiers and agreed to hire all
graduates of the course. The course included classroom instruction and in-store
work experience. This model has been used successfully by both individual
companies (i.e. a company with a large call center recruited customer service
operators this way and a large retail store uses this model as an ongoing
recruiting tool) and by collaborating companies within a particular sector (i.e.
several banks collaborated to train/recruit bank tellers and 10 hotels banded
together to recruit assistant chefs.) A very useful book on this “Skills
Training Partnerships” model is available for $10 from the Canadian Council on
Rehabilitation and Work (Email:
cmacdiarmid@ccrw.org)
Mentoring - One company set
up a Mentoring program with several CBOs. Several times annually, a dozen
employees of the company were paired with selected job seekers with disabilities
from the CBOs. The company’s employees served as job-search Mentors for a
three-month period. Naturally, the company hired several of the best candidates.
(Contact:
info@diversityworld.com)
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As I pointed out earlier, people with disabilities are
unlikely to be found congregated in a way that makes targeted recruiting as easy
as you would like it to be. Any good recruiting strategy, for job seekers with
disabilities, will include portraying a disability-friendly profile to the
general public.
People with disabilities are spread throughout virtually
every level of society – every age group, every cultural institution, every
ethnic/racial group, and every social/economic class. This “dispersion” is what
makes your general public profile so important! Carefully consider how people
with disabilities are portrayed in your advertising, merchandising, and
recruiting media. If you are able to portray yourself as a company that values
the contribution of people with disabilities, it is likely that job seekers with
disabilities will gravitate to you. (Particularly when people with disabilities
want to avoid the discrimination and awkwardness that is so prevalent in most of
their contact with employers.)
Even small companies can make big statements. I remember,
several years ago, walking into a store that had a sign on its door that read:
“Customers and job applicants with disabilities are welcome. Please see customer
service if you need any assistance.” I also remember the bank that hired a Deaf
Teller – within weeks, in addition to a significant increase in Deaf customers,
they received numerous applications from qualified candidates with a variety of
different disabilities.
I remember recently seeing a recruiting brochure from a
major corporation. They had been careful to include photographs of men and women
from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. They also included an attractive
photo of a young man in a wheelchair. Unfortunately, this picture was not on the
pages about career opportunities; but on the “Community Involvement” page that
outlined their various charitable endeavors. What a different message this
brochure would have communicated to disabled readers if that photo had been on
the “Careers in Engineering” page!
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In considering – be mindful of attitudinal barriers in your
organization that can scuttle all your best efforts. “Disability” is an
emotionally-charged, misinformation-prone issue.
Recruiters, Hiring Managers, even co-workers with
misinformation and/or bad attitudes can effectively block or hinder your best
efforts. Be sure that your part of your recruiting strategy is to educate and
inform your non-disabled workforce! Wouldn’t it be great if applicants with
disabilities were swept into your company on a wave of enthusiasm and support!
Training Seminars - Many
local CBOs and Departments of Rehabilitation offer free training available to
employers in their areas. For a fee, articulate people with disabilities are
available in most areas to address topics such as reasonable accommodations, the
ADA, disability etiquette, etc.
Several great videos are available.
One of the best is the Ten Commandments of Communicating with People With
Disabilities. It also comes with handouts and a training module. (See:
www.diversityshop.com/store/10comvid.html)
If you want to run your own
internal training seminars, rather than develop your own, you might check out
the free curriculum offered by California State University Northridge at
www.csun.edu/~sp20558/dis/emcurcon.html?113,133) The most widely-used
program in North America is the WINDMILLS Attitudinal Training Program.
(Contact:
info@diversityworld.com Train-the-trainer sessions available from Milt
Wright & Associates
www.miltwright.com)
Online Information - Online
information is great to provide your employees with as well. A good starting
place on the Internet is the California Business Leadership Network (See:
www.cabln.org) If you have one, your corporate Intranet is an effective
place to keep pertinent information for your employees. I worked with one
company to compile extensive resources on disability issues – recruiting,
interviewing, accommodating, supervising, developing/promoting, etc. It is an
effective way to have critical information at your employees’ fingertips.
Personal Interaction -
Direct, face-to-face interaction is the most powerful way to break down
attitudinal barriers. Take advantage of every opportunity to give your employees
direct contact with people with disabilities. This contact will do a lot to
overcome any uncertainty discomfort and misinformation that your employees are
harboring. I have already suggested getting your employees involved with
Mentoring programs, hiring Interns, and inviting guest speakers with
disabilities. Here are a few more suggestions:
-
Mock and Informational Interviews – Most
CBOs value “Mock” interviews as a way for their job seekers to hone their
interviewing skills. They also value “Informational” interviews as a way for
their job seekers to gain industry-specific information on their career
interests. These are great and comfortable ways for your employees to increase
their own “disability competence”.
-
Internal Training “Scholarships” – Some
companies, again partnering with CBOs, have made some or all of their internal
training courses free to job seekers with disabilities. This is truly a
“win/win” proposition. For little or no cost to the company, such arrangements
enable people with disabilities to gain more marketable skills – while they
give the opportunity for company employees to increase their disability
comfort/acumen. Also, more than one company has snagged a good employee this
way! (For a good model of this, see Project HIRED’s Corporate Training
Partnership Program:
www.projecthired.org)
-
Job Fairs – Although they were mentioned
earlier, one company used a Job Fair for job seekers with disabilities as a
great opportunity staff development. Instead of staffing their booth with 2 or
3 employees for the whole day, they changed shifts every hour – giving over a
dozen employees the opportunity to interact with job seekers and to see the
related exhibits on accommodations and access technologies.
-
National Disability Mentoring Day –
October 24 is National Disability Mentoring day. It is sponsored by the US
Department of Labor, Office on Disability Policy. It is an exceptionally good
opportunity to involve your employees in a positive interaction with students
with disabilities. (See:
www.cabln.org/mentoring_day.htm)
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Last Word
According to every study conducted in North American workplaces, people with
disabilities have proven themselves to excel in performance and reliability.
Companies that have taken the extra effort to dismantle their own internal
reticence and to proactively tap into this labor pool have reaped the rewards -
and continue to do so.
I hope that you will be able to use some of these ideas to proactively open
your workplace to applicants with disabilities - and in doing so, that you will
become an active partner in our RecruitABILITY
community.
© Rob McInnes,
Diversity World, 2001. Used by
permission.
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