[nabs-l] Job seekers- disclosing disability

[T. Joseph Carter]

As one who has been on both sides of the hiring process, let me pose 
a scenario:

You've just been handed 30 résumés and given the instruction:  Choose 
the three strongest candidates for interview.  You discount a few who 
are under-qualified.  A couple look over-qualified and are discounted 
because they are not likely to remain in the position for long.

Now the decision gets tough.  You have whittled down the applicants 
to the best for the job, but there are still about a dozen.  You pare 
it down further by investigating the reputation of their academic 
institutions and previous employers.  Six or seven remain.  You think 
you heard some hesitation when you spoke to references.  Now you have 
four.

You have four candidates.  You believe that the company could hire 
any one of them and be assured of a valuable employee.  Three of them 
are going to get calls for interviews.  There's just one thing--one 
of them has a disability, and talks about this in their cover letter.  
You don't know what effect their disability will have on anything, 
and thus far you have correctly and properly not even considered it.  
This person's qualifications speak for themselves that the person can 
do the job with some form of accommodations.

And yet, you just don't know for sure.  All that you do know for sure 
is that this person raised a question in your mind that the law 
forbids you to ask, and you're not really sure why.

I think we know who gets called for the interview, so I won't stretch 
this out any further.  It turns out one of the other three people 
also had a disability and disclosed at the time she was called for an 
interview.  We hired her because we were convinced that she could do 
the job and her disability was not a factor.

I tend not to disclose anything until the interview itself.  There 
are dangers in this, dangers I have learned of only recently.  These 
I do not know how to articulate in words yet, so I'll leave it at the 
above scenario for now.

Joseph


On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 12:49:59PM -0700, Marianne Haas wrote:
>I am blind myself and it depends.  I usually disclose before an in terview
>since otherwise interviewers are shocked and do not do a good job
>interviewing.  It is true that some people will find excuses not to
>interview me.  I would not want to work for someone who  will find every
>excuse n ot to hire me.
>
>Marianne