[nabs-l] Job seekers- disclosing disability

Haben Girma habnkid at aol.com
Sun Apr 19 02:38:39 UTC 2009


Joseph, you end with such a dramatic tone! Thanks for sharing that 
scenario. Disclosing one's disability in the early stages of the hiring 
process raises a question, as you said, and because of the ADA employers 
will not always feel safe to honestly ask the questions on their mind. 
Someone said earlier that the unasked questions are the most harmful. On 
top of that, it can be tricky to anticipate the questions, to read the 
hiring manager's mind to figure out what questions might be floating 
around in their. Yes, you set the tone quite nicely. /smile/

Haben

T. Joseph Carter wrote:
> 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
>
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