Searching for employment often feels like one of life’s most difficult challenges. The job seeker has to find a suitable position, go through the application process, hope to advance to the interview stage, and then find a way to stand out in what may be a crowd of applicants vying for the same job. 
Employers looking for the right hire face equally daunting challenges. Matching a position to someone with the right skills, experience, and attitude is no easy task, but successful employers develop methods to help them find the right talent. When reaching out to applicants with some type of disability, though, they may need to alter their process.
Kelly Wallace, an employment consultant who has a contract with the state of Oregon’s vocational rehabilitation program, has for more than a decade helped people with disabilities find and keep employment. Her experience working primarily with people with autism, cognitive disabilities, and various mental health issues has given her insights she can pass along to human resources professionals about what works in the hiring process and after an employee is on the job.
A key point to keep in mind when hiring people with disabilities is to be realistic, Wallace says. As economic challenges have pushed many employers to expect more work from fewer employees, some employers may operate under the misconception that an employee with a disability can accomplish a variety of tasks included in the same job description. But that’s not always possible for someone with a disability, she says.
Wallace says she’s careful to let potential employers know ahead of time about a job candidate’s barriers. “That’s one challenge—that someone may hire an individual and it’s just not realistic, or it wasn’t a good match,” she says. She tries to avoid that problem through screening and looking for reliable, dependable applicants who will be a good match for an employer. “I’m really vetting my clients and the companies I work for,” she says.
One of the major hurdles Wallace sees her clients face is the online application process, which often is a problem for someone with a cognitive disability. The personality tests many employers use for screening present another problem because the tests may have 100 or more questions worded in ways her clients find difficult to understand. In those cases, she steps in to help get them through the questions.
Wallace says she’s fortunate to have a relationship with several companies that allow her to sit in on job interviews so she can interpret questions for her clients. “I usually try to work with companies that aren’t going to throw up barriers,” Wallace says.
She also appreciates employers accustomed to having employees with job coaches—people who go on site with individuals once they get a job and provide services such as helping with first-day paperwork, helping a new employee get to know coworkers, and developing task lists to help the employee be productive. The job coach can check in periodically to make sure things are going smoothly and also be a point of contact when problems arise.
Even with a careful hiring process, complications sometimes come up, and Wallace’s strategy for handling difficulties involves checking in with the client and employer regularly. If that doesn’t solve the problem, she’ll schedule a team meeting with the manager, worker, and maybe the worker’s parent to come up with an action plan.
A “job carve” is another strategy Wallace often finds helpful. That entails carving out part of a job a worker can’t do. For example, a grocery store job might entail checking restrooms, bringing in shopping carts, bagging, and stocking shelves. But a worker might not be able to do stocking because of a weight limit. In that case, she will work with the employer to see if that task can be moved to someone else. “We get creative,” she says.
In spite of everyone’s best efforts, sometimes jobs don’t work out. Wallace says early in her career she helped two individuals get food-service jobs at a college. They learned their jobs during a slow time of year when just a few hundred students were on campus between terms for sports practice.
The workers started out fine, but when the regular term resumed and suddenly there was an onslaught of students, the workers weren’t able to handle the pace of the job. “That unfortunately didn’t work out,” Wallace says, but she looked at it not as a failure but as a learning opportunity. She says the experience taught her to be on the lookout for circumstances that might crop up.
Even though situations don’t always work out, Wallace says employers need to be open to the advantages of hiring people with disabilities. “One obvious benefit is disability is natural,” she says. When people with disabilities are integrated into the workplace, it shows employers are willing to include everyone.
Wallace says she’s worked with many hard-working employees who have worked for the same employer for many years. And it’s not just their long service that benefits their employers. She says they’re often the ones who show up when other employees don’t.
As an employer who hires people with barriers to employment, including cognitive disabilities and autism, I appreciate this article and hope it inspires other employers to give people with barriers to employment an opportunity! It is true that people with disabilities tend to be the employees that show up when others do not. They love the opportunity to work and have a wonderful work ethic. They are over-comers…they have had to face and overcome tremendous challenges and this trait shows in their attitude towards their job. Some other benefits to the employer include:
1. They do not job hop, they stick around
2. They become cheerleaders for your organization
3. The community appreciates the business for being inclusive – and will do business with you because of your hiring practices
4. They do not need constant supervision…once they understand their duties and responsibilities, they can be counted on to accomplish them, and to do them the right way
5. They inspire the rest of the team and bring them together
Thank you for a great article!