Page 30 - ABILITY Magazine - Best Practices Employment

2. The employer will have a start and an ending date during which they will accept referrals.
3. The employer will interview a number of candidates for the job and select from that pool.
4. The employer will generally not see candidates after the interviewing window has closed.
5. After the order is closed, the job will be removed from the bank.
Unfortunately, this system does not serve candidates who have serious or multiple employment barriers, such as disabilities. These candidates often find themselves not only competing with other candidates for the job, but also competing for referrals.
If the interview process at this stage were simply a mea- surement of skills and abilities, then persons with dis- abilities would do as well as candidates who do not have disabilities. But experience shows that this is not the case. Hiring is a process of first impressions, and for many employers the first impression of someone with a disability is one filled with questions and concerns.
While these can be addressed and resolved over time, the problem with a competitive formal interview process is that there isn’t much time. Decisions are made on the fly, and deciding not to hire a candidate is often made within minutes of the first meeting. The first wave of candidates finds themselves in a screening process, not a selection process. Those who are hired are usually chosen during a second or third interview. Persons with disabilities are too often screened out in the first phase.
The good news is that persons with disabilities have a resource that they may not have tapped: An alternative hiring system that is being used every day by successful applicants.
THE MODEL
If you’re a person with a disability, the best way to look for work is to understand how employers recruit, as well as how they make hiring decisions.
Long before employment agencies or websites know about an opening, an employer knows about it.
1. The easy way to fill the position is for the supervisor or manager to hire someone that he or she already knows.
2. The second approach is to ask other employees if they know someone whom they could refer or recom- mend. For many companies, this is the number one way to recruit new hires.
3. The third angle is to review persons who have already been interviewed by human resources or personnel.
Consider that at this point, having moved through the first three ways that employers go about filling a position, a lot
When I first entered the field of training and placement, I believed that the most-qualified applicant would be hired. I had been taught that the optimum way to help persons with disabilities seek employment was to match their qualifications with the large data base of available job openings. On paper it made sense, in reality it didn’t work.
The bigger problem is that the vast majority of persons with disabilities who are looking for work, depend almost exclusively on this imperfect system. Fortunate- ly, there are alternative job-search methods that can be used by persons with disabilities, as well as by the train- ing and placement professionals who work with them.
A TYPICAL DAY AT THE OLD JOB BANK
Whether it is an employment agency that opens its doors in the morning, an internet service that posts to the World Wide Web, help wanted ads in the newspaper, or three-by-five index cards posted in a school’s place- ment office, the principle is the same: A company seek- ing to hire someone agrees to allow a “job bank” to refer candidates. This is the most common way that peo- ple look for jobs.
When an opening appears, here is what we generally know:
1. The applicant must meet a minimum set of criteria and qualifications to be referred.