[nfb-talk] Needing a Job

[T. Joseph Carter]

As a proud Federationist and recent Colorado Center graduate, I wouldn't
put NFB on my resume either.  Why?  I like job interviews.  If I get an
interview, I can sell my qualification for the job and demonstrate how
blindness isn't a factor.  If blindness is indicated by my resume, I may
(and probably won't) even get the opportunity.

Consider it from the other end--an end I have had to consider it from a
few times, actually.  I am handed 30 resumes and I'm told to toss all but
three.  Maybe I am not as quick to toss one of the ones that lists some
form of disability as the next person might be, but if I have narrowed it
down to four solid-looking candidates, I'm going to consider anything that
potentially suggests a candidate may not work out as reason to weed them
out to make three.

Let's look at a hypothetical situation here.  I need three resumes for
interviews tomorrow at 8am.  It's 9pm and I've managed to narrow the
choices down to just four.  I'm tired.  I see that one of the applicants
is blind.  I say to myself, no big deal.  But is this person's philosophy
like ours?  Are they going to function the way I do or the way the woman I
saw on the bus tonight did?  (Or didn't, in this case.)

I put these doubts out of my mind as best I can and continue trying to
find something that gives any of the candidates the razor-thin edge over
the others.  And suddenly I see something in the blind applicant's resume
that seemed fairly typical before.  But now, something makes me think it
is a bigger deal, and for that reason, I eliminate the blind applicant
from consideration and go to bed.  I probably don't give it a second
thought, because I don't even realize myself that my uncertainty about
their blindness skills was the cause of my decision.

The applicant doesn't get the call and is left to wonder:
 - Was I discriminated against?
 - Is everyone else really more qualified than I am?
 - Did I screw this up somehow?
 - Is all of this really worth the trouble?

The answers are yes, no, yes, and yes.  But how would the applicant know
that, given that we just wouldn't call them back.


Do yourself a favor.  Leave blindness off your resume entirely.  Trust me,
if they call you for an interview, they'll figure out that you're blind
pretty quickly.  And you should assume that your interviewers are going to
be shocked by your blindness and immediately unsure of what to do.  They
may or may not indicate this in some way.  Your job is to sell yourself to
them right then, blindness and all.

The alternative is waiting for the phone that never rings because someone,
somewhere, between your resume's arrival and the interview calls, one
person wasn't absolutely sure you could do the job.

That's how HR works.  Sometimes you miss the qualified people trying to
save time and money for the company.  Plenty of fish in the sea, from our
perspective.  From yours, it's probably a different story.

On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 10:39:17PM -0400, kaye zimpher wrote:
> Hi Benjamin, you have a nice resume. You did not put the NFB on the resume. 
> Shame on you. But seriously, you ought to try to find a job with the 
> government. An agency like the VA would be good for someone with your skills 
> although the clients would not be children. Good luck!
> Kaye