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AFFILIATION GROUPS
ARTICLES
Professionals with Disabilities: Playing
Hard to Get
The following groups are
specifically intended for Members with disabilities and are
targeted at educational, career or employment concerns.
AFFILIATION
GROUPS
Association for Persons with Disabilities in Agriculture
- facilitates
employment and advancement opportunities for persons with
disabilities within the US Department of Agriculture.
Canadian
Association of Professionals with Disabilities -
a focal point for members to network and develop their
careers.
Chemists with Disabilities - a committee of the
American Chemical Society.
Deaf Professional Network - an
online publication to empower deaf professionals with the
tools to advance their careers.
Disabled Lawyering Alliance
- an on-line network of lawyers
and law students with disabilities.
EXCEL! Networking Group
- a professional and networking group run by people with
disabilities in the Washington, D.C. area.
International Guild of Disabled Artists and Performers -
A collective of artists and performers who identify as being
disabled or having a disability.
National Alliance of Blind Students
-
Since 1974, NABS has been
bringing together visually impaired students and young
professionals from across the country.
National Disabled Students Union
-
Works to ensure that all disabled students have the
opportunity to be full
participants in their communities and full members of
American society.
The National Youth Leadership Network (NYLN) is
dedicated to advancing the next generation of disability
leaders.
The Exceptional Nurse - an online site for nurses and
nursing students with disabilities.
The Foundation for Science and Disability - to promote
the integration of scientists with disabilities into all
activities of the scientific community.
The National Education Association of Disabled Students
(Canada) -encourage the self-empowerment of post-secondary
students with disabilities.
Performing Arts Division of the National Federation of
the Blind - blind and visually impaired people who have a
common and professional interest in the entertainment field.
(Return to Top)
Professionals with Disabilities: Playing hard to
get?
By Rob McInnes
There are a lot of unemployed
people with disabilities who would like to be working (about 9.6
million according to my best accounting of the numbers). The
biggest problem for employers who want to hire people with
disabilities is FINDING them. Here are a few of my thoughts on
this issue as it pertains to people with disabilities who are
pursuing “professional” careers.
Most large companies try to
increase the participation rate of groups that are
underrepresented in their workforces – women, racial and ethnic
minorities, people with disabilities, etc. These efforts are often
referred to as “diversity recruiting”. Over and over, I hear
employers say that they just can’t find people with disabilities
for their professional jobs.
About a year ago my colleague
Shayn Anderson and I attended a meeting on College and Diversity
Recruiting. This one-day event was attended by about 100
recruiters from major corporations. The focus of the day was on
how to recruit more effectively from diversity Groups
–particularly from college campuses. That day was ripe with
learning opportunities for us. One of the things we learned was
that when corporate recruiters seek to hire from a particular
“target group”, they have two main strategies. 1) They focus their
efforts on professional groups (i.e. The National Society of Black
Engineers) 2) They focus their efforts on student associations on
local campuses (i.e. California’s Latino Medical Student
Association). We surmised that as much as 75% of their diversity
recruiting efforts are concentrated in these two areas.
For those of us who are
interested in increasing employment for people with disabilities,
this presents two main problems: 1) there are almost no
professional groups of people with disabilities (I know of only
three) and, 2) there are relatively few student organizations of
students with disabilities. This means that, by default, people
with disabilities are likely going to be missed by about 75% of
corporate America’s diversity recruiting efforts.
There are two possible
responses to this: 1) try to increase the opportunity for
diversity recruiters to encounter job seekers with disabilities in
the other 25% of their work time or, 2) organize professional and
student organizations of people with disabilities that can become
part of the normal course of diversity recruiting efforts.
While these are not mutually
exclusive paths to follow, I would personally like to see a lot
more effort going into the development of student and professional
organizations for people with disabilities.
In addition to providing a
more ready source of candidates for diversity recruiters, such
groups would be such an added benefit to each and every person
with a disability as they follow their professional career paths.
Professionals groups would give members the camaraderie of others
who struggle with similar discrimination and accommodation issues,
a source of advice on career development, job search and
interviewing strategies, a network for job opportunities, and the
opportunity to guide and mentor others in their career field.
Student groups would provide similar benefits to their members as
well as opportunities to be mentored by members of the
Professional groups.
Why is it that virtually every
other group in our society that has suffered workforce inequality
has organized professional and student affiliations – and people
with disabilities have not? Here is a statement drawn from the
Association for Women in Science: “As part of its efforts to
promote the entrance and advancement of women in science, AWIS has
a long-standing commitment to fostering the careers of women
science professionals. Events at the 76
local chapters
across the country facilitate networking between women scientists
at all levels and in all career paths. AWIS chapters also
encourage the participation of girls and women in science by
sponsoring educational activities in schools and communities.” It
is so exhilarating to imagine a well-resourced disability-focused
organization with this kind of mission! (To learn more about how
such professional organizations work, I encourage you to look
through the Workforce Diversity section of Diversity World’s
website and browse the Affiliation listings for each diversity
group.)
For national professional
organizations of people with disabilities in the United States, my
research has turned up only the Blind Lawyering Association, the
Association of Blind Lawyers, the Exceptional Nurse, and the
Foundation for Science and Disability. In Canada, there
is the
Canadian Association of
Physicians with Disabilities. In Great Britain, there
is the Association of Disabled
Professionals. On a more local level, the EXCEL! Networking
Group is a
professional networking group run by and for people with
disabilities in the Washington, D.C. area and a group in
California’s Silicon Valley, the Silicon Valley Partnership, that
has recently committed to supporting the development a
professional organization of people with disabilities in that
area.
For national student
organizations in the US, I have found the National Disabled
Students Union (which does have connections to student
organizations on some individual campuses) and the National
Alliance of Blind Students. In Canada, there is the National
Educational Association of Disabled Students.
Collectively, these
organizations are a hopeful sign that professionals with
disabilities, like their counterparts from other diversity groups,
will find more ways to organize, to support each other in their
chosen fields and to encourage and support students who aspire to
similar careers. They are, however, very few in number and
generally poorly-resourced. This is a major challenge to those who
develop policy and fund programs in the arena of disability and
employment. In forming affiliation groups, where are the policies
and programs that professionals and students with disabilities can
tap into?
Until this need for
professional and student networks is adequately addressed,
employers here in North America will likely continue to have great
difficulty in targeting people with disabilities for professional
jobs within their workforces.
©
Rob McInnes, Diversity World, 2003
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