So here’s my $.02 and I’ve gotten a lot of good pointers from this list including landing my last job with Juniper so hopefully you get some value here as well. I have found that the prejudices thing can be worked around especially if you attack the problem geographically. Where the original poster is in Mass is not a bad part of the world. You might also try the San Francisco bay area and the New York / New Jersey area. I have had very good successes in these areas and find the people to be quite progressive thinking in terms of blindness and open minded. The bay area was probably the most open of these places. Professionally at least, I found northern Californians very flexible and open minded. Same with New Jersey / New York. Others I have spoken with have found geography to be a concern as well so focus in areas where you’ll be well received. I would also make sure you’re the smartest person in the room on the topic if you can. Be methodical and detailed in your interview answers. Go on a lot of interviews if you can line them up. Honestly, I look at the first 1 - 2 months of my job search as warm up or practice. You have to refine your presentation and get used to answering the interviewers. You’ll get a good feel as you get more interviews under your belt and by the time you get the offers showing up you’ll feel like an old hat at the process. Learn as much as you can and maybe specialize on less common areas. I specialized in backbone routing and switching and have extensive skills with BGP and traffic engineering. That’s a much more specialized subset of skills. Not something you get in school as much under fire at the job site. I also have a long history in the service provider space where I accumulated these skills. Do the same thing if possible. References, get solid references. Get references that don’t mind answering questions about your blindness if they come up but who will also answer the questions with out if it’s not mentioned. You want your reference to handle you just like anyone else, sell you well and if they can work in the blindness but don’t if it doesn’t fit. I pick people with long work histories with me and who clearly have not found blindness to be an issue, it’s worked well. Big point, sell yourself and be polished. As an engineer you might not need to wear a perfectly pressed Brioni suit :) but dress nicely. Be clean, smell good, brushed, etc. You’d be surprised the edge that gives you over the sited and blind alike. I can’t tell you how many admins I’ve had show up for an interview looking like the unibomber and smelling like they slept under a bridge. Doesn’t matter your work history I expect you to be put together in front of the customer so show up that way, blind or otherwise. Hope that helps, just ask away on list here. We’ve all had to deal with this issue and can help you work through it. Good luck. On Nov 1, 2013, at 6:06 PM, John G. Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> wrote:
Well, there are two seperate issues here. One involves your technical qualifications and the other is overcoming prejudices against your blindness. I was just saying that I think you are doing the right thing by being open about your blindness. There are different opinions about that, you know. I'm with you though. I take it a step further and include stuff about my hobbies to show that even though I'm blind, I'm not disabled.
I agree that you don't want a two page resume at this point in your career. That's reserved for big shots. President Obama can have a 2 page resume. You can't. But including pictures of your home improvement projects or an article written about you in a newspaper doesn't count. They don't have to read that stuff. You hope it makes an impression but you don't want to waste their time.
Regarding your technical qualifications, not having a degree in an technical field is a drawback. Employers often get so many resumes that they look for any reason at all to eliminate as many as they can. And not having a degree in an IT field is one easy way. I think you will do a lot better once you get the networking degree. If it were me doing the hiring, a BS in English and an associate degree in networking would be fine. I wouldn't give that a second thought. You might even be able to turn the English degree to your favor by playing up your communications skills. Communications skills can be a big problem for many IT professionals.
I don't know if you can do this but The day before the interview, I used to email or call and tell the employer that I have some stuff I'd like them to look at. I'd send them links to systems I'd configured or programmed. I'd even let potential employers log into my linux machine at home.
Again, I don't think you can hit them with too much stuff before the interview. I think you can easily make a pest out of yourself after the interview but not before. I would not call the employer after the interview. You can send a thank you note but I've never heard anyone even consider that when deciding on a new hire. But I'd hit them with everything I had before the interview. You want to go into the interview with them already thinking you are one of those hyper-competent blind people they are always hearing about on TV.
The problem is that it is difficult for even sighted people to get jobs these days. The employer may be interviewing fifteen or twenty people for that job. How are you going to make yourself stand out above all those others? If you are blind, not only do you have to overcome any minor flaws in your resume, you have to overcome being blind. There is no magic formula that is going to make that easy. You just have to do your best and hope to stumble upon the one person willing to give you a chance. There is really nothing to do but keep trying.
-----Original Message-----
_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins