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.
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