Get Ready for Work

Right now I’m at the second of 3 Get Ready for Work seminars we’re running this year (in UL, DIT & NUIG – huge thanks to all the staff in those colleges and all the members of GCI/ Graduate Careers Ireland) and I thought it might be good to explain a little more about the background and the point of these workshops.

The first Get Ready for Work seminar was run 2 years ago in NCI over 4 days and the point was to try and ensure that students with disabilities were as well prepared as possible for interview and the labour market. It had been and still is our experience that students with disabilities often encounter difficulties in getting work. Not always, but often. The work GET AHEAD does has a couple of strands to it and this is just one element. Right now Get Ready for Work is a 2 day session focussed on giving people extra preparation, and yes, extra advantage. It’s a way of counteracting some of the disadvantages (lack of work experience, bias or prejudice in interview, lack of specific information or support) that disabled people still incur (not the only way, but one. And no, I’m not accepting that disadvantage as a given, rather, I’m trying to challenge it in several different ways and this is one) In short, the better prepared a person is, the better an interview will go, the better an interview goes, the less impact any bias or prejudice can have. Preparation is key.

Extra careers support when you’re finished college can be expensive, although there are some opportunities available to access free support – this is another! So what we do is a day of careers skills training – career planning, career management, career development offered by members of the GCI (Graduate Careers Ireland) And on day 2 I talk about all the rights disabled people have in law, in terms of supports, grants, entitlements. I also talk about the issue of disclosure. In the afternoon, there’s a chance to talk to a careers advisor about your CV and to have a mock interview, with an employer and get feedback on your performance on that interview. It’s rare that people spend 2 whole days on their career development, even though work, careers, are a huge part of our lives. I continuously evaluate this program and every bit of feedback counts. Whether it will always be a program that people want or need is debatable but for now, it will continue to be a part of our work.

 

Think2Act – Conference for people recently made redundant or considering a career change

NCI are running another great event called Think2Act. This is an excellent (and free) opportunity. The main theme of the day is change: changing the recession mindset across all ages. More information can be found on their website.

 

advice for school leavers

Found this article in the Sunday Business Post. Nice to see someone being optimistic. More than anything though – the point is well made: preparation is key – have a good think about what you want to do and consider all the factors as best you can. This applies to all of us really especially now.

 

stories?

A while ago I posted about whether people were willing to tell stories. A friend and colleague offered this contribution:

From Caroline Carswell @ irishdeafkids.ie

“Sorting post in the mailroom of a large UK publishing house wasn’t what I went to university for. Admittedly the job was in the right field – publishing – the subject of my post-graduate diploma. The difficulty lay in convincing my new colleagues to see my potential, and not to focus on my hearing issues. From my perspective, this temporary job was a stepping stone to a graduate job and it was my responsibility to communicate this to the editors collecting their post.

Chatting about my recent past as a post-graduate student in publishing was a good way to shatter any preconceptions the staff had about my abilities. The trick was to do this conversationally. So, that’s how it was done. Any time anyone asked how I was, or how my weekend went, my former classmates might be mentioned in the context of socialising or other activities.

Slowly, the editors began to piece together the snippets of knowledge they were fed. A senior commissioning editor stopped by one day, to enquire about my publishing course and the subject of my primary degree. A part-time editorial assistant was needed for a social-history journal, and she invited me to submit a CV for consideration. That was the start of the door creaking open.

Even getting the mailroom job was a challenge. Publishing is famously difficult to break into, and as a new arrival in the UK, I had less contacts than my classmates. Frosty disinterest from staff at local recruitment agencies was also seriously off-putting. By confronting that issue however, the agency with the mailroom job was found, and four months later, a permanent job was in the bag.

After working part-time as a teenager, and doing admin work in the students’ union at college, I never questioned my ability to get a graduate job. Other people did try to “pigeon-hole” me at that stage, but thanks to work experience, my ability to challenge their perceptions had developed.”

( Caroline has since worked in a corporate marketing team in the software industry, and now runs the Irish Deaf Kids venture, http://www.irishdeafkids.ie/ )