この記事は次の言語でも読めます：日本語
When you look for a job, what kinds of job hunting method do you use?
In Japan, one of most common method is going to a human resource agency, called “Hello Work”, which is also known as Japanese government’s Employment Service Center.
Nowadays more people have access to internet, which allows job seekers to search enormous open profession positions.
Regarding people with disabilities, there are also multiple ways to find a job.
I had gone through the job hunting process three times; right after graduation from college and two career changes after my first job.
Every time when I did job hunting, I tried a new way to seek for a job position.
Personally, I found the best way is approaching a company directly.
The worst way is going through an agency, especially those focus on matching jobs with people with disabilities.
Those agencies are private companies and provide career counseling service to people with disabilities for free.
Here is how doing job hunting through those agencies would be like:
(1) Casual Interview with Agencies
The clients, which are people with disability, explain what they studied at school, what kind of job skills and experiences they have, and what job they are looking for.
The clients will also go through details of their expectations, including industry they want to work in, positions they want to challenge, salary they want to receive, and other requirements.
I had talked to three agencies.All of them had almost one hour casual meeting with me.
Some agencies tested my PC skills during the interview, too.
(2) Job Matching – Early Stage
After the casual interview, the agencies will show some available positions in the agencies’ database to clients.
Popular companies usually receives many applications.
Filtering those applications is one of the agencies’s jobs.
Therefore, the agencies select limited number of clients from the applications and send those applications to the companies with the agencies’s recommendation letters based on the information clients provides during the interview in step (1).
(3) Interview with Companies
When a company is interested in the applicants, the company will offer interview opportunities.
Some agencies would go to the company with the clients on the interview day.
The agencies would introduce the client to the interviewer and leave the company.
Interview itself goes like a regular interview.
Some companies interview applicants only once, and some interview applicants twice or three times before the companies make a decision.
(4) Result
Once the companies decide to hire an applicant, they will inform the agencies.
Then agencies will inform the applicant.
The support of agencies looks great, but I found common demerits among three agencies that I used.
Those agencies focus on how to quickly match a job vacancy with a person with disabilities then collect the payment from the company.
Therefore, those agencies mainly brings job posts which people with disabilities can be accepted easily.
The agencies take abilities and skills of people with disabilities just for reference.
What people with disabilities want to do for the next job and their preferred conditions are on the back-burner.
I have received general education from elementary school and have a bachelor degree from a college in US.
In my first job, I worked with an UK based travel company and negotiated with staffs in London about contract and rate of hotel in English everyday.
The second job was one of the listed manufacturing companies in Japan.
I was doing market research in overseas marketing department.
For my third job, I wanted to work more aggressively.
My interests were planning and implementing projects by using my experience and skills.
At that time, I had four year full-time working experience and my salary was pretty good too.
To build a better career, I was looking for a next job with better offers than the current ones.
During my job searching, I found a agency, which supports employment just for people with disabilities.
I was very curious and wondered if the agency has more information and job posts for a better career for people with disabilities.
In fact, all agencies I visited were very kind, but there was a huge gap between my expectation and the service they could offer.
The agency stocks a number of job posts for applicants with disabilities.
However once those job posts are sorted by “wheelchair user (Moon Rider) acceptable”, the number will extremely decrease.
This is because many companies consider their working environments are not accessible for Moon Riders.
The fact is that not all Moon Riders need “perfect accessible facilities” at workplace.
Every individual Moon Rider requires a different level of accessibilities.
However, most of the companies think that they need a perfect one because they do not have any experience to work with a Moon Riders before.
As a result, available jobs for Moon Riders are limited to big companies whose buildings are in newly built and accessible buildings.
When the number of job is narrowed down for Moon Rider, positions are limited too.
Based on my experience, almost all positions for Moon Rider are general admin work mainly in back-office such as human resource or administrative department.
Moon Riders are diverse. Some people have severe disabilities, and some people have less severe disabilities.
Some people can work full-time, and some people can work only part-time.
Because of that situations, it would be easier for companies to arrange accommodations in back-office.
If an applicant in wheelchair wants to work for human resource or administrative department, that’s great.
However, for people who are not interested in those departments, they would feel unfair, and think “Why jobs are so limited because of my disability?”
The other surprising fact is that I found many companies set very few and low qualifications for job vacancies when they are looking for an employee with disability.
They usually only require the applicant to have an ID for person with disability and good telephone matter.
Some job descriptions do not even require any education background.
There are many people with disabilities receive general education and have good working experiences which differentiate the applicants.
I have heard that some companies say “No one with disabilities apply for a job if we do not lower the requirements.”
It might be true, but those requirements are too low and they are discriminative.
Obviously those companies want to hire required number of people with disabilities to meet the quota requirement (*1), instead of looking for abilities and skills of people with disabilities.
The job opportunity gap between applicants with and without disabilities is too big, and it is not fair.
Because of lower quality and equality of job positions for applicants with disabilities, most positions are contracted employment, and salary is not ideal for applicants with people with disabilities who have working experiences.
I was very shocked by the limited job opportunities and think how difficult it is for people with disabilities to build a good career path.
Reference:
- I wrote about the quota system for hiring people with disabilities in Japan before. https://moonrider7.com/2016/02/07/independent-living2/