If you thought job hunting was hard, try being a deaf person! (pt 1)

Editor's note: I apologize! I had planned on finishing the post yesterday but I was asked at last minute to open the center for a meeting and I just forgot. Also...since the post itself is so long, I had to break it into two parts. Sorry!

Other than communication issues (lipreading and/or speech comprehension), I'd like to share with you how easy it is for a smart, well-educated, and deaf man like me to find jobs.

I graduated from an university with Bachelor's degree in communications. The program I majored in is considered to be more advanced than most programs in other universities - you have to do a thesis and pass it in order to graduate. That doesn't happen until you get to Master's.

With a newly minted degree in hand, I went to job fairs for 2 years. Never missed one. Never got a call or a nibble from anyone at the job fairs. Just postcards/letters with the usual "We have your resume on file and we will contact you" bullshit. That practice has now been discontinued with so disgruntled applicants suing companies for whatever reasons. In fact, I haven't seen anything like this in almost 7 years now.

At one of the job fairs, I handed my resume to a woman at a booth for a local newspaper. She looked over it and seemed okay with it until she spoke to me. When she realized that I am deaf, she said "You do know that we use telephones at work? How could you handle that?" I explained to her that people could call a TDD (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf) operator and then they could talk to me as if the operator isn't there. She was shocked by that and I walked away with disgust and contempt clearly written on my face for her. I stopped going to job fairs after that.

About 3 years after graduation, someone at an advocacy company leaked to me about a job opening at a local county government center. I ran over to there and my typing skills impressed the woman who was doing the interviews. She was reluctant to hire me because I was so overqualified. I told her that I was willing to start on the bottom and if I have the skills to move up, surely I would be moved up. That did it for her - she hired me on the spot and I started working the following week.

The day after I started, the manager caught me in a hall that wasn't close to where I was and pulled me aside. She said, "What are you doing here?" and I *knew* exactly what she meant by that...she wasn't asking me why I was out there. I explained about doing the job fairs for 2 years without any result and how I had just gotten married (got married in 2000, almost one month before I started working), and I was desperate for anything. She pondered that for a second and said, "Thank you for your honesty." One month later, she put me at a desk that was in charge of records and I never left that desk for 6 years despite all kinds of discrimination I endured.

I can hear you go, "What kind of discrimination did you face?" Truth be told, the manager, who put me in that desk, never discriminated against me and refused to allow any sort of that to happen. She had 100% faith in my ability to do the job despite having to work with a supervisor who was so universally disliked by all that nobody wanted to work with her...let alone be willingly promoted to that desk.

Naturally, the supervisor got very angry with me during the first week at that desk. The manager was genuinely surprised by how calmly I took the supervisor's rants in stride. I didn't mind the supervisor so much. What got worse was when the manager abruptly retired (she refused to tell me why but it became obvious after...) and the HJIC (Head Jerk In Charge) put in a young woman who used the "rah-rah" style of management. That's exactly when everything went to hell.

The supervisor got even worse with me after the 1st manager retired...co-workers have told me they heard her scream at me, even when I was just a desk away. She would scream my name as I walked away to get something (per her request or job request). She hated how I would get up and go, even when I didn't stop to talk with others. Once she came down hard on me for a simple error of omission and that burned me. Guess what? She made a similar mistake the same day and I told her so. She promptly reported me to the Cheerleader. (Eye roll)

When my wife and I were expecting our first baby, the Cheerleader came to me and encouraged me to change from the old PTO (Personal Time Off) system to the new one "because it's easier for you to build up your vac time versus splitting up the sick time and the vac time...and you'd have to re-accrue the vac time all over again if you used them up." Sounded like a good idea, so I signed the paper.

After my daughter was born, I discovered that I lost all the sick time and the new PTO system caps the hours at 360 (the old system had no cap on sick time and the new one doesn't allow sick time). I spoke with the Cheerleader about that and she said I agreed to use up all the hours before the maternity leave time kicks in. That wasn't in the agreement I signed. Her response? "Oh, that was covered in the policy book." Bleep. You're probably thinking, "What about the maternity leave that was supposed to be guaranteed by law?" The paper I signed stated that I agreed to that. I hated her after that and she quit after being on the job for 6 months.

(Part two to be continued tomorrow)

Lightning rod for controversy

Last week, I posted about how outdated some concepts are in terms of creating a resume. While writing up that post, I had an "Eureka!" moment and decided to create another post about job hunting.

On February 4th, ABC News did a segment that flew under the radar for most of the hearing viewers unassociated with the deaf/hard of hearing community. Why? Two reasons: ABC News has been doing the "What would you do?" segments for a while and the shock value has worn off...and the other? That segment really didn't apply to them.

Please click on this link for ABC New's show, explaining in text what you are about to see.

Then click on the link for behind the scenes on YouTube, showing you how that particular segment is set up before the taping and the airing.

Link for the lightning rod on the segment itself, watch all the way to about 5 minute mark. Better captioning of the same show can be found here

I will post next week about my experiences in job hunts. I noticed that not a single person offered the two young women any job. I also asked at the end of last week's post if anyone would hire me...

10 Resume Rules: Fact or Fiction?

Not long ago, I went to see a Department of Rehabilation Services (DORS) counselor about going back to school and get my Master's, possibly even PhD. She said, "Why?" DORS/VR (Vocational Rehabilitation in most states) help deaf people like me with the schools financially. I graduated several years ago with a Bachelor's degree.

I explained that the economy has tanked and it is the "seller's market" in terms of employment (meaning there are more people looking for jobs than there are empty offices, hence low demand for hiring). I felt that by getting my Master's, I'd look more attractive to potential employers. She asked me to bring my resume in. I asked, "Why?"

She was caught off-guard by that and after regaining her composure, she explained that she wanted to see what kind of job history I have and how attractive I am to employers. I pulled out my flashdrive and told her to print out my resume, again catching her off-guard.

After printing out my resume, she immediately broke 6 of the 10 resume rules.

1. Your resume should not have to fit into one page


2. Always use a cover letter


3. Your resume doesn't need an objective


4. Gaps in your employment history will not cost you


5. Any embellishment on your resume, even a tiny one, is not okay


6. Organize your resume in reverse chronological order


7. Put educational background at the bottom


8. Your resume does not need references


9. Use buzzwords


10. You do not need to print your resume out on fancy paper

(This was taken from Jeanine Skowronski's article on Yahoo! Finance - go to the link for full explanation)

What rules were broken? The counselor thought I had to fit three pages of my work history into one page, she felt I should put in an objective, she wanted me to throw out gaps of work history, she wanted to change one of my job titles to make it sound "better", she told me I need to put in references (how with 3 pages crammed into one?), and she suggested that I put the resume on fancy paper.

I tried to tell her that the one page resume was a thing of the past and she refused to believe me. Fine. I told her that I cannot change the job title - "What if a prospective employer calls and finds out I embellished a little?" and she was sure that wouldn't be a problem.

I decided that was enough of that and I tried again to discuss the school plan with her, but she kept hemming and hawing on getting involved. I tried to nail her down, but she wouldn't give me a definite answer. That told me she wasn't enthusiastic about helping me financially.

So, here I am...four page-long (just included the director of a center) resume, resume on Monster.com & CareerBuilder.com (always getting calls from companies that need warm bodies to telemarket - no thanks!), working part-time as a tutor, working without pay as a director for a center, getting ready to start playing softball as player/manager, and doing my parental duties. Anyone want to hire a deaf person? :)

Speaking of which...I'll post next week about something that was on TV last February which became a lightning rod for controversy.

Q & A #18

This is the most interesting question I've ever gotten. So far. Editor's note: I meant to publish this on Monday the 28th. C'est la vie!

Q: What is your favorite cartoon character?

A: Right now? SpongeBob SquarePants. Never can get enough of Patrick's antics. Always amuses me to no end that SpongeBob turns to Patrick for help/answers.

I used to follow Avatar: The Last Airbender until it concluded. Surprisingly deep story arcs in there. Yes, I was disappointed in the live action movie...so many things were thrown out and the movie felt rushed or the dialogue seemed out of place.

Iroh is played by a thin actor? Please, someone get Sammo Hung or a fat actor trained in martial arts. Cliff Curtis as the Fire Lord? He didn't look imposing at all. The actor playing General Zhao didn't look like he had watched the series at all. Not menancing at all or even...clever.

When I was a kid, I loved to wake up and catch my Saturday cartoons. Never got enough of Tom & Jerry or The Looney Tunes. Even Popeye was entertaining. As I went through the 80's, I'd run home to watch Thundercats or Voltron (I got confused when it was suddenly "different" and lost interest, not knowing it was in a different universe).

When I went away to college, I lived for Reboot and Batman. Stopped watching Batman when he sported a triangular torso frame.

Update on my life's new direction

Editor's note: Whoops! Forgot to set this to publish this at midnight. I was wondering why I wasn't getting my comments. ;)

Boy, talk about being caught off-guard...I got to a major event a bit early to help set up a booth so we could showcase the community center and how it can help the deaf community. The problem was I had not thought of trying out the display stand prior to that event, let alone know how to put one up.

The woman who brought it was stumped as well. She had not put one up before and had no experience. She shoved the manual into my hand so I knew I had to decipher it and have the display up in minutes. The manual did not use words, just pictures. No problem...except the layout of the pictures was confusing. LOL

I had to re-read the manual before I figured out the order of the layout and then I got it fully assembled in 5 seconds. What I didn't count on was the sheer size of the display. It was HUGE! It took up 90% of the booth table (you know, the standard plastic buffet-style table which is about 5 feet long). The display stand was 4.5' by 4.5' and there was no way we could sit behind the table - we would be completely obscured by the display. That meant we had to stand in front of the booth the whole time.

Grr.

Why? Because there were 6 hours of booth time scheduled and only three people volunteered for 3 shifts (1 shift = 1 hour) total. Others didn't bother to reply or had excuses. That meant I was responsible for minimum of 3 hours and that turned into 5 hours total because of the sheer number of people who wanted to know more about the center.

I was able to convince a whole bunch of people to sign up for the announcements of open-captioned theater movies. Let me explain about the OC movies...the movies are shown in a normal way with one exception - the words are either shown ON the screen (one theater does this) or on the special smoked glass on flexible necks to reflect the words (3 other theaters do this).

The special smoked glass style is called Rear Window Captioning and how the system uses those refractors (as they're called). There is a LED display case near the projector window that shows the words backwards and is shown in correct order on the refractors. The system looks like this...

(The words say "Welcome to Rear Window. Please adjust your reflectors.")

Yesterday, the board president sent an e-mail to the board and the center's management team congratulating those who were at the booth. He even said people had nothing but praise for me. They liked how visible I was at the booth and how willing I was to talk with everyone instead of handing them off to someone else at the booth. Hey, that's my job - I have to be there for everyone. :)

Q & A #17

Gillian from A Daft Scots Lass asked me this question in my Q & A #16 post - "Were you born deaf?"

No, I was not born deaf. I was a normal healthy boy with a massive shock of blonde hair on the head.

When I was 13 months old, I contracted a case of spinal meningitis and that put me in a coma for about two weeks. During that time, the high fevers destroyed some of the hair in the inner ears which made me deaf.

When I finally woke up, my mother was the first to notice that I wasn't responding to audio stimuli and the tests confirmed her suspicion. My deafness was measured at around 96 decibels. To give you an idea how loud something has to be for me to hear it, a lawnmower is around 110 decibels.

Funny thing is, I do not hear the lawnmowers...even when I operate one. My theory is my body picks up the vibrations first, negating the need for my ears to "ring" with the noises. The only effective way for my ears to pick anything up is if you do a high pitch scream into my ear or create a loud noise close to my ear - thus eliminating my body as the middleman.

Strange, huh? What's even stranger is how my ears work differently. My right ear picks up "sharp" noises like knocking or a barking dog while my left ear picks up "soft" noises like a ringing phone or a meowing cat. That's with the hearing aids...and no, I don't use the hearing aids anymore.

Why? For a long while, I kept getting confusing mix of sounds on my hearing aids...remember how my ears work independently in the last paragraph? That wasn't discovered until I was in my mid-20's. I had given up on the hearing aids when I was 12. I tried the hearing aids again with this new discovery and a better understanding of how my ears work...and that was still a failure, so I quit for good.

I think it has something to do with the atrophy factor in the part of my brain that processes sound. Just like the legs of a person who became paralyzed - they atrophy after a long period of no activity. Because of that, I am no longer a viable candidate for cochlear implants - I wouldn't be able to process sounds effectively at all. I do not want to be a candidate anyway - I love sports too much and I wouldn't be allowed to play softball or racquetball or football or anything with physical contact.

A new significant change in my life

Late last month, I was appointed as the director of a deaf community center. What that means is my visits to your blogs and my responses to your comments will be erratic at times. For that, I apologize. When I have the center up and running smoothly, I will be around more often.

I still have a boatload of posts waiting for me to: fill out, answer questions, polish, tweak, and/or schedule to publish. My last count was 16 new posts. Plenty of reading material for you. ;)