In this issue of AccessWorld we are focusing on job skills and employment. Which makes this an excellent time to take a look at a recently published eBook from Bonnie Mosen titled "It's Off to Work We Go." The eBook is available for $29.95 from Mosen Consulting, where the book's table of contents can be viewed. The eBook is published in ePub format, so it's easily accessed via most voice-enabled reading devices. I opened and read the book on my iPhone using Voice Dream reader. At approximately 40,000 words, I was able to complete the book in just a few hours, bookmarking various sections for later referral.

Defining the Problem

Mosen begins her discussion of unemployment among the blindness community by citing the generally-accepted statistic of seventy percent under and/or unemployment among the blind, give or take a few percent. She notes, however, that this number has remained steady for nearly 30 years, and this despite the tremendous number of breakthroughs in access technology which have enabled many blind people to perform more of the tasks required to obtain and retain employment.

Why is this the case? For Mosen, a part of the answer lies in the numbers themselves, which she thinks are overstated. Here are a few of her reasons:

  • This number includes blind individuals who are 60 or older who are either retired or have decided to take early retirement.
  • This number does not count those who are self-employed or who are paid "off the books."
  • Some of the unemployed blind have cognitive or other disabilities which make job placement more difficult.
  • The number includes people who are over 16 and looking for a job, so it includes high school and college students who are not ready for employment.
  • It includes people who have become newly blind and who are taking time off for training.
  • Some individuals are not actively seeking work because of frustration or fear they might lose benefits.

The problem with this argument, as I see it, is that many of these reasons are the same for many sighted people listed among the under- or unemployed, and their unemployment rates tend to range between 4 and 10 percent, depending on the business cycle and the economy as a whole.

Mosen is on stronger ground in the second part of this section, where she discusses common employer misconceptions that prevent them from hiring blind workers. She sites misplaced concerns of possible issues of safety, concerns over productivity, and the potential need to make costly accessibility improvements. Mosen concludes with what I believe is the most formidable barrier to be overcome, the potential employer's lack of knowledge about what it means to be blind. I can attest to this problem personally. Once, several years ago, I spoke with a manager of a large discount broker regarding the accessibility of their services. Together we were able to work through most of the issues, and a few months later he told me, "Until we spoke, I never even knew a blind person could use a computer." He went on to tell me that because of our interactions, when an application for a company rep came across his desk from a blind individual, he was more open to the applicant's potential, and wound up hiring him. True, I felt very good about this, but my point here is that even in a high-tech environment such as online brokerage services, there is still a great deal of outreach and education that needs to be done.

So that's the bad news. The hopeful news is that today there are more resources and adaptive equipment available than ever before to assist the blind in finding and keeping employment.

"Working" the System

Mosen's educational background includes a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling, and before moving to New Zealand she spent several years as a rehab counselor with the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. Thus Mosen is in an excellent position to offer the reader an inside look at the process—from initial intake to "26," which she states is the code number for a client who has been placed in a job for 90 days and whose case can now be successfully closed.

Mosen outlines what you can expect from your vocational rehabilitation counselor, and what your responsibilities are. Unfortunately, in these days of slashed agency budgets and productivity quotas, vocational rehabilitation is becoming more and more of a numbers game—how quickly can I close as many cases as possible? There are steps you can take, however, to make sure your case doesn't "slip through the cracks," and here Mosen provides concrete, action-oriented tips and advice that begin with your very first contact with your state's vocational rehabilitation office.

Job Readiness

Perhaps the most useful part of this book is Mosen's discussion of job skills. She organizes them into several categories.

Hard Skills

These are the practical skills a potential employee needs in order to perform a specific job. Do you have the necessary education, certifications, and/or work experience to accomplish the unique tasks of your desired occupation?

Soft Skills

What are your work ethics? Do you work well as a team member? Do you show leadership potential? Are you a quick learner? Here, Mosen makes a compelling case for the need to evaluate your own soft skills. After all, if you yourself were about to hire a customer service rep would you be more likely to select the applicant with years of experience but a poor work ethic, or someone with no experience who is a quick learner and who demonstrates a go-getter attitude?

Up Skills

Do you participate in ongoing educational and career development opportunities? Along with improving your job readiness, Mosen points out it's also an excellent way to network and discover employment opportunities you might not otherwise encounter.

Blindness Skills

Are you prepared to make proper use of any and all adaptive equipment necessary to perform the various jobs you will be applying for? Have you worked out transportation options? Do you have procedures in place to help make sure your interview and job wardrobe are appropriate?

Snagging that Job

Now that you've confirmed your skill set its time to find a job. Mosen begins the process with separate chapters describing how to compose a successful cover letter and resume. There is a lot of good information in these chapters, but I didn't find much in the way of blindness-specific formatting help, other than to use JAWS proofreading features to make sure you don't send out one of these documents with spacing problems, font issues or other mistakes.

Mosen uses her own resume and past cover letters to demonstrate how to compose these critical documents. Here I felt that the book's scope became just a bit limiting. Mosen's personal work experience has centered around blindness assistance and rehabilitation. The unintended consequence of this is to suggest to the reader that job opportunities for the blind may be best sought in the blindness services arena. I feel Mosen should have expanded her use of examples beyond her own experience, and offered sample cover letters and resumes that would encourage blind job seekers to expand their horizons as much as possible.

Mosen describes two types of resumes: the chronological resume and the functional resume. The first is more or less a listing of the jobs you have held and the duties you performed. The second is more of a listing of your various skills. A functional resume can be quite useful for recent graduates and for others with limited employment history. These are among the readers who might benefit most from a book such as this. Mosen offers a number of suggestions on how to produce such a resume, however she undercuts her own authority here when she states: "To be quite honest with you, I have had very little experience writing functional resumes."

She does it again when she discusses the job listing site Monster.com. "Interestingly, I haven't heard anything about them in years, and did some clicking around to see if they still existed." Most distressingly, she barely covers LinkedIn, describing it only as a place where you can "create a profile listing your skills, employment history and invite others to add you to their networks." In point of fact, LinkedIn is becoming a major source of job seeking and recruitment, and I believe it should have been covered in far greater depth—perhaps even in its own chapter.

Mosen seems to want to have it both ways. She insists that job seekers do everything they can to improve their skills, and yet, if writing a book can be considered a job, she herself seems unwilling to expand her own knowledge base in order to provide the reader with essential job-seeking know how.

The Job Interview

Mosen does continue with an excellent discussion of preparing for the job interview. She describes various interview types, including one-on-one interviews, panel interviews, and the increasingly popular behavioral interviews, where job applicants are asked questions such as: "Tell us about a time when you were part of a team." There is a lot of excellent content here, including tips on making potential employers aware of your ability to do the job, despite your disability.

No book for disabled job seekers would be complete without a discussion of when to disclose a disability, and here, Mosen does not disappoint. Basically, her advice is to disclose if it gives you an advantage in the application screening process. There are, after all, certain jobs were your disability may actually be viewed as part of your skill set. For example, a braille proofreader who has been reading braille since he or she was a child might have a definite advantage over a sighted person with only a few years of experience sight-reading braille.

As to the argument for not disclosing until the actual interview: I think Mosen puts it well when she states, "Yes, we may shock the employer, but someone who weighs 900 pounds might shock an employer too, but no one seems to expect that person to warn the employer so that he isn't too shocked." Perhaps not the most elegant turn of phrase, but it does make her point.

Job Evaluation

I think this book would have benefited immensely from a much deeper dive into LinkedIn, which is becoming a must-join resource for job seekers. I also believe the book needed to include at least one more chapter building on the concept of a functional resume and offering specific advice tailored to the needs of the first-time vision-impaired job seeker. That said, "It's Off to Work We Go" does offer considerable value in its unique prospective on vocational rehabilitation, along with a great deal of substantive information regarding evaluating and honing your job skills, preparing for the job interview, disability disclosure, and moving beyond obtaining a job into achieving long-term success in the workplace.

Product Information

It's Off to Work We Go by Bonnie Mosen
$29.95
Available in ePub and accessible PDF from: Mosen.org/work

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Author
Bill Holton
Article Topic
Book Reviews