Disabled job seekers see more support from top employers

Eighteen years ago, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was designed to help prevent job discrimination against qualified disabled individuals. Yet almost two decades later, more than 60 percent of the nation’s working-age disabled individuals are unemployed.

But the tides are changing, as more and more companies have begun to develop pools of potential job candidates who are disabled and to integrate them into their workforces over the past few years. While some companies still look at hiring disabled candidates as more of a goodwill gesture than a business necessity, many have begun to see and understand the vital importance of this diversity group to the US workforce.

Just as companies rapidly began to realize that hiring diverse employees is a source of competitive advantage, diversity and inclusion managers at companies across the nation are beginning to realize the business case for hiring people with disabilities. The pool of disabled job candidates is one that companies need to and are quickly beginning to want to tap into as much as they can.

Why it has taken so long for companies to understand the importance of disabled employees in the workforce is a mystery. But what is not a mystery is why companies have begun casting a wider net and including disabled candidates as they recruit employees. As the labor pool shrinks, employment experts estimate that by the time the baby boomer generation has retired (roughly around the year 2020), US employers will face a shortage of nearly 20 million workers. Rather than deal with the difficulties or recruiting, screening, and legalizing qualified foreign workers, employers have found that the disabled candidate pool is filled with qualified disabled candidates who can fill key positions.

In addition, about 10 percent of all consumers have a disability, which according to the National Organization on Disability in Washington, DC, translates to more than $200 billion in annual buying power. Companies are now realizing that in order to effectively reach each segment of the globally diverse markets they serve, they will need diverse employees like disabled employees that understand the disabled consumer, or they will lose a potential share of this lucrative market.

Forward thinking companies like Google, PepsiCo, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs have led the way in recruiting diversity employees. But building a disability candidate pipeline can be difficult, because many companies still lack a centralized talent pool from which to draw. To mitigate this situation for companies, former Merrill Lynch trader Rich Donovan, who has cerebral palsy, founded LimeConnect, a company that matches disabled college-level and professional candidates through private recruiting efforts led by its four major partners, who are (take a guess) Google, PepsiCo, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs.

Donovan, whose disability limits his speech and movement, came up with the idea of putting together a firm to match disabled candidates with employers because he believed that corporate America should recruit and give qualified people with disabilities the same sort of opportunities that most big companies already had in place for minorities and women. He remembered how challenging it was to convince recruiters and even his mentors at Columbia University that he could perform the demanding physical tasks of a Wall Street trader, and wanted to do something to get more disabled people hired not only on Wall Street, but at all US companies.

I hope that LimeConnect’s success in placing qualified disabled candidates with top notch employers will continue to filter down into all US companies. Hiring diversity candidates begins with buy-in at the top, and it really doesn’t get much higher than Wall Street.