October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and American corporations have taken to showing off just how hard they’ve tried to hire disabled people this year. One media/e-commerce/NFT/consumer goods conglomerate has reported a particularly high number of disabled applicants. Its CEO, Mike Ram, sat down with us to provide insight on the company’s hiring tactics in the hopes of inspiring its competitors.
“When I took on the difficult challenge of leading this company, I knew we needed change,” Ram explains. “We needed innovation, to move the needle, to think outside the box. We needed to establish a holistic culture steeped in synergy. I’m proud to say we did it! We are all about empowerment. I’d go as far as to say that in our offices, we don’t even see disability.”
The reason they don’t see disability, it turns out, is that the company doesn’t employ any disabled workers at all. While Ram’s various outreach campaigns and media tours have increased the number of disabled applicants, most of those are filtered out by cognitive assessments and irrelevant physical requirements.
“I was asked to recognize a pattern in a string of random numbers. I was then told to stare at a series of strobe lights, do a handstand, read the first two installments of the ‘Twilight’ series, watch their subsequent movies, lift twice my body weight and then — at the end of it all — relay the numbers by memory,” autistic applicant Clara Friedmein says with a sigh. “I work in marketing.”
Hiring and retention of disabled employees continues to be a struggle, as the unemployment rate for those with disabilities is nearly double the national average. Luckily, everyone’s favorite media/textile/energy/breakfast cereal megacorporation is currently hiring! The ideal candidate will be a disabled speedcuber and MBA player familiar with Mandarin and Turkish. Applications will be open for the remainder of October.