The Automated System
Months ago, Dad told me I wasn’t trying hard enough to find a job because I wasn’t marketing myself as a diversity candidate, but disability isn’t diversity. Some EEO surveys ask only about race and gender. Initiatives to hire people of color and women are powerful tools to alleviate wage gaps, but there’s nothing from which I can benefit. A white guy in a wheelchair is still a white guy. He didn’t agree with that, so I grabbed another drink after dinner.
Weeks after this conversation, as I continued the “nothing” I’d been doing, I settled for some semblance of a miracle. This miracle had suffered from both high turnover and “being like one big family,” but it was leagues better than the shame that barely peeled me from my bed every day.
When I joined the talent acquisition team at a company whose name my touchy NDA probably doesn’t want me to share, it was an act of sobering desperation, though this is not to say I don’t like my first-ever full-time job. Those who buy me drinks call me sociable. I can talk on the phone without the conversation devolving into unnerving silence. In the break room, I crack jokes clean enough to keep me from having to attend a panel.
What I love most about us is that none of us are smart, but we still thrive. Some of us have the decency to express shame about our intelligence, and some say they’re “street-smart” or “good with their hands,” though Vinny does neither. Vinny’s going to make it big. He struggles with vocal volume and eloquence. His New York accent is as thick as that of a guy in a commercial for a local car dealership. Vinny asked me what was wrong with me. He asked me how long I’d been in a wheelchair and accused me of faking when I moved my leg. He says, “Jason,” instead of, “JSON,” and his candidates reply, “Who?”
Sandra married her high school boyfriend when she was 18. She has a six-year-old and a one-year-old. Her mom spots her with the childcare. We’re both 25. I’m not sure my disability will permit me to achieve romantic love, so we’re on different planets, but everyone else is older than us, and she’s the only one who’s said nothing about my chair. The women I’ve befriended have been hopeless romantic prospects. Impossibility removes pressure to flirt. She doesn’t say anything about my chair; I don’t gossip with the others about her having kids. The backs of our heads appear in each other’s Zoom calls with candidates. I’m still meeting everyone else. I’ve only been to a few after-work get-togethers.
As we recruiters filter for programmers, we take note of three major items: performance on our impossible test, GPA, and diversity. Experience is certainly important for senior positions, but these three items make people stand out, especially among younger candidates.
One may protest, “Chris! GPA doesn’t matter!” Sort of. When we request that information, we care only about what bracket into which candidates fall. We refuse entirely to engage with candidates whose GPAs sink below 3.0. We don’t care if in-major GPAs are higher. The 2.8s have to go to our competitors, and the 1.8s have to hand out Szechuan sauce and chicken nuggets for the rest of their lives (or whatever they do).
A GPA from 3.0 through 3.49 is neutral. It works neither for candidates nor against them, though we don’t tell them this either.
Candidates who graduate with at least a 3.5 needn’t worry much at all, but there’s nothing higher than the 3.5-to-4.0 bracket. The difference between a 3.7 and a 4.0 is bragging rights.
Of course, they can lie! In this case, the test ascertains how hard they work and how quickly they learn.
Still, 50-year-olds tell 20-year-olds to have faith in cold calls, snail mail, and handshakes. 20-year-olds have to listen to the 50-year-olds because 50-year-olds are higher-ups who’re hiring, but here’s the problem: To hire more efficiently, today’s CEOs depend almost entirely on automated technology to sift through candidates, using us recruiters to disqualify candidates if they lack either social skills or the hard credentials we evaluate during phone screens. If one schmoozes, CEOs tell one to get in line with the non-delusional candidates.
With regard to the programming test through which each developer in our legion has suffered, the requisite score to qualify for a whiteboard interview is 80, and we’ve turned away 79s. We’ve turned away 3.49s and people with the wrong keywords on their resumes. The ultimate goal of every candidate is to find a way past the robots, whether candidates realize this or not. At best, friends and family can do some scheming on a candidate’s behalf.
All of this is hard enough for a person without a disability. One can imagine how this process has been for me. People like me don’t type fast enough to finish a test’s questions. If we need extra time, we need to wait for talent acquisition to verify whatever “proof” of disability we have. Injuries, depression, and chronic loneliness interrupt our academic studies and job searches. We run without fuel all our lives as we watch peers cruise beyond us until we can’t see them.
The most important activity people with disabilities can perform for their own sanity is to take credit. I’m nearly 26. I get a serious injury every other year. I’ve been single all my life. I live with my parents, though I plan to move soon since I’ve started making money. We’re out here doing our best, and we have to deal with everything everyone else has to endure. Professors call us lazy. Friends call us workaholics. SJWs call us offensive. Trust-fund babies call us sensitive. I could go on about how laughably impossible the disabled person’s job search is, but a charming woman has asked me to join her at the far end of the bar, as she’s alone, so I take my leave, and I hope you enjoy your night.
