Mar 24 2021 25 mins 1
Max: Hello, welcome back to the Recruitment hackers podcast, I’m Max, and today on the show, I've got my friend, Julie Sowash from disability solutions. Welcome to the show, Julie. Julie: Thanks for having me, Max. It's nice to see you. Max: Thank you. Nice to see you too. We used to meet at events across the North American territory, but now, this is my only way of meeting people, is on my podcast. So, thanks for coming on and I hope we're going to speak about your favorite topic of all, which is how to make organizations more disability-friendly. Julie: Great. Max: But before we go there, could you give us a little bit of your background and how you ended up in this very specialized field. Julie: Yeah. So, as you said, I'm the executive director of disability solutions so we are a nonprofit based out of New York and Connecticut that work with fortune 5000 global companies also SMBs to help create really end to end talent acquisition solutions for people with disabilities and veterans with disabilities, you can almost think of us like a niche RPO for that talent pool. So there's like employer branding, videos, culture training or like even I need to fill these positions, go find them. We've helped companies hire a little over 3000 people with disabilities, about 20% of them are veterans with disabilities. Over the past five years. I actually also just became the leader of our overall diversity, equity and inclusion strategy for our parent company, which is a very large nonprofit on the East Coast, and the co host of the Crazy and the king podcast. My god! Max: Nice. Good show. Julie: Thank you. I love it. Lots of different hats I wear right now but I really came into this world about 12 years ago, I was managing a grant for the state of Indiana, that came from the federal government to help overcome barriers to employment for people with disabilities. And it was also at that time, where I was really struggling with my disability and my mental health and I've had several mental illnesses that I'll live with for the rest of my life since I was probably 19-20, and really through the work that I did in the disability community and through this grant and through the amazing people that I worked for, did I understand I didn't have to live in this constant instability. And so I really found that right around the age of 30, and have been just passionate about making a difference for my community since then. And what I really learned is that the government is surely not going to change the world for anyone. They're not going to change the way that society perceives us, the way that employers treat us, and so we have to work directly with the employer to help them understand our value, understand our impact and really understand that just like any other community you're investing in from a top perspective, and we should be one of those. Max: Brilliant. I was showing you this presentation and I just came across this umbrella term called 'neuro divergence'. Is that what we saw? Julie: Yeah Max: Is that how we talked about people with mental disabilities in general, these days. Julie: So, no. So neurodivergent is like people with autism, people with Asperger's, people with ADHD, ADD. Technically I fit in the neurodivergent category but I don't say I'm neurodivergent, I say that I have a mental illness, because there's so much stigma around mental illness that we keep coming up with new terms to not deal with us. But in full transparency, it was my neurodivergent disability that took the longest to get diagnosed and was the one I needed to diagnose to get stable. So, you know, it's just how people label themselves and as I have this really big opportunity and big platform, and I don't feel like I can hide behind any of that stuff. I have a lot of privilege that comes with having a hidden disability and being white. And so I try to talk as much about mental illness as I can to help remove that stigma. Max: Yeah, I totally get it. Th [...]
