Designing disability inclusive career fairs

Francis: Welcome everyone to the idea speaker series. My name is Francis Fung. I'm the engagement lead for IDEA and a senior manager with the skills development and employment service team at March Times Canada, which is a national charity that provides supports to people with disabilities and a partner with IDEA. Before we begin, please note that we are recording this session and the recordings will be made available on our idea website. French interpretation is available for this uh session. You should be able to toggle between English and French using the interpretation button within Zoom. For those of you who may not know much about IDEA, it is a social innovation laboratory focused on helping create stronger and more diverse labor markets that include persons with disabilities through knowledge to practice. IDEA is the acronym for inclusive design for employment access. Before we start the webinar, I'd like to share a land acknowledgement relevant to the idea national office in Toronto where the National Office of Idea is situated has for thousands of years been the traditional land of the Huron Wendette, the Senica, and most recently the Missagas of the Credit. Today, this land is still home to many indigenous peoples from across um Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to conduct our work on it. This acknowledgement is relevant to Toronto and since we are gathered here virtually, we suggest that you think of the communities in your respective locations as well. This webinar series serve as an opportunity to hear the latest about current topics in the work disabilities policy arena and learn about activities underway within IDEA. During today's session, the last 10 to 15 minutes or so, we will hold a question and answer period. You can type your questions in the Q&A box at any time throughout the presentation and we will answer as many questions as we can at the end of the webinar. Our speaker for today is Dr. Dan Samosh who is an assistant professor of employment relations studies at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. He also co-leads one of our incubator hubs at IDEA focusing on transitions to work and career development. Dr. Samosh is broadly interested in researching the career success and workplace inclusion of individuals with stigmatized social identities. His research is focused on the work experiences of persons with disabilities in particular including three particular folky leadership emergence of persons with disabilities disability stigma and social identity as well as workplace inclusion of persons with disabilities. Dr. Samosh applies a multimemethod approach in his research using both qualitative and quantitative methods. His research is applied and often partnered and theorydriven as well with practical implications for individuals and organizations and policy makers. So we're very excited to have uh Dr. Dan uh Samos with us today. Thank you for joining us and I will turn it over to you now.
Dan: Awesome. Thank you very much Francis. So for today everyone, I'm going to be sharing with you a guide that we published last year. Um this is something we did through idea hub 3 on school tour transition and career development. So also just a quick thank you to idea. This is all funded through that new frontier stream. Uh this guide is about career affairs and it has information for careerfare organizers, job seekers, employers and other actors within this system. Um, but we also when we made the guide made it in a way that we hope can be useful for anyone just trying to broadly create an event that is more disability inclusive. Uh, I want to acknowledge to the research team this was a really big research team uh that went into making this guide because we did a lot of work. There were interviews as well as literature searching as well as engaging with a lot of people who are running career fairs now. So the research team members are Kim Atwood, Janice Lamb, Jean Mark Moch, Ava Kwan, Aka Moan, Rachel Solderstrom, Arf Jetha, and Chenade McCarthy. Uh, and everyone played a really meaningful role in the team. I do want to mention too one nice thing about this project uh is that we had Shenade with us uh who is with youth employment services and that means you know we always got to learn from Chenad's kind of in the field knowledge and the guide that I'm going to share with you has also been used by yes youth employment services in their own career affairs uh and you know we've taken feedback from them and others too on how to make sure this is a really practical guide for people
So, I'll give you just a brief agenda about where we're going today. I'm only going to give you an overview of some of the guide. Uh, the guide is free online, so the details are there for you to find. Uh, today I see more as an opportunity to talk together and to just give you kind of um an intro to what the guide is. So, we'll begin by just talking about like why are we even focusing on career affairs? Why is this our subject? Then within the guide itself there are two or three broader sections. The first is about guiding principles. So how we think about designing a career fair. The intention and thought process that goes into what we want to do and then the doing part are the practices. So we give a a very very wide array of different practices you might be able to engage in if you're organizing a career fair or a part of one. We've broadly categorized practices in terms of knowing different participants and then preparing them. And if that doesn't feel clear now, later on I'll go into more detail around that. Uh we talk about the structure of your event because there are so many different ways to run a career fair and they do have implications for who is included. Uh and then with some details on logistics, coordination, and communication. And last, the guide ends with a really substantial resource list. I think it might actually be something around 15 pages. Um the idea being that we're sharing all this information on career fairs. Uh but ultimately there are many other event type guides that are relevant and we share a lot of those with you so you hopefully have a space to draw from when you are creating an event and trying to make sure that it's accessible and inclusive. And from there at the end I'll just share a little bit about some other hub 3 projects that are going on within IDEA. Uh we just published a resource on ADHD for managers but really for anyone in organizations to understand ADHD better. Uh there's work on mentorship in the works and also work on episodic disability. And then we'll go to discussion and I'm I'm hoping we get to engage and I can answer any questions that you might have.
Okay. So our part one disability inclusive career affairs and really the the guide that we're working with well when we were trying to determine what research to do uh we spoke a lot with our kind of advisory group with people who were engaging in the school to work transition also nonprofits employers and so on and we regularly heard that career fairs were a really important gateway to employment and that they were also one where job seekers with disabilities were regularly excluded. Some of the ways that exclusion kind of occurred would be things like let's say there's a career fair and there's no process for requesting accommodation. So people right off the bat you know might not know whether they can ask should ask whether their request will be accepted or not this kind of thing. We also heard especially from students uh students with disabilities that formats of career fairs can often disadvantage some job seekers. Uh and so in this case uh we had you know some job seekers who identified as neur divergent stating you know this idea of uh having a table at a career fair let's say with an employer and several students or several job seekers around that employer uh created a lot of stress for some people and wasn't really an environment wherein they could thrive. And of course this is important because that individual might be great for the job. It's just the environment that's the issue here. And we also saw that there is limited guidance on how to do disability inclusion at career fairs. We have some great guidance around events in general, but for career fairs specifically, there's not as much there.
And here I do want to pause too for a moment and just mention that uh one of the things about that that's really meaningful and that I think we see broadly within the disability inclusion and work space is we're getting more and more kind of context specific guides out which is great because we've heard for so long from people that you know this industry needs some different guidance than that industry or this experience needs different guidance from that experience and career fairs are their own unique type of event. So we can give some very particular guidance. Uh but with that it means that it can be harder to get the word out that the guide exists because uh you know it might be harder to find the career fair guide versus the general inclusion events guide. Uh so while I'm kind of sharing this presentation uh if you don't mind if you could also think about who might benefit from receiving this and if you could share it with them. I know we've had a lot of success with people particularly in nonprofits that run career fairs and also within career services at universities um because this guide really speaks a lot to their work. But if there's anyone else you can think of um please you know let them know about the guide um because we're excited to get the word out.
So research background where did all of this come from? We did about 30 interviews with people uh from various experiences, many people transitioning into work that identified as having a disability, some employers, some career services people, some nonprofit people, and so on. From there, we had many discussions with our kind of advisory group. And we also did a fair bit of literature searching around what best practice was. And I want to emphasize this wasn't just academic researching um because a lot of the most up-to-date practice isn't happening in academia. Uh academia, right, we're often a few years behind because of the time it takes to do research. Uh so we really emphasized focusing on practices that are going on now and ways to make things inclusive um rather than some process that kind of keeps us a bit more in the past. So our emphasis is on supporting those running career fairs. Um, and one of the things we heard from many people running career fairs is that they're resource constrained. Uh, they really want to be doing a lot of different things and making their career fairs inclusive. Uh, but you know, in these times of often budget cuts and these kind of austerity measure times, there's often not that many people on the team. So a lot of our practices and suggestions are especially geared towards being lowcost to no cost and in particular often highlighting opportunities for crossorganizational or interorganizational collaboration so that these kinds of things can get done uh without kind of um meeting certain barriers that are often discussed.
And do just want to mention too, I mentioned earlier that this work was partnered with Sinead McCarthy at Youth Employment Services and so we had lots of help and and work with Yes. in order to kind of make this make this guide useful.
So I'm going to go inside the guide. Now what I've done before is just really background. And the guide begins with principles. So how to think about running a career fair. And these are really important because we thought if we just give people a bunch of practices, then if we engage in practices without reflexivity, if we engage in practices without thinking why we're engaging in them, uh we might accidentally do something that we think is helpful that isn't. Um because there is no perfect list of practices, right? Every context is different and we need to respect that. So in brief, our first principle is nothing about us without us. as much as we can, we are adding persons with disabilities into the design process, into the process of creating the career fair. Now, point two largely came from interviewees who were job seekers saying that they would often find themselves in situations where uh maybe there was a career fair or something of this nature, but it wasn't really focused on meaningful and competitive employment and what they wanted was a job that paid uh that paid fairly and so on. So to as much as we can focus on competitive employment and the term meaningful will come up later in the practices so I'll talk about it then um point three is respecting the complexity of the individual.
An important caveat when looking at a guide that is disability focused uh is that we unintentionally might think that disability is the only thing in focus. Uh but for many people you know for some disability is a really important primary identity. For many other job seekers, it's just a part of themselves and often a very neutral part. Um, so just respecting that it's the person's role to identify who they are, not the organizer's role. Part four, taking a strength-based view. Again, we often heard that there could be the potential that organizers will assume what the person is capable of. Um but instead, you know, taking a balanced view, understanding that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, but when we're thinking about getting a job, when we're thinking about career affairs, focusing on what that person can do, what their strengths are, what their aptitude is, and what they might want to build on in the future. Now, the fifth point is one that comes up in guidance, especially around kind of event structure and engaging around accommodation processes. First, being proactive and next being flexible. I think this is reasonable guidance for anyone in a kind of leadership role or in an organizing role. First, we be proactive. We prepare as much as we can. And in the guide, you can notice these things where, you know, we talk about different ways to be accessible around communication. We talk about accessibility in terms of documentation and so on. So, do all of those things. Uh, but recognize that we can't predict every situation. And when we come up with something that we weren't expecting, whether it be the day of the event or a week before or a week after, being flexible, not, you know, entering into a defensive position, but saying, "Okay, how can we make this work and collaborate together?"
And that kind of segus to the next point. A big part of this guide is emphasizing collaboration. We can't do everything alone. And so we share a list of different potential collaborators and what they might be able to do at your career fair. Now the seventh point, this one is about context. That context matters. And this is just to make sure that this guide isn't used as a checklist, but to say that you know your context better, you know, than any of us as writer writers of a guide could know. So take everything that we write within your context. Think about who it is who is at your career fair, employers, job seekers and so on and make sure to you know filter everything we write through that context.
And the last point is around continuous improvement. Uh we can't be perfectionistic about these things. Instead it's better to grow and each time each next career fair do a better job. And so each of these principles you'll see that they play a role in the practices that come up next. So from principles to practices broadly when looking at different actors within this kind of career fair system, we're thinking about job seekers, employers, and other collaborators. And for job seekers and employers in particular, the guide is framed around knowing who job seekers and employers are and then preparing them for the career fair. So next I'll get into some information about job seekers that kind of knowing and preparing framing. So knowing your job seekers, we heard quite regularly from job seekers that organizers might assume what their interests are and that their interests are actually very wide and varied and you wouldn't know what those interests are probably unless you talk to the person. So it being very important to engage with job seekers before the career fair happens. Uh and in the guide we talk about different ways of doing that engagement. I I won't go into that here but some of the interests we heard from from folks were you know whether they want to get a job in an urban or a rural setting. Some workers in trades office work in others. U many people spoke actually about the importance of being in jobs that had lateral growth opportunities. And by that I mean jobs that even though the title might stay the same, the responsibilities might vary and grow over time. And we also heard a fair bit about upward career mobility uh the desire to you know one day move into management positions and so on. Now in particular an emphasis that was made by participants uh specifically job seekers was a desire to access what they deemed meaningful work greater than just a job. Uh and a big part of what meaningful work was to a lot of people was being in inclusive workplaces and that meant primarily having colleagues who respected them who you know whose company that they enjoyed but also managers and the organization more broadly. And in terms of thinking as a career fair organizer at this point we have career stage differences and first generation post-secary students listed there. Uh we heard from some job seekers about how, you know, some are very very early in their job search process and they really just want to know what jobs are out there. Maybe they're not applying for a job yet, but they want to know what they might be able to get versus someone who, let's say, we have a post-secary student who's in their fourth year. They're really focused on getting a job potentially now. So knowing that as an organizer, who are the job seekers coming to this event, what career stage and kind of job search focus do they have? And we heard within the post-secondary context as well although acknowledging many career fairs do not happen in that context right but within the post-secary context a lot of people mentioned that being first generation postsecondary students was an important part of their experience and wanting to have support based on that kind of role and experience within the university.
Now a last point that was mentioned that is often forgotten is transportation access needs. So, you know, if an event is listed uh two weeks before the event is going to happen, someone might not be able to get transportation to that event. It might uh you know, they might not have enough time. So, making sure that an event is both in an accessible location and also that time enough is given so that you know a person can get transportation to the event.
Now on this slide and on several of the remaining ones that are practice focused, I just have this little box here of highlights. So some things that you can do to prepare job seekers specifically. The first portion being about knowing them and understanding them is that as an organizer before the event, you can always run things like different workshops if you have the capacity. And we heard especially again in post-secondary context that students really understand or often understand accommodation within the university. But that doesn't mean that they understand accommodation within the workplace. It's a totally different experience, right? They do not have the same structure of accommodation system. So helping students understand what does disclosure look like if they so choose to disclose in a workplace context and what does accommodation uh what does that seem to be too? Now there's all the usual stuff too around job readiness uh and then other things like students and job seekers stating they would have really benefited with just a little bit of practice maybe to learn you know how do they interact with employers. It might be a first experience interacting with a manager or an HR person or a representative from an organization. So having a bit of training there can be really helpful and also just demystifying the hiring process. Um, as an organizer, as someone in that kind of position, it can be easy to forget that, you know, we all who are in these jobs had to get jobs and went through that process and at the beginning really didn't know what that process was. So, demystifying the hiring process can be really meaningful for job seekers, too. Next, we'll look at employers. So, there are so many different practices uh relating to employers in the guide. just a few of them. If we go in the order of the guide and first understand our job seekers, then the next step is to ask you know what employers do these job seekers want to meet with. So inviting employers who actually match our jobseker interests, our job seeker goals and so on. And then we can start thinking too about preparing our employers. Uh we heard a lot about how just even something as simple as education on different models of disability, making sure people don't only come in with a solely medical model view of disability is important. Talking about the social model, affirmative model, and so on from there, teaching about inclusive communication practices, which we list some within the guide, accommodation conversations, how to do those, and also how to produce accessible presentations, right? because often we have these Bristol board presentations or maybe a PowerPoint or something like that. Uh so you know how to do documentation in an accessible way and the presentation too. From there from job seekers we heard from a lot of them that they wanted employers to share about their DEIA initiatives. Um so to really highlight those if those are ongoing and then other preparation activities can be similar to with job seekers having kind of pre-career fair events whether that be webinars uh you know more informal lunch and learns where resources can be shared with employers and the career fair can be seen kind of as a touch point. So even though we're doing a career fair you can also share much more right around how to be an inclusive employer more broadly.
Now, one practice that we heard about uh by a really impressive, I think, career fair organizer uh was the idea in our highlight box of formalizing an employer contract. So, saying to employers, you know, if you're going to be a part of this career fair, we just also have this contract that we'd like you to read over, we can discuss, and then you can sign. Um and the contract will have information about expectations potentially around acceptable and unacceptable behavior, goals of the career fair. You know, some of the principles that I shared earlier, uh those could be a part of something like a contract to make sure that your employers grasp the purpose of the career fair and you know are then engaging in inclusive and accessible ways at the career fair. So from there right I talked about job seekers knowing your job seekers preparing them employers knowing your employers and preparing them.
Next I'll talk just a little bit about collaborators. Uh the main focus here is often in this work right people are just busy and it can be very hard to know who might be able to help and whether they are actually willing to help. And I think one of the one of the most enjoyable things about being an academic is that I get to talk to a lot of people about what they're passionate about and what they know really well. And it's so so common that individuals from these various groups and and I'll name these groups in a moment. Uh individuals from these various groups uh mention that you know they wish they could coordinate with X Y or Zed but they don't have much success with it or they don't know how. And then you hear the exact same thing from the other side saying, "Oh, we wish we could coordinate with this other group." Um, so really being open to exploring some of these collaborations with employment service providers, job coaches, service provider networks, community organizations led by persons with disabilities, professional associations and regulatory bodies, chambers of commerce, uh, post-secondary institutions. Within them, there are different functions, right? Career services, accessibility services, and alumni services. All three could play a role in career affairs. Um but usually uh it's only one and there might not be actually cross collaboration between and then we have other actors like mentors, guest speakers and role models and applied research organizations. So all of these kind of different people, groups, organizations could be a part of career fairs and could make them better, could make them more inclusive. So those are the people and groups involved in a career fair.
Next, I'll talk a little about event structure and then logistics and coordination and that'll be the main body of my discussion of the guide and we can you know go into more conversation together. So in the event structure this is one place where nothing about us without us is very important. Having people on the you know committee or the team that runs the career fair that designs it who actually have experience with disability. Now, while making that structure of an event, there are so many different options you have. So, it's very important to know what your job seeker's needs are and what their interests are because an event could be disability focused or it could be not disability focused. Now, we heard, you know, it really depends on the person. Some people would express that they don't want to go to a disability focused event because it kind of outs them uh and maybe they don't want to disclose uh and as well maybe they just don't want disability to be the main emphasis. Maybe you know their real emphasis is that they want to get a job and disability is just some piece of their identity whereas other people really did say that they would be happy to go to a disability specific event. Now you can have one-on-one employer, one employer to one jobseker type events or you can have one you know uh one employer to multiple jobseker type events and you can also have events that are industry occupation or profession specific or just you know involve all the employers who want to join and maybe something a bit more general.
Now the career fair is also an opportunity to share about other career supports that are available um especially within organizations like universities and colleges but within any context really uh and for some of our job seekers we heard that that was an opportunity to reduce pressure a bit because if we think about you know the first time speaking to an employer it can be really stressful. So to not make the entire event about engaging with employers for job seekers can actually help a lot. One way of doing that too is to integrate peer mentorship or mentorship of other forms within the event. Uh because we also found many people expressing that you know they were hoping to meet other people with similar experiences to themselves and an unintended outcome of career fairs was they actually got to meet some really nice people who are job seekers too and they got to coordinate and learn about their experience and kind of grow together. And then within this too, as mentioned in the principles, we have this plan, do check act cycle of, you know, we should experiment with these things. Uh it's never going to be perfect and instead try to figure out what works for people over time. And one example that worked for some of the careerfare organizers we spoke with is always having a
postc careerfare survey. So asking uh the participants about what their experience was, what they liked, what they would change, this sort of thing. And in our highlight box here on the right, there's this idea of a reverse career fair. So this is a concept that if you know your job seekers well, it might actually really work for them and it might be a concept you want to implement. So the typical career fair, right, involves booths where you have employers and then job seekers go to those booths, right? Uh but you can reverse that and have job seekers hosting booths, right? the job seeker can prepare their own board or whatever it might be and prepare you know information about who they are and then employers would actually circulate around the room around the auditorium wherever this is held and we learned that for many job seekers this idea could reduce a lot of social pressure because they don't have to be the one who's breaking the ice by going to the employer of course this is very idiosyncratic some other job seekers would say quite the opposite but for many it's an opportunity to showcase their strengths in in a bit more of a proactive and comfortable way.
Turning to logistics, coordination, and communication. This part of the guide has a lot of very detailed information which I'm not going into here, but just like some of our points, having early notice is very important. Certain types of technology or supports take time. Uh, right? If we need an interpreter, it's going to take time to find one. Uh, transport can often take time. And so giving early notice, ideally much more than a month, but at least a month in advance so that there's time to coordinate these things. Having an accessible registration process and response to registration, making the accommodation process clear. We in the guide talk about what you should include in accommodation related correspondence, how to address accommodation requests, and we actually also have a sample statement uh around accommodations within the guide too. learning and just being aware of what local transportation looks like in your area and also preparing for communication access, documentation, physical location type access, and making sure that you schedule in breaks. It's impressive how many people we heard from who said they actually just really needed a break at some point, but the event was something that kind of kept on going uh and then it had, you know, an effect on them and it would have been a better experience with some breaks. And of course, if you can do a trial run, especially for things like assist of technology and that kind of thing. Now, in our highlight box here, in terms of logistics and coordination and communication, we have roles at the event. So, within the guide, we detail different roles that people might play in order to make the event work on the day of. Now, all of these roles could be one person uh or each one could be a different person or even multiple people. So making sure you have an event contact, right? Uh if you have an accommodation process, you have to say who the person is connecting with. You have to make sure that people know who it is they can email or otherwise to engage with the event. Having accessibility and accommodation coordinator, having wayfinders, individuals at the event who help people navigate the space. Often these events are in auditoriums. It can be hard to navigate through them. So having people there who are available should someone need tech support both for assisted technology and general technology. And then one practice I really like that we learned about uh from a career services individual was having someone around who is kind of networking support. someone who if you know the job seekers want if they've requested then that networking support person can just go up and say you know start the conversation help as was described turn cold connections into warm connections and just make it a little bit easier to engage with employers.
So the last part of the guide is this lengthy resource list. The resource list is detailed by the different participants. So, job seekers, employers, other collaborators, and then subtopics within that, knowing them, preparing them, and so on. There's a lot of detail there. If you do use the guide, I hope that part is helpful. Um, we wanted to make sure that we got the most important stuff within the guide itself, uh, that is kind of most important to career fairs, but there are so many amazing event focused guides out there around disability inclusion that we didn't feel the need to reinvent any of those. In those cases, we said if you want general events information and so on, you know, go to these other guides. Uh, and last on this slide, I've included the link to the career fair guide. It's free through the idea website. Uh, and these slides should also be posted at some point, too. Um, but if you don't want to wait and you want to get access to it, you can always email me and I'd be happy to, you know, share the guide with you. Okay, so that is the career fair guide.
I just have a little bit more to share around other work that we're doing in hub 3 with idea. So the first one is just I think last week we published a guide on ADHD and career success which really details like the barriers that an individual might experience and the facilitators of career success that an individual might experience and especially focusing on those facilitators. And this guide though for anyone it's particularly written in a way that is catered to managers in the hope that managers can get a bit of a better understanding not just of ADHD which we give some background in but how to be respectful of their employees with ADHD and how to work well with them. And the URL for that guide is also at the bottom of this slide. You can also access it through the idea website and I think it was in the last newsletter too if you get those.
Now an ongoing project that we haven't um sent out into the world yet but two of these are kind of in different stages. Um we're creating some guidance now on how to design disability inclusive mentorship programs and I have to mention uh Ana Ahmed who is at Queens University with me working as a postoc. She has done some amazing work on this and we're both really excited to get this out to the community. We've heard time and time again how mentorship is something an area where guidance is kind of lacking and so we've gone really deep into how to how to design mentorship programs uh which hopefully can be you know helpful in in the audiences here at your future practice. And then we also might end up running a future mentorship program too. So, if you're at an organization where you might want to be a part of that, uh, let us know because if we can make it work, we will. And we'd love to use all of this research we've done around mentorship, all this engagement we've done with people who run these programs to try to make a really good mentorship program and then see how it works. Last around research that is ongoing. Uh, this is a request from uh, Megan Crouch is a postoc at the Institute for Work and Health. Uh we're also doing the study on episodic disability which uh Megan and Arjetttha are leading. Uh it's a kind of longitudinal study of career success from the experiences of individuals who are 18 to 35 years old transitioning into work who also experience episodic disability. Uh so if you know anyone who might want to be a part of that study, you'll get access to these slides or you can you know contact uh Megan at IWH. um please do cuz I think that will be a meaningful study as well. And the only thing left for me to say before the Q&A is thank you. I hope you enjoyed the presentation part of this. And yeah, we'll get into conversational part.

Francis: Well, thank you uh Dr. Dan Samos um for your um uh insight and uh the research that um that brings principles to practices. Um, I personally really enjoy when you talked about engaging job seekers before the career affair and making sure that you uh try to get to know them as best as you can before it happens. I personally have some experience with that um uh career fair as well. And I really do find that that's a a really nice setup. Um I also really like the idea of the the reverse job fair and in fact I think it's becoming a bit more popular. So, I'm I'm I'm glad that you um you're able to identify that as a really um good way to to be inclusive. So, we're going to open up the uh question and answers now from the audience. Um and if you are new to the uh Zoom platform, there is a Q&A button at the bottom of your screen and you click on that a separate window should open up and you should be able to then type in your questions. Um and we are going to try to answer as many questions as we can. Uh we do have a little bit of time. So um I am going to read out the first question I see and uh for you uh Dr. Samosh. So the first question I have here from the audience uh for certain industries specific requirements such as like licenses for different occupations may be necessary. Uh what are your thoughts on conducting pre-screening before a job fair?
Dan: So it depends to an extent on what is meant by pre-screening. But what I'll share about there is one of the actors we mentioned are professional associations and licensing bodies. And these can be really meaningful groups to bring to career fairs who often aren't engaged in them because it's an environment and a space where job seekers can then learn really what are those licensing requirements. So I think in general inviting those kinds of actors and also groups like chambers of commerce too right these organizations we aren't necessarily thinking of because they might not be the ones doing the hiring but they are really important organizations that help an individual job seeker learn what is this industry what is this context what do I need to do to get that kind of job right often especially if someone um maybe hasn't had a job before their idea of that job uh might not be representative of what it is and those kind of licensing bodies can often give way more information um than you know a single representative from an organization. So I think if it's pre uh pre-screening in terms of you know who do we have involved here do we have a wide enough array of these kind of collaborator contributors who are ensuring that the job seekers get a broad enough and deep enough understanding of the field then yeah I think it could be really nice it could be a nice addition to the kind of work we do.
Francis: Yeah, thank you. Um bringing the right layers and um and and the collaboration and then making sure that we also think about from the job seekers perspective I guess um it's and in incorporating the inclusive lens. So yeah, thank you for the response. Um there's a comment um from the audience to add to the important of having um access to um uh washroom for wheelchair users from an accessibility p perspective as well. So um obviously not just the structure of the career fair itself but also the um the environment as well too.
Dan: So thank you for the uh comment that we have there. If I can add to that too, Francis, just to mention it's such a it's a really important comment. Um, and within the guide we go into much more detail about kind of accessibility within space, accessibility within events. Um but then we also share other guides that would have uh this important point and then many many others too because of course like the goal is to have an event where every element is accessible and washrooms you know the space the entrance to the building and many other aspects of this are really important to to have in mind too
Francis: Right yeah thank you um there is a question here this is more about like followup with you I think or perhaps with Megan and and some other folks on your team as well about how do how do they get in touch to discuss the mentorship part of it. So um to be able to maybe share an email contact or anything like that.
Dan: Yeah. So if it's about the mentorship piece that's something specifically uh that Asha Ahmed and myself are working on. So you can feel free to send me an email. Uh it would be great to to get a message from you and from anyone else in the room um because we're early stages in that. So actually you know if if you end up being a part of it there's a lot of room to kind of grow together and explore. So yeah thank you for the question.
Francis: Sounds great. Okay. Um so moving on to another question. So um was there any research done on digital platforms used for online job fairs? Um the uh the comment from the attendee uh the attendee says that she know it's hard to find ones that are accessible out of the box sometimes. So um what what what would be a recommendation to employers?
Dan: Yeah, it's a really good question. So for us in the guide, we primarily were looking at physical in person job fairs and then hybrid job fairs too. And so there is some guidance in the guide around hybrid job fairs. Um but perhaps it's kind of a gap of ours and something that the next iteration of the guide can include. We don't have much information about online only guide uh job fairs. Um so I don't have like a specific piece of technology or software that I would say that's the good one to use. Um but rather that would be one of those moments again where if we start within the format of the guide and focus on the job seekers first then asking okay what do our job seekers really want and what are they looking for and then choose based on that. But I'm sorry I don't have like a a quick easy answer.
Francis: Yeah that's okay. I think that's maybe an area where the community kind of kind of get together and then think about that a bit and exchange some um uh tips and and and so on related to that. Um I want to go back to the reverse job fair. Um the reverse job fair the the premise of that is kind of having the employers go around and going to the act the actual job seekers and uh in terms of like preparation like how do you see that work out because employers may not be so familiar with you know um interacting with people in disabilities in general they may be a bit shy to kind of do that. So how how do you get that um into the preparation part?
Dan: Yeah. So, it's really important, right? Like we know that when people are uncomfortable, then they tend to avoid. And this is one of the things we constantly see in the disability inclusion space of like well-intentioned employer who doesn't understand that an experience is just an experience and then goes like, "Oh, I'd rather just avoid the context out of fear and this sort of thing." So, I think that's a place where some of this pre-training can be really helpful. And there are so many good guides there around how to communicate in an accessible manner. Um whether that be you know I know out of um Quebec there's an organization called Chrisfish which made a guide on neuromixed communications which really beautifully details you know how to engage in communication between kind of autistic and alistic communities. Uh so giving resources like that potentially having sessions beforehand to help make employers make sure they kind of understand how to communicate, how to engage. Um and also just within this too, it's the comment I made earlier around the one kind of some of our principles about respecting the context, respecting a strength-based view and also not only focusing on disability. Ultimately, we have a person in front of us and disability is potentially just one bad experience. Um, and you know, we focus so much here because of all the stigma and all of the discrimination, but fundamentally we want to be framing this as here's a job seeker and here's an employer and here's employer here's how to do your job better job seeker here's how to engage with employers within this context that sort of thing right
Francis: I see thank you and speak speaking of like kind of a a pre precareer fair kind of preparation things um and uh attendee asked that um if you're aware of any pre-existing content for kind of like prefair webinar what what may needs to be in there I know you mentioned some guides about how it interact with you know certain um uh individuals but can you maybe expand on that?
Dan: Yeah so first I also noticed the point uh the question kind of asking for like does this content exist somewhere and I think it's one of the nicest things about this research and ideas research more broadly too around having this partnered compon component. Um, I wish Chenade was here with me. Uh, cuz I know YES has so much amazing material and a lot of this prefair information is also just like you know how to be a reasonable decent person information, how to be an inclusive employer type information that can be used in many other contexts too. So I think organizations like yes and so many others have really good information that could be shared but as you mentioned Francis like some of that information is around communication. Some of it too is like around how to share documentation. So what does an accessible document look like? What formats are we using when we're sharing information with people? How do we engage with people you know from different communities and from different experiences? And also I think too in the effort to mitigate that avoid response which is so common and I think like so many in the service provider field ex experience of like employer wants to help employer is afraid employer doesn't help. Um is being there and just saying like you don't need to know everything. We're also here to support you in that to taking that principle of first being proactive. learn as much as you can, take all these resources, but fundamentally also knowing, you know, the career fair organizer has lots of knowledge too. Maybe even another role we could have added to that list is like an employer support. You know, if someone when the employer has questions, when they don't know what to do, uh they can turn to that person. Uh that kind of thing can be really helpful to demystify and reduce some of the stress.
Francis: Right. Right. Okay. Well, that's great. Um I have one more question. Um earlier on uh you mentioned that um um career advancement and sometimes it would be good to um for job seekers who kind of have to uh have some understanding of what may be uh possible within um that organization with that employer in the career fair. This is kind of a a sensitive part, right? Sometimes when there are, you know, they're looking for kind of um someone to come in and and maybe the first time they've been to a career fair that that have inclusive lands and may have job seekers with disabilities and you know for employers to kind of really talk about like potential career events may be a bit um taunting um and so on. So so what is what are the extents on this? Is that uh again more about getting to know about the job seekers? What what are your thoughts on that?
Dan: Yeah, I think there's two sides. Um the first is getting to know the job seekers as you mentioned. What is it that they really want? Because as described earlier too like some people really want jobs where there's predictability. Some people really want jobs where there's lateral growth but they don't have a desire to advance. Other people have this advancement desire. So to know who is the group that is coming in. Um but then also I think a really big part of that and why it was important to write it in is that both in the research and in the practice kind of communities there's often the assumption that the person doesn't want to advance their career. Um and it's a really problematic assumption right so I think just having that in mind that we're dealing with individuals and everyone has different interests and wants and needs and that career advancement is often a really big part of that picture. I I think it can be nice for employers to start off with that recognition. Um especially if it's a disability specific career fair and especially if they haven't been prepared properly for it. Um because otherwise all of these pervasive and kind of problematic assumptions that we see, we run the risk of just having them show up uh at the event and not really having the intended effect.
Francis: Yeah. Well, thank you. I I really um like the the career fair guide. Um just personally because I have some experience working um with employment service provider and I I really like the fact that things are practical you know that uh if you're maybe a bit new to the process you you can kind of follow in step by steps and then um if as if as you gain a little bit more experience you can always kind of like uh think about it from the more the principles perspective and and tweak it and kind of build on your own. I think this is a tremendously um helpful um uh tool for the community and thank you for sharing that uh with us today. And you mentioned a few more things that hub three and your team and and engaging research are working on as well. So we're looking forward to all those things too and and hopefully our audience will um also keep in touch with us and uh and check out the tune resources. So, um I'm not seeing um many more questions, but uh there's one more that come in and it looks like we still have a few minutes. So, would you mind taking this one on as well?
Dan: With pleasure. Yeah.
Francis: Okay. So, um the question says that um do you prepare this guide for use for anyone globally or is it more of a Canadian context when when it was developed?
Dan: Yeah. So the intention while making the guide was that it should be helpful for anyone anywhere. Um but of course I think it's our seventh principle that context matters. Probably the further someone is from where we are the more likely we are unintentionally you know making it something that okay this part is helpful that part isn't so helpful. Um so two things I would say to that. One is the guide was written in a way kind of Francis as you mentioned that if you're someone who is running a career fair for the first time and you know you're like ah I don't know what to do the guide can really help you in a step-by-step manner go through all of this instead if you're someone who's run many career fairs you're comfortable with it then the guide I think is more of a piece that you can turn to and go you know what are some smaller parts of this guide that I haven't considered that I might want to integrate into my work rather than needing that, you know, step-by-step component. And then also this principled element of, you know, first off, are any of these principles things I haven't thought about. And then also, what principles might you add as well if you're more advanced in this? Uh, you know, like we didn't discuss as much universal design. It's kind of embedded in some of the other principles, but if you have a lot of knowledge and background there, that might be something more central for you. So I do think this can be useful in other contexts outside of Canada. Um but with too you know a big purpose of this research um is to get it out and to get people using it and also to share it. So um to the question asker if there's ever any opportunity to rework the guide like if if you have a specific context in mind where after you read the guide you're like some of this is useful some of it isn't so useful. I'd love to talk about reworking it. Um because you know the goal isn't to write it and then move on to the next thing. It's to write it and share it and have as many people as who can be helped by it and use it use it. So yeah, please another opportunity to maybe get in touch with me if you want to email.
Francis: Yeah, thank you for offering that um followup support. It's uh so important that we we continue to reflect and improve and and even earlier on you mentioned about after career guide is always good to have survey or evaluation process in place as well too. That's great. Well um thank you once again uh for being here uh Dr. Samos and for sharing um the work that you've done with your team. Um and I want to thank the French interpreter for helping us today as well. And as a reminder for the uh audience, the recordings for our speaker series will be posted on our idea website which is triplew.v AI ai sorry-ca uh when they become available. And um if you have any questions or suggestions for the speaker series, you can also contact um um us at info@ver-ida.ca.
Um, I've been uh reminded that if you're in the attendance and you require a certificate or proof u for attending this webinar, please contact our national office uh through the uh the same email address info@ ver-ida.ca which is typed into the chat. Um and thank you for everyone for spending the time with us uh today and hope we can see you next time in the next uh speaker series session.