Fake Cover Letters Expose Discrimination Against Disabled

Re:Fake Cover Letters Expose Discrimination Against Disabled by extra88 on Tuesday November 03, 2015 @08:27AM (#10499349)

How is a spinal cord injury relevant to an accountant job? It's weird and premature to bring it up in a cover letter, it could be taken as a sign of poor judgement or "why are they bringing this up? I don't care, are they an activist type? I don't need that kind of attitude." A younger person new to the world of work might be more easily forgiven the choice than an experienced person. If you get contacted for an interview, that's the time to bring up accommodations like wheelchair access.

I could imagine a cover letter describing Asperger's syndrome as an asset for accountancy work, claiming it's a source of their focus and numeracy. It would still be weird but that would meet the reader's expectations, right?

Still, I'm not trying to explain away their results, the quantity of data and comparable results for both disabilities suggests a common bias irrespective of the nature of the disability.

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Re:Fake Cover Letters Expose Discrimination Against Disabled by DanBC on Tuesday November 03, 2015 @08:40AM (#10499433)

A spinal cord injury has some relevance - is the location of the interview going to be accessible? Is the location of the job going to be accessible? Here the candidate is going out of their way to give potentially useful information to the employer. It's weird (and illegal) to use that against them.

Also, some places have recognised that they have bias, and they've put in place some system to reduce it. See, for example, the "two ticks" scheme in the UK.

https://www.civvystreet.org/employers/en-gb/civvystreetemplo...

https://www.gov.uk/recruitment-disabled-people/encouraging-a...

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