The ‘Dare to Hire Me Now’ invites companies to be open to the possibility of hiring people who require different employment approaches and strategies such as hiring a Person with Disability because PWDs are productive members of the workplace and society.
The Dare to Hire Me Now carries its name in the website www.daretohiremenow.com introduced by Project Inclusion of the Unilab Foundation.
It was launched last July 15, 2016 at the Bayanihan Center in Mandaluyong City, Manila, just in time for the commemoration of the 38thNational Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Week which started July 17.
The www.daretohiremenow.com was introduced to promote skills, capabilities, and work preferences in order for PWDs to find gainful employment.
The website provides a platform for a paradigm shift towards PWDs advocating for themselves as productive members of the workplace and the society. It offers a process that matches the skills of jobseekers with job requirements of employers, rather than matching degrees and qualifications with job positions.
The website serves as an invitation to evaluate company policies on recruitment, placement, and training and development – and adjust them if necessary to enable PWDs to perform at their best, hence, attaining more inclusive workplaces for PWDs.
The website is the first job matching online facility for PWDs in the Philippines and in the world and boosts self-advocacy among PWDs seeking jobs being a PWD-centric.
The putting up of the website itself is evidence of PWDs competency for work. It also illustrates the potential of PWDs to contribute in the country’s labor force.
Two PWDs, one Deaf and one person with physical disability, were part of the team that developed the site after it was created in partnership with Bootstrap Digital and Tech Ventures, Inc. an inclusive company that employs PWDs.
The website also includes enabling features that cater to different kinds of disabilities. Its resume builder is both text and photo-based, for the ease of understanding and utilization of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (PWIDs). Other features include text-to-speech for blind persons, and a magnifying glass function for visually impaired persons.
In the early phase of their lives, PWDs are championed by their parents or interventionists. As PWDs become young adults, however, they become more independent and able to effectively communicate and assert their own interests, desires, and needs. They slowly begin to advocate for their own rights for education, inclusion, and employment.
This is the reason why the website is well received by PWD rights advocates and experts in special education, occupational therapy, human resource sectors.
The website is also an outcome of collaborative work with partners of Project Inclusion from the academe, national organizations, intervention centers, private companies, government agencies, families of PWDs, and PWDs themselves.
The www.daretohiremenow.com is a work of bayanihan, and invites more people – not just employers and the PWD community – to help build more inclusive workplaces. (Archived News – July 24, 2016)