Podcasts about individual plan

Believers Voice of Victory Audio Broadcast for Friday 3/10/2023. God knows every detail of your individual plan! Watch Believer's Voice of Victory as Kenneth Copeland and Professor Greg Stephens remind you of why you should trust Him for it. Learn to take God at His covenant WORD, and watch His perfect plan unfold right before your eyes!

Believers Voice of Victory Video Broadcast for Friday 3/10/2023. God knows every detail of your individual plan! Watch Believer's Voice of Victory as Kenneth Copeland and Professor Greg Stephens remind you of why you should trust Him for it. Learn to take God at His covenant WORD, and watch His perfect plan unfold right before your eyes!

Ever considered a career in the skilled trades but were nervous about having to learn in a sort of "boys club" environment? On today's show, Ariana Dugan explains how you can use Interplay Learning's awesome online platform to gain the skills you need to break into the skilled trades! They even offer some of their modules in a virtual format!   You'll also hear how Ariana went from a career in creative writing to eventually switching to product management and becoming the Vice President of Product at Interplay Learning!   Interplay Learning's Links: https://www.interplaylearning.com/   Interplay Learning's Individual Plan: https://www.interplaylearning.com/diy-pricing   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/interplaylearning/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/interplaylearn/reels/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InterplayLearn   My Links Thinking about making a career shift yourself? Visit my website to learn more about my career coaching packages, what services they include, and their prices.  https://www.evergrowthcoach.com/   Tools I Use for This Show: Podbean - I use Podbean to host my website because I think they do a great job of distributing it to podcast channels are super easy to use. If you'd like to give it a whirl, here's a link for one month free! https://www.podbean.com/GoFindOutPodcast   Canva - Free 30 day trial of Canva Pro! Make stunning social media images with Canva's designer tools! https://partner.canva.com/c/2534412/647168/10068   Looking for more inspiration? Sign up for the Go Find Out Podcast email list and get tips on how to kick your fears to the curb and go find out! You'll also hear about upcoming guests and any new book releases!  https://mailchi.mp/269e51a68b80/im-ready-to-go-find-out   You can also follow this podcast on: Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/GoFindOutPodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gfopodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gofindoutcareerswitch/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChkAbL0fPvaomE_vZKz-hIQ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@evergrowthcoach? Email me: EvergrowthCoach@gmail.com   Interested in my fiction or articles about being an Indie-Author? Check out my author website at https://www.jjrussellwrites.com   Want to support the podcast? Buy me a cup of coffee here! https://ko-fi.com/gofindoutpodcast  

In the Blind Abilities Studio, Hannah Harriman sits down with Jeff Thompson to talk about her academic and employment journey. From her early days and her Individual Education Plan (IEP) In Grade School to her Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) as she attended the Summer Transition Program, MN State Academy for the Blind and went off to college to her two current jobs, Hannah is excited about her future. Hannah's parents had high expectations and allowed her to take charge of her future through her IEP meetings and her decisions on her educational goals. Hannah never doubted her college education and she talks about how she prepared and advanced through her transition and employment goals. Her high expectations and self-determination has made a world of difference as she handles two jobs in the career that she wanted. You can find out more about the Summer Transition Program and the Minnesota State Academy for the Blind by contacting Sheila Koenig by email and by phone at 651-539-2361. Contact Your State Services If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Transition Coordinator Sheila Koenig by email or contact her via phone at 651-539-2361. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Storeand Google Play Store. Give us a call and leave us some feedback at 612-367-9063 we would love to hear from you! Check out the Blind Abilities Communityon Facebook, the Blind Abilities Page, and the Career Resources for the Blind and Visually Impaired group

Talking about what diets and exercise to follow . Creating a health plan for what suites you , individually . You can reach us on artandlibby.com

Episode 2: Talking Terms & Resources – Sandra really wants to know how to pronounce Asperger’s! Where did the term even come from? Who was Leo Kanner, and what was his issue with diagnosing boys? We learn a bit about history, too. Functioning labels are talked about, as well as how functioning labels can fluctuate – knowing and keeping that in mind can help you be a better ally to the Autistic community.Sarah gives a few tips to allies, and defines a number of terms that may be confusing or new to listeners. Knowing of these things, plus a little compassion can help everyone involved. Do you have someone in your life with ASD, and are you confused about person-first versus identity-first language, of disabled versus differently abled, and other ‘versus’ in the autism community? We’ve got something revolutionary – tune in to find out what it is!Sarah looks for the “elephant in the room” that Sandra is talking about… it’s accessibility and neurodiversity! Keep in mind the three A’s – Adapting, Accommodating, Accepting. All this talking makes these sassy ladies want cannoli. Feel free to reach us for questions or comments at www.spectrumwithsas.com We talk about some important people you should totally look up: Steve Silberman, Judy Singer, Lorna Wing, Haley Moss, Dr. Lori Butts, Amy Sequenzia, Christa Holmans (Neurodivergent Rebel), Becca Lori HectorWe talk about some amazing resources you might need: Speech-Language Pathologists, Speech Therapists, your local library, stim toys, silicone straws, online databases, audiobooks, closed captioning, podcast Spectrumly Speaking, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Autism Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN), Autism Society, Autism Women & Nonbinary Network (AWN/AWNN), Stimtastic.co, disability conference Family Café (in Orlando, June 5th-7th 2020), Family Inclusion Network (FIN), autism conference Promising Pathways (at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, April 18th 2020), My Autism Connection, Agency For Persons With Disabilities (APD), Children’s Family Medical Services, Dan Marino Foundation, SpectrumNews.org, Geek Club Books, Zoom Magazine, Florida Alliance for Assistive Services and Tech (FAAST), Knowledge Counts Online, Mental Health Counselors/Therapists, SSI (Social Security Income), SSDI (Social Security Disability Income), Vocational Rehabilitation, Individual Education Plans (IEP), Individual Plan for Employment (IPE).Support the show (http://www.patreon.com/spectrumwithsas)

Sandra really wants to know how to pronounce Asperger’s! Where did the term even come from? Who was Leo Kanner, and what was his issue with diagnosing boys? We learn a bit about history, too. Functioning labels are talked about, as well as how functioning labels can fluctuate – knowing and keeping that in mind can help you be a better ally to the Autistic community. Sarah gives a few tips to allies, and defines a number of terms that may be confusing or new to listeners. Knowing of these things, plus a little compassion can help everyone involved. Do you have someone in your life with ASD, and are you confused about person-first versus identity-first language, of disabled versus differently abled, and other ‘versus’ in the autism community? We’ve got something revolutionary – tune in to find out what it is! Sarah looks for the “elephant in the room” that Sandra is talking about… it’s accessibility and neurodiversity! Keep in mind the three A’s – Adapting, Accommodating, Accepting. All this talking makes these sassy ladies want cannoli. Feel free to reach us for questions or comments at www.spectrumwithsas.com We talk about some important people you should totally look up: Steve Silberman, Judy Singer, Lorna Wing, Haley Moss, Dr. Lori Butts, Amy Sequenzia, Christa Holmans (Neurodivergent Rebel), Becca Lori Hector We talk about some amazing resources you might need: Speech-Language Pathologists, Speech Therapists, your local library, stim toys, silicone straws, online databases, audiobooks, closed captioning, podcast Spectrumly Speaking, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Autism Self-Advocacy Network (ASAN), Autism Society, Autism Women & Nonbinary Network (AWN/AWNN), Stimtastic.co, disability conference Family Café (in Orlando, June 5th-7th2020), Family Inclusion Network (FIN), autism conference Promising Pathways (at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, April 18th 2020), My Autism Connection, Agency For Persons With Disabilities (APD), Children’s Family Medical Services, Dan Marino Foundation, SpectrumNews.org, Geek Club Books, Zoom Magazine, Florida Alliance for Assistive Services and Tech (FAAST), Knowledge Counts Online, Mental Health Counselors/Therapists, SSI (Social Security Income), SSDI (Social Security Disability Income), Vocational Rehabilitation, Individual Education Plans (IEP), Individual Plan for Employment (IPE)

Videos are an efficient way to reach multiple people with the message you’ve polished. There are many, many uses for this. We’ll sort this into categories and simplify so you can turn this into a profitable tool. What NOT to worry about: - Being super polished - Having more than about 2 minutes or less of content to your message - Don’t over-engineer, over think or get analysis paralysis. Done is better than perfect. ***Listeners will be offered discounts on the Individual Plan pricing.... $200 off their real estate specific plan or $120 of their more basic plan. No code needed as it already applies with the affiliate link.***. Pricing ranges from $500 to $1500 annually with upgradesoptional. vid.us/harris Schedule A Free Coaching CallListen on iTunesListen on SpotifyListen on Stitcher

Videos are an efficient way to reach multiple people with the message you’ve polished. There are many, many uses for this. We’ll sort this into categories and simplify so you can turn this into a profitable tool. What NOT to worry about: - Being super polished - Having more than about 2 minutes or less of content to your message - Don’t over-engineer, over think or get analysis paralysis. Done is better than perfect. ***Listeners will be offered discounts on the Individual Plan pricing.... $200 off their real estate specific plan or $120 of their more basic plan. No code needed as it already applies with the affiliate link.***. Pricing ranges from $500 to $1500 annually with upgradesoptional. vid.us/harris Schedule A Free Coaching CallListen on iTunesListen on SpotifyListen on Stitcher

Show Summary: son. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. In this episode Serina and Jeff talk about Reasonable Accommodations for the workplace. What is a Reasonable Accommodation? What is a Hardship? What can we bring to the table when Accommodations are being investigated and what solutions you may already have. Sometimes creativity and innovations can bring about a solution and some of the common apps we use on a daily basis can be a tool for the workplace/ It’s not always a major purchase that is needed when considering accommodations. While the word, “Reasonable” and “Hardship” can be defined from so many different perspectives and from company to company, Serina and Jeff explore solutions and encourage one to contact and work with their State Services, Voc-Rehab specialist and their company to find the best solution. Join us for this Job Insights podcast and check out the other Job Insights podcast on the web at www.BlindAbilities.comand select Job Insightsfrom the category drop-down menu. You can find out more about the ID Mate from En-Vision America, thePenFriend,Aira, and BeMyEyes App, EnvisionAI appand the over40 App. Check out this episode of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Contact: Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Show Summary: Welcome to Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. In this episode Serina and Jeff talk about Networking and Social Networking. The internet has really enabled us to reach more groups, more people and more resources than most of us could have imagined 15 years ago. Sure, we shake hands, trade business cards and meet and greet on occasions, and in between those moments, the internet has brought on an entire new capability of exchanging information and accessing resources. But, we are not alone. Most of our interactions on Social Networks are logged and cast in stone for the world to observe and recall. This brings a responsibility to one’s use of Social Networking as more and more people, companies and agencies use the network for their data gathering, just as easy as doing a Google search, yes, a Google search on you.  Join the Job Insights team, Serina and Jeff, as they build upon some strategies and suggestions for navigating the networking field. Get Networking! And remember, Social Networking is a resource for you and your potential employer. Keep your presence on the up and up. Check out this episode of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Thank you for listening! Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Show Summary: Welcome to Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. In this episode Serina and Jeff talk about the importance of weaning yourself off the services provided by your college student services office. How to take charge of your independence and hone the skills that you will be transferring into the workplace and the career that you want.  Disability Services at colleges are needed, and can be a tool for you to use; however, for your own success in the workplace, learning the skills for the services you receive from Disability services will serve you better once you leave college and enter the workforce. Join the Job Insights team, Serina and Jeff, as they leave the Disability Services Office behind.  Get Prepped, you’re seeking employment. Check out this episode of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Contact: You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.

Job Insights #9, A Success Story: Meet Emily Zimmermann – One in a Million – Survivor, Advocate and Accessibility Tester Full Transcript Below. Welcome to the 9th episode of Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. On this 9th episode of Job Insights Serina and Jeff bring you a success Story from Emily Zimmermann. Emily survived 4 major surgeries to remove a Softball-size brain tumor which ultimately left her totally blind and having to face major changes in her young life. Emily took on the challenges and transitioned from high school to college and is now approaching her year mark of her internship. She never imagined herself working with accessibility, computer coding and making a difference in the world of accessibility. Emily has a passion of telling her story and that is how Serina hooked up with Emily. After listening to Emily speak at a conference, she contacted Emily and asked her to join us in the Job Insights Studios. From her childhood to her graduation from college and her work testing accessibility, Emily will take you on her journey and give us great advice first hand on what it was like and is like to day doing what she does. It is not what she dreamed of doing but it must be what was meant to be.   We hope you enjoy this Job Insights episode and you can send your feedback and suggestions to the Job Insights team by email Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network.   A big Thank You goes out to CheeChaufor his beautiful music! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store   Full Transcript: Job Insights #9, A Success Story: Meet Emily Zimmermann – One in a Million – Survivor, Advocate and Accessibility Tester Emily Zimmermann: I got the call saying that the MRI showed that I had a brain tumor, and it was pushing on my optic nerve. At that point, it was the size of a softball. Jeff Thompson: Job Insights, podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Emily Zimmermann: It was a long time where it was very hard. You're angry and upset and you don't understand. Now, I can look back, but that's certainly a process. It's not something you can just be at that point, and I think that's how a lot of things in life are. Jeff Thompson: To help you navigate the employment world and give you job insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. Serena Gilbert: But in middle school, you're really not ... for me, I just wanted to be, quote, unquote, "Normal." Jeff Thompson: And you can find the Job Insights podcast on BlindAbilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities Network with hosts, Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson, and you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.com. Leave us some feedback or suggest some topics that we cover on Twitter @JobInsightsVIP, and check out the Job Insights support group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community. Emily Zimmermann: Going back to your home but small city, and you having all that independence just taken away is very difficult. I mean I'm definitely not super, super tech savvy, so half the stuff that's out there, I don't even really know about, which is super sad. Serena Gilbert: Oh, just keep listening to the Blind Abilities Network. You'll learn all kinds of new stuff. Shameless plug there. Sorry. Emily Zimmermann: Then I've gotten to do some coding, some different JavaScript and HTML and BSF, just different things like that. So it's so cool because there's such a variety of different things. I love it all. It's been great. Jeff Thompson: Whoa. Whoa. Let's back up here, Emily. You were just saying that you're low tech- Serena Gilbert: Yeah, I'm confused. Jeff Thompson: ... low tech, and now she's coding and going into [crosstalk] Serena Gilbert: JavaScript. Jeff Thompson: Learn about resources for training, education, and employment opportunities. Emily Zimmermann: Just many difficult things to get through, but you work through each one, and yeah. Jeff Thompson: Now please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights. Jeff Thompson: How you doing, Serena? Serena Gilbert: I'm great, Jeff. I am really excited today. We have a special guest with us. Her name is Emily Zimmerman, and I met her at a conference that I attended her in Colorado, and she shared an amazing story of her journey from the first diagnosis that she received all the way through finishing college her at Metro State University, and I'd thought it'd be a great idea for us to hear from her and have her share her journey with our listeners. Jeff Thompson: Great. Serena Gilbert: So, welcome to the podcast, Emily. Emily Zimmermann: And thank you all so much for having me here tonight, and very excited to be a part and to be able to share some of my story. Serena Gilbert: Well, we are definitely excited to have you. Jeff Thompson: Yes, we are. Nice to meet you, Emily. Emily Zimmermann: Nice to meet you all. Serena Gilbert: So I guess the best place to start, and I was just fascinated by your story, Emily. You did such a fantastic job over at the conference, and you captivated me from the moment you started talking. I don't know if you realized this, but everyone, there was not anyone in the room that was playing on their phone or doing something else. They were all super into your story because I know that you have a different type of story than most individuals that are in our field in regards to when your vision impairment began to onset. Do you want to start [crosstalk] Emily Zimmermann: Right. So I had grown up living a very typical childhood, and then when I entered high school, I went to a small public high school, and I never had any vision problems or medical issues, but I started to have trouble seeing the board in my classes. So my dad and sister both had glasses, of course. We thought I just needed glasses of some kind. Emily Zimmermann: So I went to the eye doctor, and they did tons of tests, one of which I can distinctly remember because I was looking at those famous eye charts that we all know so well, and with one of my eyes, I couldn't read the big E on the eye chart, and after growing up always having perfect vision, it was quite a shock. But then the worst part was the eye doctor said there's nothing he could do to correct my vision with glasses. So then we go to an eye specialist, and beginning to get a little more concerned because I just thought I needed glasses, which didn't thrill me, and now I'm finding out they can't fix it with glasses. Emily Zimmermann: So several visits to the eye specialist, many, many tests, and he finally said, "I don't think we'll find anything, but we have to start ruling some things out." So he suggested getting an MRI done. At that point, I was 14, and an MRIs a huge machine, super, super loud, and it was so scary. We actually got one. It was the last one of the day. They were just getting ready to close, and on the way home that night, we got the call saying that the MRI showed that I had a brain tumor and it was pushing on my optic nerve, and it was a one-in-a-million tumor, and at that point, it was the size of a softball. So it was going to require several surgeries. Emily Zimmermann: So, again, it was a complete shock and a huge adjustment to go from thinking life's all normal and then all the sudden it's not. So the first two surgeries, I actually came out seeing better than I had going in. There were many side effects to deal with, but they were things we could deal with, we could handle. We were working through them. We were just getting through it. Then, over the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, the tumor grew back and the doctor believed after a second surgery that he had had it all. They're not sure if there was maybe a small piece left. They're not sure if it was a new tumor that grew. They don't know, and ultimately, it doesn't matter. Emily Zimmermann: But the third surgery, the possibility that was always there happened, and I came out of the operation unable to see. The doctors and surgeons talked to my parents, and even though it was incredibly risky, they asked about going in a fourth time, just two days later, to try to repair my vision. And they did go in a fourth time, but it was too late and the damage was permanent. Emily Zimmermann: Now, on top of having to recover from two back-to-back brain surgeries and having to start to relearn how to live life, I mean completely relearn how to live life. I mean I can very vaguely remember nurses and people coming into the hospital room and they showed me basics of how to eat and orient myself with the food on my plate, things that seem so elementary to us, but here I was at 16 years old and I needed to relearn all these things. Emily Zimmermann: And then going back to school was a whole new thing, and, again, I had to relearn how to read using Braille and I had to relearn how to get around with a cane and all of those things, which was incredibly difficult. And, yes, we can't change the situation we're in. We can't change the situation we're given, but it's wonderful having had been able to see colors and see things, but the transition was very, very hard. Serena Gilbert: Now, Emily, you mentioned that you went back to school. So did you go back to the same high school that you were at prior to the diagnosis? Emily Zimmermann: I did, yes. I grew up in a small city, so they didn't have a ton of options to begin with, and while I could have, I suppose, gone to ... they had a school for the blind in Columbia, which would have been an hour and a half away or something like that, at that point, we didn't really think about or consider me going away during the weeks and stuff like that. So we made it work. Jeff Thompson: Emily, with all this happening so suddenly and so tragically, where did you find the drive to move forward, and where did you get the information to find a pathway forward? Emily Zimmermann: Honestly, for me, a big part of it is I have a strong faith, so my faith is a big part of what helped me just get through, but, like you're saying, I had a huge support system. Even though it was a very small city, I found through my church a visually impaired lady who gave me information on the National Federation for the Blind and the chapter for the area and just the community gathering around me and a closer knit community, people like that, just was a huge, huge help besides, like I said, my faith was a tremendous help. Serena Gilbert: I have another question for you, Emily, before we move past your high school days. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. Serena Gilbert: Did you find that your close friends treated you any differently, or were they pretty supportive? Because sometimes that transition can be difficult not only for the individual experiencing the sudden loss of vision but also those around that person. Emily Zimmermann: Yes. So I'm going to say it was difficult for them as well because they were not there. They just were not supportive at all, and every one of my quote, unquote, "friends" left, and that also made just the transition and everything about it very difficult. It was a long time where it was very hard and very ... you're angry and upset and you don't understand. Now, I can look back, and be like, "If that's how they are, I'm better off without them," but that's certainly a process. It's not something you can just be at that point, and I think that's how a lot of things in life are. Yeah, they were, unfortunately, not supportive. Jeff Thompson: Emily, was there a sense of loss? I'm not talking about just a loss of vision, but a loss of identity, who you were, and how you would define yourself at that time? Emily Zimmermann: Very, very much so, just because everything I knew was different, and, to some extent, I mean not because of anything I could but because that desire was gone. All of my dreams were gone because they just had all changed. So I think very much so there was that feeling and that loss at first. But you refind yourself and you refind yourself in different ways, and you have to believe that those different ways are just what's supposed to be. Jeff Thompson: Do you have any key turning points that you remember? Emily Zimmermann: Well, one key for sure, I lost my vision as a sophomore in high school, and that after high school, I knew I needed some training, and that's when I came out to Colorado from South Carolina to the Colorado Center for the Blind. And I was out there one year at the training program they have because I just had so much I needed to learn. I was learning things in school, but it was just a half hour each day or something. So being in the intense, intense training program was a huge help, and at the same time, it was obviously incredibly difficult. Yeah, I think that was just one of the huge points where extremely difficult but totally paid off in the end. Jeff Thompson: You mentioned that you had someone from your hometown that was visually impaired, and she gave you some information. What was it like when you went to the Colorado Center for the Blind and found so many other students, so many other people that had blindness as well? Emily Zimmermann: It was honestly very different. I mean it wasn't, obviously, bad or good or anything like that. It was just different for me because being in a small town, there was just so little of that and just so few of us. I mean I know when I went out I was stared at, and, obviously, probably still am to some extent today, but we were just a very, very, very minority there. I mean the two of us probably were two out of maybe 10 in the whole city limits, all that area, and that's a big stretch. Jeff Thompson: So when you got to Colorado, that must have been a big change when you had so many people. Emily Zimmermann: Exactly. So when I got to Colorado, and then, like you said, was surrounded by them at the Colorado Center for the Blind, it was just a huge change, and not good or bad. It was just a huge change. Jeff Thompson: Did you find any role models? Emily Zimmermann: Definitely, and different things in different people because some people were extremely just adventurous in their traveling whereas other people just amazing in their cooking. So I totally had role models just with different skills and abilities, which was great. I liked that a lot. Serena Gilbert: Emily, what was the hardest part about transitioning to the Colorado Center for the Blind? Emily Zimmermann: Ooh, the hardest part. I mean I'm trying to think of the best way to put this. I think the fact that, for your own good, they push you so hard, but then if you break, they're not necessarily going to be there to help wipe your tears. You know what I mean? The pushing had to happen, and I understand that, but I never felt necessarily ... I don't know. I don't know how else to put it, but it was just a very tough program, but I think the toughness of it is what helped build the character. Jeff Thompson: I can understand exactly where you're coming from. I taught at Blind Incorporated. I taught woodworking, and I was a student there at one time, and I think you start to identify with some of the instructors or some of the other people and you find your own comfort zone within the confines of the camp, the training center. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. Jeff Thompson: Kind of after hours when everyone goes back to the apartments and stuff, you start finding your own little group or comfort zone. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. Jeff Thompson: Serena, you haven't been to a training center, have you? Serena Gilbert: I have not, so, Emily, to give you a little bit of background on myself, I have retinitis pigmentosa, so I've had that I guess throughout my whole life, but I really didn't start receiving blindness-specific services until probably ... it was like middle school, I want to say. But in middle school, you're really not ... for me, I just wanted to be quote, unquote, "normal." I didn't want a special lock on my locker. I'd rather struggle and put the wrong code in three times before I do it myself. I didn't want to walk around with a cane. I did not want to feel different. Middle school's awkward enough without adding, "Oh, this girl has a white cane too," on top of everything. Serena Gilbert: I really didn't embrace truly using blindness-specific tools and learning screen readers and things like that until I was actually a sophomore in college and that was more- Emily Zimmermann: Oh, wow. Serena Gilbert: Yeah, well, because I still have some usable vision, and back then, I had enough where I could even read regular print. It just took me forever, but in college, that doesn't cut it. So I finally realized ... I got a sample of JAWS and taught myself how to use it and all the sudden it was like, "Holy cow. This is way faster than struggling for an hour to read one chapter." And that's when I really started embracing using the cane and using some more blindness-specific tools. Serena Gilbert: They did offer me the opportunity to do a residential type of program, but at the time, I had commitments with college and I had a part-time job, so I could not be gone for that long. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah, that makes sense. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, and I think that's a big difference between ... so many people, it depends on where they are in life when it comes to a training type of center, especially residential, especially where you're living. And you traveled all the way from, wow, South Carolina? Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. Jeff Thompson: To Colorado. Now, how was that process when you decided you wanted to leave South Carolina to go to there? You must have went through your voc rehab to get authorized. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. [inaudible] very smoothly. They were a huge part of the transition. They were the ones who recommended coming out to the Colorado Center for the Blind, and then when I decided I wanted to stay, they were totally helpful in the transition process. So it was honestly a very good transition. Jeff Thompson: Oh, that's great, because some people really find it a real stickler to get them to override being sent to somewhere within their state or someplace close and stuff. So that's great that you had that opportunity and took advantage of it. Serena Gilbert: I am curious though, Emily. How was that transition for your mom? Emily Zimmermann: Well, she actually writes about some of it. She has a book that she titled, "She's One in a Million," because the brain tumor I had was a one-in-a-million brain tumor. So she writes about some of those transitions in the book, but I know it was very difficult. The transition just with me losing my sight, and then when I came out here, it was very difficult at first. So just many difficult things to get through, but you work through each one, and yeah. Jeff Thompson: So I have a question for you. While teaching for quite a few years at Blind Incorporated, I watched students come and go and come and go, and I always remember once they leave through that door and go down the sidewalk and they go off into the world again, they've been at the training center for six to nine months, there they go, you just wonder what it's like, especially if they're going to go return to a small town where they don't have the transit system, where they don't have the grid system or the public transportation available to them. What was that like for you when you left Colorado? Emily Zimmermann: It was very hard because you're used to having all those things available, and you feel this liberation and independence that you can have and feel you do have, and then going back to your home but a small city and you having all that independence just taken away is very difficult. I mean that's a big reason why I'm back out here now is because you miss it, and it's hard to go from having it to not having it all the sudden. Jeff Thompson: Just like losing your sight. Emily Zimmermann: Exactly. [inaudible] changes you can avoid, by all means, avoid it. Serena Gilbert: And Denver has an excellent public transit system with the light rail, the buses- Emily Zimmermann: Oh, yeah. Serena Gilbert: I'm jealous, because I'm down here in Colorado Springs, and ours isn't the best. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing down here, up here, whatever. Jeff Thompson: Well, likewise in Minneapolis, we have two training centers, probably a mile apart. There's always 30, 35, 40 students out there exploring, traveling, and doing stuff. So even the people of the city get acclimated to seeing people who are blind around. Emily Zimmermann: Wow. Serena Gilbert: So, Emily, how soon after you completed the program at the Colorado Center for the Blind did you decide to come back out for college? Emily Zimmermann: So I completed the Center for the Blind in May. Then I went back home. I had already applied at a couple different schools, and I had been looking at Metro just as a possibility. Then I applied ... I want to say early June and [inaudible] it all then came together pretty quickly because then once I got the acceptance, I thought, "Okay, well, then it's meant to be." And then you call ... I mean I had been accepted and everything at Winthrop and already contacted them to put all my scholarships on hold for a year when I was at the Center for the Blind. It's like everything that's all set up there was on hold for the year that I was at the Center for the Blind, and I was basically just coming back. Emily Zimmermann: So it was just surreal because all the plans I'd made were, in a good way, no more, but it's like I had to call them and change it, but it was all great. And then I just organized things with the disability office at Metro, and Metro was a great experience, great experience. Serena Gilbert: And Jeff and I have talked a lot about ... gosh, Jeff, it feels like forever ago, on our very first episode you remember we talked about the difference between getting accommodations in high school versus in college? Jeff Thompson: Oh, yeah. It's quite a difference because you have a disability services office that you got to get connected with, and then all your individual professors, you don't have a TVI anymore or a district teacher. You're got to put this all into action yourself. Emily Zimmermann: Yep. Absolutely. I totally agree. That was a huge thing I noted, and it was following up with professors, following up with different people, that's all on you. So I totally get what you're saying. Jeff Thompson: What tools did you use to keep all that organized? You were pretty new with Braille, and probably were using JAWS, I imagine. Emily Zimmermann: Yes. Jeff Thompson: So what was your go-to tools when you first started college? Emily Zimmermann: Definitely, like you said, JAWS. Honestly, at first, I didn't use many tools at all just because I was so new to everything. I used a recorder. I used the pure note-taker option they have, and then I did use, as my Braille got a little better and a little faster, I used a Braille note-taker, the Braille Edge 40, and that has been great, especially since Braille has improved. But those are really the main things for college that have been helpful. Emily Zimmermann: So, I mean, I'm definitely not I mean I'm definitely not super, super tech savvy, so half the stuff that's out there, I don't even really know about, which is super sad, but probably just as well because I can't afford it anyway. Serena Gilbert: Oh, just keep listening to the Blind Abilities Network. You'll learn all kinds of new stuff. Shameless plug there. Sorry. Emily Zimmermann: I'm sure I will learn way too much. Serena Gilbert: So, college went overall pretty smooth for you, Emily? Emily Zimmermann: It did. It certainly did. I mean I'm sure I had some professors ... I know I did, who handled my blindness better than others, but overall, I certainly didn't have any major problems by any means, and, overall, it was a very good experience. So it was good. It was very good. Serena Gilbert: And tell us, what was your major? Emily Zimmermann: Communications. Serena Gilbert: So, Emily, I understand that you're working at an internship right now. Emily Zimmermann: Yes. I'm super excited about it. I've been loving it. I've done it ever since this past September, so coming up on a year. And what I like is because I'm an intern, I get all sorts of different work. I've had the opportunity to test some of their products for accessibility, and then I go through all the different usability tests that they have, and I tell them what does and doesn't work for me being blind. Then I've gotten to do some coding, some different JavaScript and HTML and BSF, just different things like that. So it's so cool because there's such a variety of different things. I love it all. It's been great. Jeff Thompson: Whoa. Whoa. Let's back up here, Emily. You were just saying that you're low tech- Serena Gilbert: Yeah, I'm confused. Jeff Thompson: ... low tech, and now she's coding and going into [crosstalk] Serena Gilbert: JavaScript. Jeff Thompson: That's impressive. Serena Gilbert: I think it's really cool you do accessibility testing because you can see an immediate impact with what you're doing. That's awesome. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Jeff Thompson: It is a great sense of being employed, even having an internship and it's coming up on a year, but it's a good feeling to being rewarded for the work that you're doing. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. I totally agree. It's cool. What I love is to be able to fix something and to see the result right then. I love that just immediate effect and just to be able to think, "This is helping so many people like me be able to access the internet better and easier and more effectively." I love thinking about that, like a firsthand experience, just like I obviously get how it helps people. And so it's just ... I don't know. It's so cool. Serena Gilbert: So, Emily, this is going to be a question that I start asking everyone that's in the position that you're in as far as maybe fresh out of college or that sort of thing, and it's a cheesy question so I apologize in advance, but, Emily, what is your dream job? Emily Zimmermann: So my dream job would be to be a motivational speaker, to go to different companies, schools, churches, sharing how I lost my vision, but, more importantly, how I got through the difficulty of losing my vision and just sharing hope and that there's hope in whatever we go through, and whether what I'm doing now, the coding, testing, that's a part of that for a full-time job and just doing a lot of speaking on the side, I don't know. That'd be fine if that's the case, but the passion is in the speaking. Jeff Thompson: Oh, that's great. That's great. Serena Gilbert: And you definitely have a talent for it. Emily Zimmermann: Oh, thank you so much. Serena Gilbert: So before we wrap up the interview, we have a question that we ask every single person that we've probably had on the podcast so far, because it's been so long. Jeff Thompson: It's not a math question. Serena Gilbert: No, we promise. Emily Zimmermann: Good. Serena Gilbert: There's no wrong answers. You don't even have to study for it, but a lot of our listeners are either young adults that are right exactly where you're at, maybe even coming out of high school or finishing up college- Jeff Thompson: And we also have listeners who are newly blind, like you were at one time. Serena Gilbert: Exactly, or that are looking at career changes because of the new blindness. The question that we have is, "What advice do you have for somebody transitioning either out of high school or into a new career?" Emily Zimmermann: My advice ... well, it's multi-fold. First of all, it'd be, "Don't limit yourself," because doing something like coding or testing a website, I never would have imagined myself doing. The only reason I'm doing it is because of the internships I was pushed into when I was college. I needed an internship just to get something on my resume, so I went to my advisor, and that was the only thing he could really think of that'd be easy to get to, on campus, and so I took it because I needed something and that's when I fell in love with that kind of thing. So I think that's the biggest thing, just being open to try something you maybe wouldn't have tried and maybe it doesn't go perfect with your degree or whatever, but that's the big thing. Emily Zimmerman: Then, kind of goes with that, is also being open to people around you, your boss, your coworkers, the people you encounter. I think that just so helps form your work experience and being able to view people in a more positive way just, I don't know, helps your work experience be more positive. Serena Gilbert: That is great advice. Jeff Thompson: Well, Emily, I just want to say the component of an internship, I think they work that into degrees, and it's kind of like volunteering. Sometimes you get to explore some areas that you're maybe interested or not or just wanting to do it to stay busy, but you might find an interest. It's a opportunity. It's a safety net type of situation, at first. Then you found a love for it, a passion for it, and you're making the best of it. So good for you. Emily Zimmermann: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Serena Gilbert: So, Emily, if any of our listeners would like to learn more about you, where can they find you? Emily Zimmermann: Absolutely. They can go to my website at www.brokencrayonsejz.com. Serena Gilbert: Perfect. Well, you all have just been listening to us interview Emily Zimmerman. She doesn't know this yet, but she's probably going to make another appearance on your podcast in a few months so we can catch up with her and see where she's at because I think our listeners are going to fall in love with you, and I just love that you share your story and are so honest and upfront with us. Emily Zimmermann: Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a true pleasure. Serena Gilbert: We really appreciate you, Emily, and thank you so much for sharing. Jeff Thompson: Thanks, Emily. Emily Zimmermann: Thank you. Jeff Thompson: Serena, that was a great guest. Emily was just awesome. Serena Gilbert: I can't wait to have her back. Jeff Thompson: Emily, that was a good find. That must have been a great convention. Serena Gilbert: Oh, it was fantastic. Like I said, when we were in the general session, you could have heard a pin drop. Everybody was just captivated by what Emily was sharing with us, and I cannot tell her again how much I appreciate how open she was on this interview. Jeff Thompson: I know you got to listening and you just started sinking in further and further into her story, and it's like you could really relate to it, and yet, you wouldn't wish it upon anybody, yourself, or anybody, one in a million. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. And I'd like to check that book out, because she did say her mom had a book called One in a Million, so I'm going to have to look that up. Jeff Thompson: A lot of the transitions from a mother's point of view. That must be interesting. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. Well, we hope you enjoyed this episode, and, again, Jeff, do you want to tell them where you can find us? Jeff Thompson: Yeah, so you can go to www.BlindAbilities.com, check out all the Job Insights podcasts and you can also find us on Twitter @JobInsightsVIP. Serena Gilbert: And on Facebook under Job Insights, and we also have a wonderful support group called Job Insights Support Group. Jeff Thompson: And you can also send us email, feedback at- Serena Gilbert: JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com. Jeff Thompson: Great. Thanks for listening. Serena Gilbert: We'll see you next time. Jeff Thompson: And thank you, Chee Chau, for the beautiful music. You can follow Chee Chau on Twitter @LCheeChau And, as always, we want to thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye-bye.   [Music]  [Transition noise]   When we share, What we see, Through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. On Twitter @blindabilities. Download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.        

Job Insights #8: The Job Interview – Get Prepped, You’re Going In! Full Transcript Below Welcome to Episode 8 of  Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. Job Insights Episode #8 is all about the Job Interview, from researching the company, finding out what exactly they do, what they produce and what is the latest news on this company? We discuss what to wear, what to do before the day of the interview arrives and how to be prepared so you can best let them know that you are the right person for the job. Serina talks about the STARInterview Response Method and technique that will help you prepare yourself for the interview questions. Glass Dooris a Job Search web site that will help you get the job that fits your life. Join the Job Insights team, Serina and Jeff, as they jump right into the deep end of the Job Interview, Get Prepped, You’re Going In! Check out episode 8 of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Thank you for listening! You can find out more about Job Insights on the web at BlindAbilities.comand follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIPSend us your feedback and suggestions by email. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store FullTranscript: Job Insights #8: The Job Interview – Get Prepped, You’re Going In! Serena Gilbert: So that when you're practicing and tailoring your answers to some of the commonly asked interview questions, you have an idea of how to frame all of your answers. Jeff Thompson: Job Insights. A podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Jeff Thompson: Three copies, you should be good. Your resume is a sheet of paper, a cover letter, maybe a sheet of paper. So it's not like you're taking in a briefcase on wheels. Jeff Thompson: To help you navigate the employment world and give you job insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. Serena Gilbert: Practice, practice, practice interview questions. Jeff Thompson: And you can find the Job Insights podcast on blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network, with host Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson. And you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.come. Leave us some feedback or suggest some topics that we cover. On Twitter @jobinsightsvip and check out the Job Insights support group on Facebook, where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community. Jeff Thompson: Relate it to something that you've done, and we've all had experiences in different areas and stuff, so hopefully you have something that will relate to the question they ask. Learn about resources for training, education and employment opportunities. Serena Gilbert: If you can, getting contact information or business cards of the interview panel so that you can use that to send thank you emails to them when you arrive back home. Jeff Thompson: Little things, or just little tips that might help push you to the top of the list. Serena Gilbert: Jeff, would you like to learn something new today? Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative), always ready to learn. Serena Gilbert: Always. You're a good student, right? Jeff Thompson: ... yeah? Serena Gilbert: That had a question mark at the end.   Speaker 2: Now please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights. Jeff Thompson: Hey, Serena. Serena Gilbert: Hey Jeff, how are you? Jeff Thompson: I'm doing good. How you doing? Serena Gilbert: I am doing great. Jeff Thompson: I've got a question for you. Serena Gilbert: I don't know, I'm a little scared. What's up? Jeff Thompson: What's your greatest weakness? Serena Gilbert: That would have to be you, Jeff. Jeff Thompson: Ha ha. Serena Gilbert: You set yourself up for that one. Jeff Thompson: Because that's one of the questions, Serena, that will probably be asked at a job interview. Have you ever had that asked at an interview? Serena Gilbert: I've definitely had that question asked at every single interview that I've participated in. And it's a little bit of a catch-22, because you're torn between, "Do I say what my real weakness is, or do I pick a weakness that is kind of a weakness but can be turned into something a little bit more positive?" And spin it a little bit. So that's a question that we'll go over a little bit later in the podcast, and give you some tips with how you might tackle that and have somewhat of a prepared answer so that you can shine in that interview. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, we're gonna be talking about clothing, all the professionalism that you want to bring into this, about shutting your phone off, about your ring backs. We're gonna be talking about being prepared, what you bring to the interview and all this. What kind of interview is it gonna be? Are you gonna find out there's gonna be three in a panel or just one person? So we're gonna be talking about your approach to the whole thing, how you get yourself all ready, and I think it starts in the early morning when you decide what to put on. Serena Gilbert: Yeah, so I have kind of a pre-interview routine that I go through, personally. I know, it sounds so fancy, right? So basically, and this isn't all on the same day. This can be within the few days that you know that you have the interview. The first thing that I do is I look back at the job description that I applied for. Because you might've applied for a few different positions at the same company, and you might not quite remember the specific job description of the job that you applied for. So it's always a good idea to review the job description so that you can have an idea of, 'okay, what are the qualifications they were looking for again? What's some of the things that are really important that this person does?' So that when you're practicing and tailoring your answers to some of the commonly asked interview questions, you have an idea of how to frame all of your answers. Serena Gilbert: The next thing that I do is I research the company that I've applied for. So some of the things that I take a look at are some recent news items, maybe doing a google news search. But then I also take a look at their home page and click on the About Us part of it, because that's where we're going to find what that company is really about. They'll tell you what their mission is, what their values are. Some of them will have their vision as well. They'll also talk about what product or service they provide, or if they're like a government agency, what types of services they provide to clients and things like that. That's gonna also be important for you to take a look at when you're framing, again, the questions and answers that you would be asking and answering during the interview. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's nice to be able to have that in your back pocket for the questions that might come up. Serena Gilbert: The next thing that I do, is I take a look at where is this job interview going to occur? And there's a few different ways that you can research this. When the person calls you to schedule the interview, it is perfectly appropriate to ask, "okay, so are you the building on the northeast corner of Main and 1st Street?" That's a common question that a lot of people ask, and the person scheduling the interview definitely doesn't mind letting you know where they are, and even giving you some basic directions. That'll help you if you do need to take public transit or even para transit to kinda do a test run to see 'okay, how long is this gonna take me to get here?' It's important when you do your test run though, to make sure that you're doing it at roughly the time and day that your interview would be on. So don't do your test run on a Saturday at 2:00, because the traffic is not gonna be nearly the same as a Monday at 8:00. So whenever possible try to mimic what that type of commute would look like, so you can be prepared with how long it realistically will take for you. Jeff Thompson: And that takes a lot of pressure off you, because on the day of the interview most anybody is gonna have a little bit of butterflies and be a little nervous. Anxiety can build up. So if you've already been to a place, you know, it's so easy to return. You're not exploring anymore, you're just traveling to the destination and then you're gonna get to the door and go in. Just to alleviate some of the stress by knowing where you're going and that you can get there on time and it fits your agenda. Being there 15 to 10 minutes early is a good thing. Serena Gilbert: Well, and you had mentioned alleviating butterflies, and there's a couple of additional things that you can do to help alleviate those butterflies. They're never going to go completely away. If you're in a job interview and you're not nervous, then you might not want that job, because frankly, anytime you really want something you should have a little bit of nervousness going on. It's just human nature. But one thing you can do the day before, or even a couple days before, is pick out your interview outfit. Because that can be stressful, if the day of, you take it out of the closet and your significant other or your son says, "Why is that so wrinkled?" Yeah. That's not fun, right? So pick it out a couple days before, try it on. Make sure everything fits, make sure there's no buttons missing, because that, again, could completely throw you off the day of. Iron it, put it away where it's not going to get any sort of fuzz or hair on it if you use a service animal, that sort of thing. Jeff Thompson: Take off the dry cleaning tag. Serena Gilbert: That's helpful, because that might be a little itchy, right? Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Serena Gilbert: The other really big thing that you can do, and this is gonna be a little bit of a longer discussion, is practice, practice, practice interview questions. And we'll talk about some commonly asked interview questions coming up next, but it's gonna feel a little bit awkward when you are practicing these questions. I'm not gonna act like it's not. But the more you practice it, the more you gather your thoughts, the easier it will be in the interview to recall that information and be able to chat a little bit more naturally with the people interviewing you. Jeff Thompson: Now Serena, at vocational rehab in Colorado, they do offer mock interviews because in Minnesota we do the same thing where you can do mock interviews and gain some experience. Serena Gilbert: We do offer mock interviews and we typically do mock interviews where it's maybe the counselor that you're working with as well as two other staff members that you've probably never worked with before or are not familiar with. Because we found that when you interview with your DVR counselor, you're pretty comfortable with that person when you're at that stage in the game, so it's not quite as reflective of what the real job interview might feel like. Jeff Thompson: That's great. And that's a service that's available to you, so if you would like to get some more experience, I mean, you can do it with your friend, your mom, your sister and stuff like that, but I like that idea that bringing in some people that you haven't worked with because then the anxiety comes up, and that's how it's gonna be in the real job interview. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. So  Jeff, I've a question for you. Jeff Thompson: Go ahead. Serena Gilbert: This one's an easy one, I promise. So this next question is asked probably in 100% of interviews. I'm sure I'm exaggerating, but I don't think I've been to one that this wasn't asked. So Jeff, tell me about yourself. Jeff Thompson: Well, I'm very young, dashing. I like walks along the beach and sunsets, and I don't think I want to go there. Serena Gilbert: No. Jeff Thompson: I want to stick right with the professionalism. I've been in recording media for 14 years, I started out in a band and I transitioned into podcasting later on, and I've been doing that for five years now. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. Many individuals when they hear the 'tell me about yourself,' tend to go off on a tangent into their personal life. Most organizations when they're asking you that, that's not what they are looking for. They don't need to hear that you're a single mom of three kids and you recently got divorced and you just moved to Colorado. That, honestly, will maybe put some more questions in their head that are a little bit distracting to the interview, and frankly, not really relevant to your skillset and your abilities and capabilities. So this is the question where you would want to use, we call it either a two minute pitch or an elevator pitch. There's all kinds of different ways that people refer to it. Basically you talk about your skills, abilities, education and experience, briefly, as it relates to the position. Serena Gilbert: So as Jeff demonstrated there, if he was applying for a media specialist position, for example, it's great that he mentioned the background as a musician and how he's been doing podcasting for five years. That immediately, honestly, a lot of employers would be like, "Tell me more about the podcasting, tell me a little bit about that." And it'll open it up for them to ask you additional questions and it might even make you feel a little bit more relaxed in the job interview. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Serena Gilbert: So Jeff, I think you asked me this earlier, so I'm gonna ask you another interview question for you. Jeff Thompson: Uh oh. Serena Gilbert: Tell me your greatest weakness. Jeff Thompson: My greatest weakness is I have a hard time not bringing work home. Because I'm always wired for doing stuff, and I want to get things done all the time. So when I'm at home, I'll still be working and that kind of thing. But you know, if you answer something like that, like you're an overachiever and stuff like that, wouldn't they rather hire someone that has a more balanced family life where they don't burn out? So that's why I kinda exaggerated that way. Serena Gilbert: Well, see you're gonna disagree with me. That's okay though. See, that one I don't see as like a horrible weakness, because yes, they want to see that work-life balance, but when somebody says that to me, it depends on how you frame it. Because when you first started talking, I thought, 'well, does he not stay on task at work so he has to take it home?' But then as you went on, it really seemed like it was more, 'I'm a hard worker and I really like what I do.' Jeff Thompson: Well, I usually have these cars that break down once in a while, so sometimes I'm late for work unexpectedly and stuff, I think. But you know, I really have a passion for these cars and stuff, so I should be getting better at that, but yeah, I'll probably be late once in a while. Serena Gilbert: Alright, so let's break down Jeff's answer. So Jeff mentioned that he has unreliable vehicles and that he is late to work, in his words, 'every once in a while.' So as an employer, I'm thinking, 'he's probably late all the time, because people tend to downplay that.' So it might be accurate, but that's not something that you'd want to share with an employer, necessarily. So we understand that that was a little bit exaggerated, but we wanted to demonstrate the kind of things that might distract an employer with a potential answer that you have to that weakness question. So one thing that if you really wanted to use what Jeff responded with is, "okay, in the past I have had some issues with being on time to work. However, since, I have gotten more reliable transportation. I have left my home earlier," that sort of thing. I would highly recommend, though, not using any sort of answer to that question that points out punctuality to an employer. Jeff Thompson: If I was asked that question again ... Serena Gilbert: Would you like a round two? Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Serena Gilbert: Alright, Jeff, tell me about your greatest weakness. Jeff Thompson: I think my greatest weakness is, it come down to delegating and stuff. I believe leadership comes in a form of delegation to hand the ball off to some people, but when, in time crunches and stuff, I tend to build a narrow team to make sure the job gets done and it may seem like I'm not giving opportunities to everyone, but sometimes there's times to hand the ball off to some people, but sometimes you have to keep it yourself. So delegating is a good skill of mine, I like delegating, I think a teamwork works great, and I think my weakness is I need to branch out a little bit more with that. Serena Gilbert: See, and I think that's a perfect answer, Jeff, because it shows that you have leadership skills, and it shows that you understand that maybe you could delegate a little bit more, but the only reason that you're not is because you care about meeting a deadline and having quality work. So in an employer's mind, those are all great characteristics to have and it's nothing that would prevent them from hiring you. That's the trick to the 'what's your greatest weakness' question. You never want to say, "I'm tardy to work all the time," or "you know, sometimes I'm a little bit slower on the computer," because that's just really big red flags to employers. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, I agree. Because you always want to leave with a positive. You always want to end it on a high note and not leave them wondering, or dragging it out into asking more questions than they really wanted to on this topic. Serena Gilbert: So there's some other types of questions that are very commonly asked in interviews called 'behavioral interview questions.' You might've heard of these, or if not, I'm sure you've been asked these and just not realized that they're behavioral interview questions. A behavioral interview question is a question that sounds a lot like, "tell me about a time when ..." Or "tell me what happened when this happened." So an example would be, "Jeff, tell me about a time when you had to manage multiple deadlines. How did you accomplish the task and what was the result?" Jeff Thompson: Yeah. And those are questions that will come up, because it'll be situation, how you handle the situation, and so you gotta be ready for stuff like that. But if something never happened like that in your life, don't make up stuff on the spot. Relate it to something that you've done, and we've all had experiences in different areas and stuff, so hopefully you have something that will relate to the question they ask. Serena Gilbert: Jeff, would you like to learn something new today? Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative), always ready to learn. Serena Gilbert: Always. You're a good student, right? Jeff Thompson: ... yeah? Serena Gilbert: That had a question mark at the end, so we'll see. But one method that I teach my clients to use when answering almost any question, this works on, even questions that aren't behavioral interview questions, is called the STAR method. So that's S T A R. So when a question is asked of you, you take the situation or task and explain that. So for the example of 'tell me about a time that you had to juggle multiple deadlines,' Jeff can talk about, gosh, this last week that he's been editing podcasts like crazy and how he approached that, how he broke that down, how he mapped out what his work was. So that, the situation or task is the fact that he had tons of podcasts that he had to get done and he wanted them out in a certain amount of time so that they're still relevant. The action that he took is how he broke down his work and how he prioritized what he needed to do first. So the result would be that Jeff met all of his deadlines and was able to release all of his podcasts on time with relevant content. Serena Gilbert: So the reason that a lot of employers a) ask behavioral questions, or b) like when people answer questions in this method, is it shows historically how you respond to any types of situations that would be similar to the work environment that they're in. Jeff Thompson: I think that's great, because people used to tie a string around a finger to remember this, that, and the other thing, and if you can relate something to the STAR thing, there you go; situation, task, action, and results. There you go. And you can do that quick enough in a two minute answer to a question. Serena Gilbert: Jeff will google that and put it in the show notes. Jeff Thompson: I will. ... Click on this. Serena Gilbert: So you've prepared for the job interview. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Serena Gilbert: You're there, you're entering the building, now what? Jeff Thompson: You're on time, too. Serena Gilbert: Yep. You're 10 minutes early, which is perfect. Jeff Thompson: Your phone is off. Serena Gilbert: You have a portfolio with you that has copies of your resume and cover letter. Jeff Thompson: And I suggest three copies. I don't think that there's too may times when you're gonna have five or ten. No one's expecting you to bring, but if you bring three copies you should be good. Your resume is a sheet of paper, cover letter, maybe a sheet of paper. So it's not like you're taking in a briefcase on wheels. Serena Gilbert: And I would suggest that you use the nicer paper for both the cover letter and resume, because although you might not be able to see it visually, but the print does look a lot better on the resume paper. It just pops a little bit more, and having that heavier card stock just presents a more professional image when you're handing those things to the employer when you sit down. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, this is something that you do in advance. Make sure that you get these copies made. Have them ready, so on your journey there, don't fold them. Put them in a portfolio thing, a nice, neat, attache case or some type of case that you bring in. Open it up and if there's one, two, or three people, hand them each one. Yeah. And that's a professional way to do it because they don't all want to be sliding a piece of paper from one person to the other. Because they all want to just glance at it. Serena Gilbert: And you might not realize it, but your interview starts the moment you walk into that lobby door. The receptionist is going to let people know if you walk in and you're having an argument on your cell phone with somebody, or if you walk in and you smell like smoke. Those are things that we really have to make sure that we're cognizant of, because the smell of cigarette smoke or even just how you walked into the door could end that interview for you before you even start it. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So when you come in, announce yourself. You'll probably have a chair to sit in. You'll sit there and you'll just wait because someone's gonna come down and greet you. And that's when you want to make sure that you can start up a conversation with the receptionist, the person that comes down to greet you and to bring you back to the interview room. That's when you're gonna have that light, personality type of conversation. You know, how's the weather, typical thing. My nephew does hiring, he's in the human services department and he hires people, I think he said he's hired over 20 people, 25 people, and he just started a couple years ago. But he says the interview starts at the door and that walk back, you can tell who a person is just how you casually talk. So remember, the interview starts when you come into that door. Serena Gilbert: And I know we've talked about this before and everybody knows my soapbox about disability disclosure and things, but that's just one more thing just to remember and think about if you do decide that you're going to disclose during the interview or, you know, they're obviously gonna see if you have a white cane or a service animal. If you do typically use a white cane, but maybe have some usable vision and you opt to not take that white cane to the job interview, just know that it could impact you in your first impression. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. I would say use your cane and if it's best, if there's lots of turns, they might start calling out, 'we'll go left here,' and you know, just pay attention to that because it's a foreign area, you haven't been there before, and get to the room. And when you get into the room and you find your seat, everyone's gonna be sitting down and stuff, make sure you get their names, whether it's their first name that you remember, try to remember their first names. And like the STAR thing, maybe you want to take one finger, two, three, and try and remember those names because it's very polite to be looking at each of the interviewers. Turn towards their voice and everything, pay attention to the three people, the two people, or the one person, that's a lot easier, but don't forget that there's other people in the room. If you can use their names, you can answer them by name. All these little, little things, they're just little tips that might help push you to the top of the list. Serena Gilbert: And a lot of people get a little flustered, because sometimes there's really long interview questions. And believe me, I've been on interview panels, we understand when somebody needs to have a question repeated, especially when there's multiple parts to it. I would rather somebody asked me to repeat the question than to not answer a good chunk of the question. Because if it's there, they want you to address it. It's not there just to add words to the question, believe me. Jeff Thompson: Yeah. Serena Gilbert: And it's also okay to take a moment to gather your thoughts before you answer the question. Again, I would rather see somebody take a couple seconds to really think about what they'd like to say rather than hear them ramble and make absolutely no sense. It's very distracting when that happens. Jeff Thompson: Typically what they really want to do is sell you on their company. And you want to sell yourself on the company. So the questions are just gonna be getting to know you, explaining what the kind of job details there are, and when they ask you are there any questions for them, you want to be prepared. You may want to ask, 'what are the expectations of this position in the next three months?' Or you might want to even ask one of the persons there, 'what do you like most about this company?' You're turning the tide onto them and they can then tell you some stuff about the company, and that might break into some more conversation. So remember to have some questions ready for them. Serena Gilbert: I really like those questions that you said, because that'll get people really excited about talking about their company, and everyone loves talking about things that they like about where they work. So Jeff, what do you think is probably one of the questions that we should avoid asking during an interview? Jeff Thompson: "When will I be making six figures?" Serena Gilbert: "What are the benefits?" Jeff Thompson: "When do I get the corner office?" Serena Gilbert: "How much money am I going to be making? What are the benefits?" That's ones that, if they're going to hire you, there's a time and place to ask and negotiate those particular things. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. Serena Gilbert: Another question that I really like to ask, and it'll take kinda getting the wording down for what you're comfortable with, but I like to ask, "What are the characteristics of an employee that you're looking to fill this position?" They will inevitably tell you, they will literally lay it out for you. You can follow up with, "well, that's fantastic. Here's some of my experience that matches some of these things." You don't say it like that, but basically, "you know, I heard you say that you like somebody that can juggle deadlines. I want to let you know that in the past I worked in a position in podcasting where I had to edit multiple podcasts a week on a deadline and I was able to successfully do that." Right Jeff? Jeff Thompson: Yeah. There's that answer with the question mark at the end again. Serena Gilbert: Maybe. You know, you've only got like 400 episodes under your belt, right? Jeff Thompson: Yeah, but those questions, they're just questions to get to know you. Questions to see what experiences you have. Serena Gilbert: Mm-hmm (affirmative). The interview is the time to really show your personality. Just like you were saying. They're interviewing you to see if you fit in basically with the office culture, honestly. That's the biggest thing that we're looking for when we're doing job interviews. Jeff Thompson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I would do some research by typing in 'questions to ask at interviews,' or 'questions that are asked at interviews.' You can always just research that because there might be that one question, you might read 30 of them, but there might be that one that just fits you really good and you might want to keep that in your back pocket. Serena Gilbert: So if anyone has been following the Job Insights Facebook page as well as our Job Insights support group, they would notice that I post a lot of information from a website called Glass Door. That is a website that has a ton of just articles and tips and things like that for job searching and interviewing. But most importantly, you can type in a company and you will find information specific about their interviewing process, and what types of questions are asked, what type of interviews they do, and it's basically like getting insider information because the information actually comes from people who have gone through the interview process before. Serena Gilbert: So this is irrelevant, but it's just a really good example, because you know, Toys R Us is no longer here, but for those who have applied at Toys R Us before, they do their interviews very uniquely. They would do group interviews and ask some very unique questions and the manner in which they narrow down people was way different. You're not gonna be by yourself at that job interview. And some of the more progressive companies do that, where it's this really weird, big group networking thing almost. So if that's the way that the company operates that you're gonna be applying for, it would be real helpful to know that before you got there, because that would be pretty overwhelming if you didn't know that that was gonna be the case when you arrived at a company. Jeff Thompson: Oh yeah. So be prepared. In this job interviewing process we went to the job hunt, now you're in the job interview, all this preparation work that you're doing, all this research on the company, is good practice because if you don't land this job, you're gonna have the next one, and you need to go through the same routines and stuff. And after a while you're gonna have these questions down. You know, you're gonna map it over to a different company, you're gonna change a few words here and there, and the same with your resume. Your resume is a working piece of document that works for that company. It might not work for the next company. So this is a good time to go through these, if you've got a mock interview you get to go through this process all the way through it, and then try it out on an interview, a real one, and you might have to try it out on a couple more. But as you go through this process, things are going to become second nature and you're gonna start to wing it a little bit better. And who knows, you might land that job you want. Serena Gilbert: So you're at the interview, and you just did a fantastic job answering all the questions, you've asked your follow up questions. Before you leave, there's just one more thing that you have to do. I would recommend, if you can, getting contact information or business cards of the interview panel so that you can use that to send thank you emails to them when you arrive back home. I am very traditional when it comes to that. A lot of people say that they don't send thank you emails, but it's one more opportunity to get your name in front of the hiring manager, to get your name in front of the panel, and to even bring up something that came up in the interview and discuss that. So a really good way to send a thank you email would be, "Thank you for the opportunity to interview for the Media Specialist position. I really enjoyed hearing about the new podcast content that you guys will be producing, and I hope I have the opportunity to contribute to your team. I look forward to following up with you," and then you can put your phone number, your email address, anything you want. Just to kinda tie that up and a lot of times people will even respond with a thank you. Which is kinda nice. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, it's not where you want to say "peace out, brother," and all that stuff. You just wanna kinda be cordial and professional. Like we said at the beginning, this is where you up your professional game. I used to have an email called 'ezj101' and a person actually told me, it was a counselor in the disabilities services office, she said to me, " Jeff, you're in college now. You're going to get opportunities and I just don't think this email address really carries that very far." So I got rid of the 'ezj' and I went with jthompson. Serena Gilbert: That's a good point. I don't know that we've talked about email addresses in our previous podcasts, but yes. Please, a very professional email address that's some form of your name, and sometimes numbers, but sometimes numbers can also date you, so be careful. Especially if you put your birth year after it. But some form of your name. You don't put 'ilovecows@gmail.com' or something like that, because that will not be a good, positive impression for your employer. Jeff Thompson: No? Serena Gilbert: No. I don't care if you love cows. That could be your personal one, but not for your professional job search. Jeff Thompson: Unless you're being hired on a farm hand position, that might work. So be aware of all the stuff that you're gonna be given. They're gonna give you business cards, you might have a business card to give to them. You're gonna have a resume, you're gonna have all this professional stuff going. You don't want to wear in the squeaky shoes or the shoes that light up, you know. You really want to knock this out. Get yourself a lint roller, get yourself someone, I don't know, some people have these amazon devices, the look or something like that? But put on an outfit, ask someone to give you their opinion of it, 'looks good, you look great, don't worry about it.' So go with that. Up your game, up your professionalism. This is real stuff, this is going for a job, this is a career, a lifetime journey and this is gonna be experienced, everybody remembers every interview they've ever had. And there's a reason for that, because it's a moment, and it's a moment that you really want to go in and bring your best game. Serena Gilbert: So what comes next is unfortunately that dreaded waiting game. So one question that we forgot to mention that you can ask at the job interview is "When do you intend on making a decision?" That's a perfectly appropriate question to ask. A lot of people are prepared to answer it, and typically they'll tell you something like, "oh, probably in about two weeks' time." If they tell you that it's going to be two weeks before they make a decision, I would recommend not following up before that two week mark, because if they're telling you two weeks, it's probably a reason that they're telling you that. Jeff Thompson: So you're saying not following up like sending a thank you? You're saying not following up by inquiring again about the job? Serena Gilbert: Definitely send the thank you as soon as you get home. But as far as actually making a phone call or following up and saying, "Hey, I'm just following up on the job interview." If they've told you it's gonna be two weeks I would wait til right around that two week mark to call them again. Jeff Thompson: There you go. Write it down, put it on the calendar. Serena Gilbert: Did we miss any topics, before we wrap up? Your chair squeaked. Jeff Thompson: Well, I had the thing, so I had to, you know. Put my hand up under my chin and look off into the wilderness. I know there's a lot of information that was given on here, and there may be more information that you might still be seeking. So I would talk to your counselor and see if you can set up a mock interview, because that experience, as Serena was talking about, you need to keep asking these questions, going through the questions that might be asked and when all of a sudden you're stumped one of them, like you know, right at the beginning when Serena asked me a question, I was stumped a little bit there. It happens. So if you can practice this, once you're in the groove of job interviewing, repetitious, asking in the mock interviews, see what your counselor has in their employment team that could probably help you out. Serena Gilbert: Jeff, what's on the docket for our next podcast? Jeff Thompson: Well, Serena, I think next time we'll be talking about reasonable accommodations. Serena Gilbert: We are. Sometimes it's hard to figure out 'what can I request? What's reasonable? What's not reasonable?' So I think it might help a little bit, just to chat a little bit about what an employer considers reasonable. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, because what's reasonable to one employer may not be reasonable to another one. And I see that word a lot and it's kinda vague. It's nice to hash that out, and I think if they can actually do something for you to get work done in an easier time, less money, there you go. Serena Gilbert: Well, we hope that you've enjoyed this episode of the Job Insights podcast. As always, you can always find us on Twitter @jobinsightsvip or on Facebook under Job Insights. Thanks so much and we will chat with you next time. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, we'll see you next time Serena, on Job Insights. And you can follow Job Insights on Twitter @jobinsightsvip. Send us an email, jobinsights@blindabilities.com. We're part of the Blind Abilities network and you can find us on the web at www.blindabilities.com. And thank you Chee Chau for the beautiful music. And you can follow Chee Chau on Twitter @elcheechau And as always, thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed. And until next time, Bye-Bye   [Music]  [Transition noise]   When we share, what we see, through each other's eyes...   [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]   ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.   Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective: Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities Download our app from the App store: 'Blind Abilities'; that's two words. Or send us an e-mail at: info@blindabilities.com Thanks for listening.

Job Insights Extra: Gaining Skills and confidence, Getting the Job You Want and Aira as a Reasonable Accommodation – Meet Lori Thompson   Welcome to a Job Insights Extra with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. Job Insights Extra is where we highlight success and whether it be a person or a product, app or development, we will share the success with you. This Extra episode we want to introduce Lori Thompson. Serina Gilbert sits down with Lori in the studio to talk about her journey through Adjustment to Blindness Training, her work with State Services in the job hunt and the accommodations used at her job.   Lori has her Aira Smart Glasses in her toolbox and talks about how she incorporates Aira to independently do her job. She also talks about other adaptations and alternative tools that keeps her efficient in the workplace.   Lori and Serina are both Guide Dog users and they talk a bit about having their Guide dogs in the workplace.   Join Lori Thompson and Serina Gilbert for this Job Insights Extra and see how Lori’s determination and hard work led her to the job she wanted.   You can follow Lori on Twitter @LThompson6835   You can find out more about Aira on the web at www.Aira.io [caption id="attachment_2435" align="aligncenter" width="200"]Image of the Aira Logo[/caption] Your Life, Your Schedule, Right Now. If you want to know more about Aira and the services they provide, check them out on the web and become an Aira Explorer today! www.Aira.io   Thanks for listening! You can find out more about Job Insights on the web at BlindAbilities.comand follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIPSend us your feedback and suggestions by email.   Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities Network   You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store    

JobInsights 7: The Job Hunt – Resources, Resumes and Strategies   Full Transcript Below   Welcome to Episode 7 of Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. Job Insights Episode #7 is all about the Job Hunt. Serina and Jeff talk about resources, resumes, strategies and their own experiences while in the hunt for the Job you want. A couple of apps were mentioned that can help you enhance your job hunt experience: InDeed Job Searchis and app and is on the web at www.InDeed.com and offers searchable job listings with the ability to set alerts for listings in your selected fields. Career Connectis an app from the American Foundation for the Blind and has many resources that will help you navigate your pathway to the career you want. Thanks for listening! You can find out more about Job Insights on the web at BlindAbilities.comand follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIPSend us your feedback and suggestions by email. Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store   Full Transcript: JobInsights 7: The Job Hunt – Resources, Resumes and Strategies   Serena Gilbert: When you're making some cold calls, I know it sounds super old school, but it's very effective. Jeff Thompson: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Serena Gilbert: Yeah, I especially love Indeed. It's an app as well as a website, it's indeed.com. Jeff Thompson: To help you navigate the employment world and give you job insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. Serena Gilbert: Somebody once told me when it comes to a resume that even Colin Powell has a one page resume and that resonated with me because I'm like, "If he can get it down to one page, surely I can." Jeff Thompson: Sometimes some job interviews or some process that you go through is just gaining experience, so you can do better at the next one. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. Jeff Thompson: You can find the Job Insights Podcast on blindabilities.com. Part of the Blind Abilities network with host Serena Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson, and you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.com. Leave us some feedback or suggest some topics that we cover on Twitter @jobinsightsvip. Checkout the Job Insights Support Group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community. Serena Gilbert: You are interviewing them as well. It might not feel like it, but you are. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, it's a two way street. Jeff Thompson: And now please welcome Serena Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights. Serena Gilbert: When a job opened and they saw my name, they could place a face with that name and know that I took that extra step to want to be with that agency. Jeff Thompson: How are you doing, Serena? Serena Gilbert: I'm great Jeff, how are you? Jeff Thompson: I'm good, I'm getting ready for conventions coming up. Serena Gilbert: Very nice, I'm jealous, because you get to go to Orlando. Jeff Thompson: Oh, yes I did attend the National Federation of the Blind convention in Orlando 2018. It was a great time, got to meet up with lot of people, attended a lot of the employment breakouts led by Dick Davis from Minnesota and our very own Hadeisha Van Alstine was down there working with the employment groups. I had a great time, got some great content for some future podcasts and here we are, back in the studio talking about the job hunt. Serena Gilbert: I know summer is well underway and I know we have a lot of graduates that might be looking for some job hunting tips. So we thought we'd take today's podcast to talk about a lot of different techniques and resources to help you with your job hunt. Jeff Thompson: Yeah the job hunt can be very challenging. A lot of up and downs. But remember this is an experience, you're going to learn from it and experience is the best teacher. Serena Gilbert: Job hunting is definitely a full time job. It kind of feels overwhelming, I'm sure, and I hope that some the things that we chat about today will help break it down and give you some systematic steps that might help you identify some jobs that aren't even posted that might be perfect for you. Jeff Thompson: So I think one of the first things you want to do is identify the type of job that you want. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. If the type of job that you want is technical in nature, think outside the box. For example, maybe you're going into web design. Think about the biggest industries that are in your market that might still need a web designer. For example, some of the top industries I know here in Colorado, and probably pretty much nationwide, are healthcare, education and government. So everyone in those three particular areas would probably need some web design type of experience in order to run their company because they're such large organizations there's a seat for everyone. So I would start by identifying some of those places that maybe some other people wouldn't think about when you're looking at your skillset to start making a list of companies you want to look into. Jeff Thompson: And I always suggest to people when they're looking at the companies to go online, check out their about page, check out their mission statement because that will identify what the company is about. It's always nice to have some of their keywords if you get into an interview to have that to be able to utilize and use that during your conversation. Serena Gilbert: And that will help too with, and I know this next thing will get some people a little bit nervous, but that will also help with when you're making some cold calls. I know it sounds super old school but it's very effective. A lot of companies do not even advertise a great deal of their jobs because maybe they know that there's an opening coming but it just hasn't been posted yet. And if you can call and get your name in front of a hiring manager before they even posted that job that decreases the competition for that job and increases your likelihood of being seen by that hiring manager. Jeff Thompson: That's great information. It's who you know sometimes and getting your name in there really works. Get your resume and your application right to the top. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. And don't be afraid to volunteer at an organization that you want to work for as well. Because a lot of organizations, especially maybe a hospital or something like that, might hire from their volunteer pool before they would go into the applications that they received from candidates. Jeff Thompson: You know, volunteering is such a key part because if you're not working that's a void in your resume. So when you have volunteering in there a lot of companies look at that as a plus. Serena Gilbert: Exactly and you're still building your skill set, and more importantly, you're networking and you're keeping yourself busy as well. I know one of the topics that we're going to talk about on our upcoming podcast is talking about mental health and vision impairments and things like that and also some self-care tips. Getting out of the house will certainly help with keeping that balance for yourself and also keep that positive, optimistic outcome coming out. Jeff Thompson: So once you identified a company that's when you start honing in. If you have two, three companies you start, as Serena said, the cold call, you explore their job opportunities. And on most website they might have an area that is employment and you can go in there and check. Some places do post four, five, six different jobs, different areas and check out the area that you're interested and see if there are some opportunities right there too. Serena Gilbert: And also look up not only just their website but do a quick Google news search on that company. See what kind of things they have up and coming because that will help you with if you do get to make a cold call and speak to a hiring manager that'll give you some talking points to mention. For example, I saw that you guys are launching a new product. I wanted to let you know that I have just recently graduated from UCLA and I have some significant web development skills and I wondered if you had any openings for me to be able to utilize those skills at your company. That shows you that you dedicated some time to look at their webpage, look at some news clippings. And it also shows that you've been pretty thoughtful about how your skills might fit into the company and where they're going next. Jeff Thompson: And if you want to learn more information about searching for jobs and some ideas to have, there's apps out there that will help you like CareerConnect is one of them from the American Foundation for the Blind. There's another one from Indeed and this just gets you into that groove. You start looking through this stuff it might spark some ideas in yourself. Not that these are total answers for getting a job but it does enhance your own possibilities because you're reading stories or you're reading about other jobs and tips and tricks for the interviews. So don't shy away from these apps, they're a good resource of information. Serena Gilbert: Yeah I especially love Indeed. It's an app as well as a website, it's indeed.com. And the very nice thing about Indeed is it's obviously very much accessible as screen readers. And it filters out a lot of those spam type postings that you see sometimes on other job boards that maybe aren't so legit and it still pulls in jobs from the government websites such as USA Jobs or your state government or even your county or city government. So you're seeing virtually every job that's posted that meets the search results that you're putting in. And it also allows you to set up job alerts. You can enter your email address, enter the keywords and every day it'll send you all the postings that match those job alerts. And you can also save your resume on there. Jeff Thompson: One thing I really liked about these apps, these are not apps for just the blind. CareerConnect might have a twist to it and help you out with some hurdles or obstacles that you think might be in the way. But Indeed is just listing the jobs that are available and that's some frame that you have to be in that you can do these type of jobs and why not. Serena Gilbert: Exactly. That's half the battle right there because, and we'll talk about this again in an upcoming podcast, but if you go into the job search thinking, "Well maybe I can do this, maybe not," it's going to definitely impact you when you're called for that first interview and you're asked very specific questions about how you're going to perform duties or react in particular situations. So we got to remember to be really optimistic about what we can and can't do as well as think of the ways that you can get accommodations for what you'd like to be able to do. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, we were talking earlier about volunteering you mentioned that what positive that is on your resume. You might be doing a resume and you might have some gaps in there. The thing is volunteering can fill those gaps. Serena Gilbert: Well we talked a little bit about volunteering and I know that sometimes individuals think, "Why would I want to volunteer? I'm really trying to get paid, I don't really have the benefit being able to volunteer my time." I see that as an investment in your future. I know that sounds really cheesy and kind of corny but in order to get where you want to be sometimes we have to do some things that we don't really necessarily want to do and make some sacrifices but in the long term that will certainly pay off. Because those volunteering opportunities, like we said, will most likely, especially if you're doing them in the field that you're interested in, will put you in touch with lots of individuals that maybe work in the field or the company that you would like to work for. And they've seen your work ethic and seen how you can do things. And that will help get you that paid employment down the road. Serena Gilbert: Even when I started with vocational rehabilitation here in Colorado, I took one of my personal days off of my regular job to literally chat all the counselors in the office for an entire day and meet with the supervisor that was at that office. So they knew who I was. When a job opened and they saw my name they could place a face with that name and know that I took that extra step to want to be with that agency. Jeff Thompson: I think another thing that volunteering does it gives you experience that you are not probably expecting. Because when I was teaching, I taught woodworking at a blindness training center. I also did a teen night, a volunteer thing that I kind of created on a Friday night. And the teens kept coming back, 10 to 12 of them for four years straight. And it was just interesting because I wouldn't never got that experience to just like freelance time, three, four hours, with a group of teens that kept coming ... I didn't know why they kept coming back. But the experience I got from that was like I could be innovative, I could be creative and to keep their attention. That experience is a lifetime and I've taken that into my other jobs. You do gain a lot of experience from volunteering. Serena Gilbert: And you mentioned gaps in a resume before and along with gaps in resumes comes some gaps in current professional references. And most employers when they're looking at candidates would like at least three professional references. And they like them to be people who have recently worked with you. So again, that volunteering opportunity could give you an option to be able to build new references that you can then use to apply for paid positions down the road. Jeff Thompson: And if you've had plenty of jobs and moved around and planning on volunteering there's a limit to how many you may want to list that keeps it relevant. Serena Gilbert: That takes us right into resume writing. And there's so many theories on resumes. I have my own personal theories. I am very traditional in the way that I approach resumes. And by traditional, I don't mean as far as the formatting or the layout, because there's lots of different layouts that you can use that are very effective. But somebody once told me when it comes to a resume that even Colin Powell has a one page resume. That resonated with me because I'm like, "Well holy cow, he's done all kinds of stuff." And if he can get it down to one page, surely I can. I know it's a little different nowadays because yes there's computers that are looking at your resume and scanning for specific words and things like that. But even when you're in front of the interview panel they might not look at every single page on your resume and if there's some really cool experiences that you want to make sure that they see but they're on page two or page three that's not going to work to your benefit sometimes. Jeff Thompson: Put it all on the front page. Serena Gilbert: And there's lots of ways to creatively do that because there's skills-based resumes which is more so at the top of your resume listing different categories and then sub bullets of very specific skills related to the job that you're applying for. Or you can do the traditional chronological, there's all kinds of different ways. But especially if you're career changing maybe you're having some vision loss a little bit later in life and you're moving into a different type of career, you'll want to do more so of a skills-based type resume. Because that will allow for you to show your transferrable skills to open the employer's eyes to what you've done in the past that will also work to their benefit on the new position. Jeff Thompson: That's extremely important because the stuff that is relevant is stuff that you done lately, the stuff that they see will help you succeed at the job that they need to get done. And when you frame it that way that makes perfectly good sense, because if I went chronologically, wow, we're talking page four, page five. But if you- Serena Gilbert: That's it Jeff? Jeff Thompson: That's just the introduction. But that's one way to bring it all to the front because they want to find the important stuff. Because they're looking for someone to fill a job tomorrow. If you put those skills right up front, they're interested. Serena Gilbert: And somebody once told me, and obviously being visually impaired this is really hard to kind of wrap my mind around, they said that it's easier for employers to read your resume if there's a lot of white on it as opposed to a lot of big chunks of text. So for example, when you're writing a bullet maybe keep it to five, six, seven words instead of three lines because they want to be able to visually just scan down it, see the highlights. Use a lot of bold, italic, that sort of thing, for different sections because they're not going to read it word for word. Jeff Thompson: Right, sound bites we call that. I had a teacher that said, "We become a society of sound bites." And this was years ago where people don't read paragraphs. Well they don't. You got about seven seconds to get someone's attention with the beginning of a podcast, with beginning of a story. Even a song or a jingle, those little catch phrases, that's what you want your piece of work, your resume. When you're talking about the job description and your skills that's where you're going to find all the stuff they're looking for. The job description, bang bang, you're going to look at that, dissect it and bring all your skills that fit that to the forefront. And the keywords that they're using in there because you want to use those keywords, probably an algorithm that's going to go through there and search for those and move your resume to the top. Serena Gilbert: It's almost like taking a chemistry test but having all the notes and the book right there beside you. You got the job description, you have the internet to research every single thing you could possibly want to know about a particular company to be able to tailor your cover letter and your resume to at least catch someone's attention. So that they see, "Oh my gosh, I said I needed all these great things and look this person's perfect." And it's okay to use the same words as them. I wouldn't say copy/paste the job description into your resume because they'll notice that, but it's okay to use some of the same keywords. Like if they're looking for specific software or specific programming languages or whatever your field may be make sure that's on your resume if you have those skills. Jeff Thompson: Exactly. Serena, I really think you hit the nail on the head here with tailoring. Because if you're going to apply to two, three different companies they might have job descriptions that are similar but a little bit different. You want to tailor each application that you put in, each resume that you submit, you want that to be tailored to that specific job. And it's not just something you make three copies and send to three companies, so I really like how you use the word tailoring your resume. Serena Gilbert: In order to make it as easy as possible for you to be able to customize and tailor that resume make sure that you have a master copy of your resume that's in an easily accessible format for you to be able to switch it around and copy/paste or do whatever you want to do. Make sure that it's saved maybe in ... I would suggest, highly suggest a Word version. Even if you do use a Mac computer, most people in the business world do not use Mac computers when they're accessing things. So even if you do create it in Pages make sure you're saving it as a Word document. Jeff Thompson: And this final resume that you do come up with, your master, I would suggest, and some people may debate this, we might get some fan mail or some other kind of mail about this, is having someone take a glance over, a once over. Someone that is familiar with checking out resumes. One of your people that you put down as a reference. Maybe you can send it to them and say, "Hey, what do you think?" You may not be saying that, "Hey, I can't see the resume I want you to check for format." But they'll just glance at it and if there's something obvious that just strikes them they'll probably suggest, "Oh, you might want to do this or do that." There's ways of actually having someone check out your resume, and I highly suggest you have someone check it out. Serena Gilbert: Well unsighted or not it's always a good idea to have a second person take a look at your resume. And spell check, spell check, spell check, and then spell check again because the worst thing you can have happen on your resume when you're submitting it is there to be a glaring typo or grammatical error that will immediately eliminate you. Serena Gilbert: I know that we have a lot of listeners that are looking to enter into employment in the federal government. So I wanted to take some time to chat about that because that's a whole different beast to tackle and there's some tricks and things that might help out with that. So usajobs.com is where all of the federal government jobs are posted, including what's called non appropriated fund jobs which are the types of jobs that aren't tied to the federal budget. So I'm not sure if people follow politics but I feel like every six months or a year the federal government is threatened with a shutdown. The non appropriated fund jobs are jobs that would not be affected by budget because they're essentially self-supporting with the money that they bring in. So those are jobs, for example, at the child development centers. They're recreation centers like the gyms or the bowling alleys. Overseas, there's actually some casinos. Things like that. And they are still federal jobs, you still have all the federal benefits it's just a separate type of department. And then there's also the traditional USA jobs that are federal positions that are tied to the budget. Serena Gilbert: But one thing to remember about these types of jobs is that they have certain hiring I guess priority categories would be the best way to discuss it. So for example, usually on a position the first classification that is considered for a job is a disabled veteran. And then it's usually military spouses, and then individuals with disabilities is I believe the third category that gets a special hiring authority assigned to it. The reason this is important is because in order to be considered an individual with a disability is you have to have what's called a Schedule A letter. And a Schedule A letter is basically a document that you get from a professional, typically your vocational rehabilitation counselor that certifies that you are in fact an individual with a disability that qualifies for special hiring authority under Schedule A. It's a very simple letter, it doesn't even say your specific disability or anything. It could not be more general. It says, "This individual is an individual that has a disability that might be mental, physical, whatever." It's not specific at all. But it's something that has to be attached with your application in order to be considered in that special authority hiring. Jeff Thompson: And I know in some federal jobs and even state jobs that they are looking for people with disabilities because they do want to increase that category of hiring. Serena Gilbert: Well, and it's not just the federal and the state it's actually the contractors with the Feds as well. They're required to hire a certain percentage of individuals with disabilities as part of their contracts with the federal government. Jeff Thompson: Yeah keep your eyes open for all sorts of opportunities. It's now popular for companies to be out there saying that we're inclusive, we're looking for people with disabilities and creating those opportunities. So be aware, take a look around and you might be surprised. Serena Gilbert: For sure, I mean, definitely the companies that are really smart are looking for inclusiveness. Because the reality is if you look statistically, people with disabilities don't typically leave positions that they get because we worked so hard to get them. We worked so hard to get our accommodations. And frankly, it's usually a really good fit if we gotten the accommodations that we need. We're not typically trying to look for the next best thing. I think that some companies are finally starting to recognize that value. Jeff Thompson: It is, it's a good time to pay attention to the jobs, the opportunities that are out there. And check our show notes, check out the links to Indeed, CareerConnect. Dive in, dive in and start looking into resumes. And if you have friends that have done resumes before talk to them. Like Serena said earlier, there's not one size fits all for a resume. Serena Gilbert: Unfortunately, the job hunt can be an incredibly frustrating process. We're going to hear way more no's than we're going to hear yes's. That's just the reality of the process. Just remember as long as you are continuing to submit applications and you're continuing to network and talk to people about the fact that you're looking for employment, you're still moving forward. And yes I know this sounds, again, a little cheesy, I'm a little sentimental, but all you need is one person to say yes. That's all that it takes. And you're not going to hear that yes unless you put in a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton of applications. Jeff Thompson: Yeah, and experience is the best teacher so sometimes ... And someone, I think it was Cindy Bennett told us, "Sometimes some job interviews or some process that you go through is just gaining experience so you can do better at the next one." Serena Gilbert: Exactly, and that's great advice. Jeff Thompson: We hope this helps with your job hunt. In our upcoming episode, we'll be talking about- Serena Gilbert: The job interview. The scariest part of the whole job search, right? Jeff Thompson: ... Swimming with the sharks. Serena Gilbert: Oh I thought that was a Jaws reference. Jeff Thompson: Oh yeah, well okay there you go. There is so many aspects with the job interview, preparing for mock interviews. So there's a whole bunch of topics that we're going to throw at you and give you a chance to think about on the job interview episode. Serena Gilbert: I can't wait to talk about that because I truly think that that is actually the hardest part of everything, especially figuring out the disability part of it. Like we talked about with the disclosure piece of it. But even just, "Oh how do I answer what's my greatest weakness?" And not say a really bad weakness. We'll talk about that and work through some questions and different tips and tricks. Jeff Thompson: And like we've been talking about looking at their about page or their mission statement. That is where some of those questions that they might throw at you or questions you ask them about where you can gather some of that information as well. Serena Gilbert: Exactly because you are interviewing them as well. It might not feel like it but you are.   Jeff Thompson: Yeah, it's a two way street. Serena Gilbert: Well, Jeff. Jeff Thompson: Well, Serena. Serena Gilbert: Well, Jeff. Jeff Thompson: Serena and everybody I hope you enjoyed the show and until next time. Serena Gilbert: See you next time. Jeff Thompson: Bye bye. Serena Gilbert: As always, if you have any questions or topics that you'd like us to follow, you can give us a message on Twitter. That's @jobinsightsvip or on our Facebook page which is Job Insights. And we also have a Job Insights support group on Facebook. Just search Job Insights support group. See you next time.   Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with a blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com. On Twitter @blindabilities. Download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words. Or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.   [Music]  [Transition noise] When we share what we see through each other's eyes... [Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence] ...We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff Thompson: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective: Check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com On Twitter @BlindAbilities Download our app from the App store: 'Blind Abilities'; that's two words. Or send us an e-mail at:info@blindabilities.com Thanks for listening.  

Job Insights #5: Transportation to the Workplace – Traveling vs. Exploring Welcome to Episode 5 of Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you the latest innovations from across the Vocational Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. Job Insights Episode #5 is all about Transportation, How do you get to work, school or to interviews? With guest, Joe Dinero, a Assistive Technology Instructor from New York City, Serina and Jeff talk about the ways we all get around and how multiple means of transportation is a must in this ever changing world of commuting to and fro. Trains, buses and public transit to navigating new locations, we share our experiences, successes and short falls, no pun intended Joe.  We bring up some apps that help our transportation needs and some that help eliminate transportation all together. That would be shopping with Shipt, a new app that like an Uber or Lift service, they shop your list and deliver the same day! Yes, Uber and Lift are mentioned as well and how the creativeness is allowing more of us to consider using these services more and more. Join the Job Insights team with Joe Dinero in this transporting episode of Job Insights. Check out episode 5 of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.  

Job Insights #4: Apps With Productivity in Mind for Education and in the Workplace. Transcript Provided Welcome to the 4th episode of Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jef Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you the latest innovations from across the Vocational Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. On this 4th episode of Job Insights Hope Paulos joins Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson in the studio and they talk about productivity apps and software. From the classroom to the workplace, these apps are geared towards making your daily challenges a bit more manageable, efficient and productive. Hours Tracker, Black Board, Drafts, Files, SeeingAI, Dictionary Thesaurus Pro, KNFBReader and Bookshare’s Read To Go app are all mentioned with some great discussion about how we use these apps. A great little Scan Stand named Foppidoo makes the scene and a conversation on Lift and Uber gets quite a chat as well. You can check out the Meet Me Accessibly book from Jonathan Mosen and learn about Zoom on the PC. Join the Job Insights crew and download some apps and give them a whirl. Hey, productivity rocks! We hope you enjoy this Job Insights episode and you can send your feedback and suggestions to the Job Insights team by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. A big Thank You goes out to CheeChau for his beautiful music! Thank you for listening! You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.   Job Insights #4: Apps With Productivity in Mind for Education and in the Workplace. Transcript Provided [Music] Female voice: I feel like I'm getting a lot better education so yeah, I think, I think the online learning is an equalizer. Jeff: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Female Voice: But sometimes I require KNFB Reader when I have more than one page that I want to kind of read continuously. Jeff: Learn about resources for training education and employment opportunities. Female Voice: Blackboard, that is a learning management system and a lot of universities are using them as well for classes. So this particular app is available on Android, iOS, and PC, and Mac of course. Jeff: We will hear from people seeking careers, employment, from professionals in the educational field, teachers, and innovators in this ever-changing world of technology to help you navigate the employment world and give you Job Insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. Male Voice: Fopydo people sounds good and I actually at that time asked my son, and I, it was actually a play on the on Scooby-doo. Jeff: And you can find the Job Insights podcast on BlindAbilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities Network with hosts Serina Gilbert and myself Jeff Thompson, and you can contact us by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com, leave us some feedback, or suggest some topics that we cover. On Twitter at Job Insights VIP, and check out the Job Insights support group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community. [Music] Female Voice: Lift also released an update to their service dog policy saying that an allergy or fear of animals is not a valid reason to not pick up an individual with the service animal. Jeff: But hey it's a good learning tool, because it's just repetitious and pretty soon it just starts coming to you, mm-hmm, so I dug right in, when I saw they had flashcards I went Wow! [Music] Jeff: And now please welcome Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights. [Music] Jeff: Welcome to Job Insights and this week we're talking about apps, apps that you'll use in school, at the workplace, and these are productivity type of apps, and with me today of course is Serina Gilbert how are you doing? Serina: I'm good Jeff, how are you? Jeff: I'm just doing great and we got a guest today all the way from Maine. Hope Paulos, how are you Hope? Hope: I'm doing great, how are you? Jeff: I'm doing good, we're all doing good, so that's good. Today we're gonna talk about apps, you know some of these apps are mostly productivity type of things, stuff that you'll use to, you know get things done and that's, that's what we're, we're all about here on Job Insights. So Serina, last podcast you said you were holding out on us from what you're gonna tell us, is the cliffhanger over or are you gonna tell us? Serina: Oh we've got a little bit of a wait cuz we have to talk to Hope first, we have a guest. Jeff: How about you Hope, what do you got? Hope: I certainly don't have a cliffhanger. [Laughter] Serina: We set her up there Jeff! Jeff: yeah. Hope: Yeah you did! [Laughter] Jeff: So Hope, how's it going out and Maine? Hope: It's going well, the weather is nice finally, when I talked to you and Pete last time, it was March, and it was in the 20's, 20 degrees. Now we are in about the 60's, 70's, so I am absolutely loving it, birds are chirping, the guide dog is going for walks, he's enjoying it, Jeff: Is he bringing you with? Hope: Oh yeah of course! [Laughter] Jeff: That's great! Serina: But Jeff needs to know if you planted any Apple trees? Hope: No. Serina: Only PC trees? Hope: Only PC trees. [Laughter] Jeff: Oh that's the running joke isn't it? So when it comes to productivity type of apps, Hope what did you bring to the show today? Hope: Sure, so I have a couple of them. I don't use this particular one very much right now because I do work for Apple, and Apple has me on a strict schedule so I don't need this particular one, but for people who are freelancing, the name of the app is called Hours Tracker, it's a free app and basically it allows you to track your hours of course, hence the name, but it also allows you to track your earnings, and it will deduct the taxes as well. So it will tell you how much is deducting for taxes. So it's great for individuals who are freelancing. The second app that I have brought to the show is Blackboard. That is a Learning Management System and a lot of universities are using them as well for classes, so this particular app is available on Android, iOS, and PC, and Mac of course. This will allow you to do your classes online literally anywhere and actually a couple of the blindness organizations were working in tandem to get this particular app accessible. It's extremely accessible, there was only one thing that I commented on a couple weeks ago and I sent feedback in to the iOS developers and they fixed it. They're very very good about fixing issues that people might have. The other app that I brought, that I brought to the show is Learning Ally. This is an app that will allow you to download books and it's also good for individuals who are dyslexic and who have low vision because I believe it will allow you to magnify the print in the actual book so you can read along with the narrator which is quite helpful. That's more University as well, University-type app, Productivity app and of course the last app would be the Bookshare app. The Read2Go, this allows you if you have a membership to Bookshare, which I believe most students can get for free, it allows you to read the books on your phone be it Android or iOS. Jeff: Now on the Hours Tracker, is that what it's called? Hour Tracker? Hope: Hours Tracker yeah. Jeff: Hours Tracker. So when you're doing the setup, your presets, do you put in your wage, and then it just calculates it and are you able to output that anywhere, or is it just something you read? Hope: Absolutely, so this particular program allows you to put in the wage, and it allows you to put in whether or not taxes are withheld, so technically even if you were, you know not freelancing, if you working a job as an employee, a W2, you could use it as well. Basically it allows you to put in your breaks and your lunches and things like that, and it lets you know when to go on the break, and when to go to lunch, and when to clock out, and when to clock in. [Music] App Voice: Sample Job, 0.05H today, 0H button, clock out now or long-press for extras menu, button, next clock out now, button, cause now, button, break now button, break now, sample job 0 H on break 8:10 a.m., 0.02H button, end break or long press for extras menu button, end break. Hope: It also will let you know, like you can, you can set a reminder to have it automatically clock in when you get to work, and yes you can send it, I think it's a CSV file, or CV file, something like that, a database file, and it will put it in an Excel spreadsheet I think as well, so that you can show it to your employer. Jeff: That's kind of neat. Serina: That's pretty cool I like that. Hope: Yeah it's a it's a pretty neat app for sure. Jeff: Intuit the makers of QuickBooks and various tax applications has a program and it might be part of their bundle and I believe you can buy it separately, I believe it's called Self-Employed, but that sells on a monthly subscription for 7 to 8 dollars a month. Hope: Yeah this is free and I think, I'm trying to think if I paid for anything, I think I did just because I was freelancing at the time and I wanted them more, more, so it has a lite version and it has a full-featured version, but even the full-featured version wasn't some really really, you know cheap price. Jeff: A one-time fee? Hope: A one-time fee yeah. Jeff: That makes perfectly good sense, economically I can track that pretty good. [Laughter] [Music] Jeff: You can download Hours Tracker free from the App Store or the Google Play Store. Hourlys Tracker is free for up to 21 days of time entries and if you upgrade to the pro or professional, you get rid of all the ads, unlimited amount of entries that you can make, the only difference between the professional and the personal is you can have unlimited amount of jobs in the professional, and you can upgrade to the professional or the personal in the in-app option. The professional will run you $9.99 and the personal will run you $5.99. Once again, a one-time payment, I was really intrigued when I heard about Hours Tracker, I downloaded to my iPhone, and started using it right away, I named a job, I started the time, and when I was completed I stopped the time. I also had the option to input the time that I wanted it to start or input the time that I wanted to stop, otherwise you could do it in real time and that works out really nice. There's also an option that you can take notes and keep them with that job. I found that the accessibility on Hours Tracker on my iPhone was second to none, all the buttons were labeled and the intuitiveness was what I expected for when I have started logging the job, putting in the hours, getting out of the job, putting notes in, was just exactly how I expected it would work and it did work that way. Another small part of the accessibility, it lets you cancel a pop-up or dismiss the pop-up that comes up, and I really like that because if you've ever had a pop-up pop-up and not be able to get rid of it, that's not good. So after kicking around Hours Tracker on my iPhone for one job, I personally recommend this for anybody who is self-employed or someone who works on projects and just wants to have better records of the time they spend on their projects and jobs. [Music] Jeff: So on the Blackboard, I remember I have not experienced Blackboard yet, but I remember going to college and I was at the mercy of every professor that was experimenting by putting stuff on the web and accessing it through a link they give you, and if it was accessible you got lucky, so Blackboard is a collective effort to make it accessible for everyone. Hope: Absolutely, so it all depends on the type of class you're taking obviously right, if people don't know I'm going back to school to become a teacher of the blind and visually impaired and so all of the courses need to be accessible to me. So the professor's will tag their images so that I can know what's going on, their quizzes are all accessible, obviously the discussion boards are all accessible, and I use a combination of the two apps, so I use the combination of Blackboard and I use Learning ally to be able to do my classwork, and literally like I said, I can do it anywhere. With the phone if I have a Braille display and/or a Bluetooth keyboard I can do my homework on the beach or in the park you know, so literally anywhere and that's huge compared to when I was going back to school to get my undergrad degree, like you know 2009, that's when I graduated so it's, it's huge it's a huge step up. Serina: Yeah I remember using Blackboard when I was doing my master's degree which would have been gosh, probably around the same time as you are doing your undergrad, so I finished in 2010 and so, I don't know, 2007, 2008, somewhere around there's when I started it and they used Blackboard for everything. My program was pretty much 100% online, we didn't have the app back then, we just had the website, but even back then the website was pretty accessible. I rarely had any difficulties with it and I was going for the rehabilitation counseling so the professors were a little bit more cognizant of accessible media and documents and things like that. I loved using blackboard because it is easy to log on to, you know if I was on a break at work or whatever, or at home trying to get a discussion posted or something like that. Hope: Yeah it is really easy to use extremely easy to use. Jeff: Is that why you opted to do your classes online, not that you're on an island out off the shore of Maine, but..... [Laughter] Hope: Yeah I think, I think it's easier because I've done classes on site to, not having to do as my masters, but having to do with my undergrads degree. I find the digital world to be a lot more accessible, I just remember going to classes on site and didn't have a lot of input from the professor. The professor was teaching to a lecture hall full of I don't know, a hundred students, I just felt like I was kind of left out and wasn't getting all the notes that I needed to get, whereas here taking the classes online and using, again the combination of Blackboard and Learning Ally, I'm able to take the notes that I need, I'm able to contact my professors if I need to. I have peer to peer interaction as well. I feel like I'm getting a lot better education, so yeah I think, I think the online learning is an equalizer. Jeff: Mm-hmm. Hope: Of sorts. Jeff: Yeah that's great because you know everyone has to do what works for them and if you found a good way of doing it that's great, having those two apps makes it all accessible. Hope: For the most part yeah everything is accessible, even from registering for classes, I go to Missouri State University, so using Missouri State's website is accessible. It's just huge, it's what we're able to do as people who are blind and visually impaired with a digital world, it's absolutely huge. Jeff: So is that something you looked for when you were looking for an online course that they did use Blackboard? Hope: Not really, I didn't know what they used, I contacted them, I did ask them in the beginning when I was registering for the program what they used and I could have used Moodle, Moodle was another application, another learning management system that I'm familiar with and either one I would have been fine with. I looked online and and saw the collaboration between the two blindness organizations regarding Blackboard and I'm like okay this is going to be fine, this is gonna be great, I know it's gonna be accessible, I contacted my professors beforehand and gave them my accommodations and all that and said I need extra time and because it's a digital world they can input my time-and-a-half for quizzes and allow me to have that time and you know they can input that in Blackboard and all is good. I can't speak enough good things about accessibility and digital stuff. Jeff: So let's see, there's Learning Ally, we will put that in the show notes, we'll put Blackboard in the show, we'll put all these in the show notes so people can click on them and go right to the App Store or the Google Play Store and we'll have the links there, so back to the cliffhanger. [Laughter] Jeff: Hi Serina. Serina: And I thought of one like while we were sitting here, so even you'll be surprised Jeff. Jeff: Ooo. [Laughter] Serina: My absolute number one favorite app and I see it all over all of the groups like iPhone and iPad apps, and the assistive technology group, all of them, a seeing AI, I don't think it's any surprise there. That app allows me to be a lot less dependent on a human reader to just go through what's in my mailbox that I get at work. Now I can just kind of okay, yeah I need someone to finish reading that to me, or oh, this is just something that needs to go in the file, it's cut down on how much time I have to spend with somebody sitting at my desk with me going through stuff, and it's free, which is amazing to me because I remember reading gosh, I think it was like two years ago when Microsoft had their hackathon and they had released a video about seeing AI and they were showing a demo of it and I was like, well that's cool but it'll never come out and if it does it'll be super expensive. And then all of a sudden there's a link, and it's free, and it works, like amazingly and it, I can't thank Microsoft enough for that, that actually was a big surprise for me. Jeff: Yeah, you just open it up and boom, short text is reading. Serina: Yeah, from across the room right Jeff! [Laughter] Jeff: Yeah, that happened to me and, I shouldn't say it but I was that Orcam demonstration when they were having the little issues, and I was reading the wall that had their sign on it, so I was like wow, this is already talking, just out of the box, just turn it on and there it is. Male Voice: I use seeing AI all of the time to determine what's in my medicine cabinet, for documents you know I use seeing AI for short text. [Music] Female Voice: I use the document reader all the time, not gonna say it's as good as KNFB Reader because it's not. I did a test between reading my mail with it and with KNFB Reader and I found KNFB Reader to be far more stable, but I still like the app, I use it a lot, I'm glad that it's one of the tools in our toolbox. Female voice: For reading and stuff I used to go to KNFB Reader all the time but it just seems like Prizmo go and seeing AI is so much easier that I tend to go to them more. Male Voice: Seeing AI is my main go-to app and I use that, the short text channel mostly if I can't identify an item with that I will switch to the product channel if it has a barcode. A lot of the apps like [Inaudible] and Aipoly Vision and [inaudible], I've deleted most of those off of there because I can accomplish the same thing with seeing AI [Music] Male Voice: Jeffrey I see apps like Aipoly Vision, [Inaudible], Identifee, of course the KNFB Reader, I think seeing AI is becoming the main tool in the toolbox. Jeff: And you know, all the other channels that they have on their to four options but that's the one I use all the time because, you open it up it works. Serina: Yeah there's a handwriting one too that I've tried only a couple of times, but it surprisingly did recognize the handwriting enough for me to figure out at least what the note was generally about cuz sometimes my clients will stop in and I can't see them, and they'll leave a handwritten note at the front desk and obviously it's probably dependent on the individuals handwriting but I was at least able to get the name of the client and know, okay I'll just call them and see what they needed. Jeff: Hmm, well that's good. Serina: That one's in BETA I think. Jeff: Yeah you always wonder when they have a little feature that's in there and they tag the word BETA after it's like, you better use it now because it may not be there! Serina: Or it's like the disclaimer don't trust this feature. It might not work right! Jeff: Mm-hm try it on a doctor's prescription. [Laughter] Serina: Oh gosh. Jeff: That's the to test. Serina: This is totally not productive but when seeing AI first came out, we were playing with it in my office to see how old it thought everyone was. [Laughter] So all of my co-workers were like changing their hairstyles or putting on glasses or taking off glasses to try to trick it to make it think that they were younger. Jeff: That's a great use of state-funded money. [Laughter] Serina: Hey! Jeff: I know everyone's been doing that, it's kind of a novelty thing and that's like artificial intelligence to me when they're built into apps to me, it's like you know when you go to the carnival, you know, they'll guess your age and you win the whistle or something but you know, I'm not into the novelty stuff but that really does work. Serina: Hope, do you use seeing AI for any of your school work, or since it's mostly digital do you not have to use it a lot? Hope: Yeah I use it sometimes, I use it for work actually to find out whether or not my Mac, my work Mac is gonna turn on correctly. We have so many policies in place at Apple that sometimes voice-over doesn't turn on correctly and so I use either seeing AI or I also use AIRA for that, but most of the time I just grab my phone and you seeing AI. Speaking of the, or how old people were, I actually did that last weekend I think it was on my grandmother's 93rd birthday. I went up to her and took a picture of her and had seeing AI tell her how old she was, now again she's 93 right, so it said a 65 year old woman is smiling, or looks happy or something like that and she's like, wait, did it say 65? [Laughter] Hope: Shes like, I like that! So it made her day. Serina: Yeah. Jeff: I actually think for women they do have a built in algorithm that knocks off a couple years just to you know, keep the customers happy. Serina: No it added 10 years to mine, no matter what it says 10 years. Hope: Oh really. That's funny! [Laughter] Jeff: The algorithm breaker! Serina: Gosh. [Laughter] The other one that I use is obviously very similar to seeing AI but sometimes I require KNFB Reader when I have more than one page that I want to kind of read continuously. To my knowledge I don't know that you can scan multiple pages in seeing AI and if you can, somebody let me know, cuz I actually like it a little bit better. But sometimes when I'm working from home and I don't have access to my flatbed scanner but I need to read some printed like medical documents or things like that, I'll take out KNFB Reader and just scan a whole bunch of pages all at once and then read it, through it continuously, so that's very helpful, and then also you can save on KNFB Reader in their file system, and I think I saw on the latest update that now they can sync with Google Drive and Dropbox now to, so that's kind of a really cool feature that they've integrated in there now. Jeff: Yeah I like the KNFB Reader when I have like, I might have 10 pages of something to read and I don't want to take a picture of each of them so I put it on double sheet and then batch mode and when I turn the page it'll sense that, so you know you got the page turning then ch-ch-ch. KNFB Reader Voice: Manual picture button, automatic picture, picture from ste..., alert, please place your device on an empty document stand and align the camera with the aperture, okay, button, flash off, button, multi-page mode off, button, multi-page mode on. [Camera Sound Effect] Serina: Do you have a stand that you use with it? Jeff: Yeah I do, its the Fopydo and it was designed by Thomas Wardega, and here he is. Thomas: Fopydo sounds good, and I actually at that time asked my son, and it was actually a play on the on Scooby Doo. So basically this was designed from the ground up for people who are blind and visually impaired and along that process I learned to work with people who are blind so I went through a couple of revisions of the stand before I even started selling it just to make sure that people are happy with using it and that it fulfills whatever is needed from a scanning stand for people who are blind and visually impaired. [Camera Sound Effect] Jeff: It comes with a set of instructions that you can scan, you can put it together, once you got it together it just folds right up and you can put it in a suitcase, it takes up very little real estate. Serina: Oh I need one, and does it work with any phone or? Jeff: Well back when I talked with him he said it would handle, if you balanced it right, and iPad Mini, so I, I guess your your beast of a phone, your iPhone X may work. [Laughter] Serina: Yeah and put the link in the show notes cuz I've been, I thought, I had somebody looking for one before and they were like $50, I'm like mm-hmm, I'll just hold it up, you know. [Laughter] Jeff: Having the batch mode on the KNFB Reader really makes it viable product for someone that's in school that may have to be scanning a lot of pages. Serina: I definitely need one of those. Jeff: Yeah we'll put the link in the show notes and I believe he sells it on Amazon and if you have Amazon Prime, there you go, ten, twelve bucks. Serina: Primes getting expensive though it's like $120.00 starting this year. Hope: I think there's a discount for students. Serina: It's half off for students cuz I had that for a couple of years, and then they got smart and realized that I'm not a student anymore because my school let me keep my student email address for years, and I don't even think I have it anymore now. Now they make you verify by sending in like a schedule. Hope: Oh really? Serina: Yeah. Hope: Similar to Apple music, they do the same thing. Serina: Yeah, and I think Spotify does the same thing too. Hope: Yep. Serina: They got smart. Jeff: So we'll have to put the link in there for Amazon Prime half off for students, that's good news. Serina: Yeah that's it, and half off of Apple music and Spotify, not that those are, those could be productivity apps because if you need music to stay focused. Hope: Technically yeah, exactly, that works! Jeff: Or books. Hope: Yeah. Jeff: Amazon still sells books. Serina: Who orders books anymore? Jeff: Does anybody use Audible for books? Serina: I do not, I totally looked at it, but every time I looked at it I just can't, like I think it's thirteen ninety-nine a month for so many credits and one, the amount of credits you get for that amount is equal to downloading one book, and I haven't found that it's better than just using BARD, because they usually have especially if it's a best-seller what I want anyway. Jeff: Mm-hmm and the BARD app is totally accessible too. Serina: Yeah it's, it's a little old school sometimes, it has its glitches but it gets the job done. Hope: It can be yeah, exactly. Jeff: But it's, it's something that if you do send in a report and stuff like that they'll fix it? We can hope for the best right Hope? Hope: Yeah exactly, yeah sure, I'll write them, I'll give them a good report! Jeff: There you go. Hope: Sure. [Laughter] Serina: Well and it's hard because I know, I think that's run by the Library of Congress so that probably takes like an act of Congress just to get a glitch fixed you know. Jeff: Oh good one! Serina: I didn't mean it to be all cheesy but it's kind of funny. Jeff: Yeah it is, it is, it's nice when things work and you know, you were talking about seeing AI when you open it up short text just starts. I got an app called Drafts, just like the seeing AI, when you open it up it just works the short text is working, do you open it up and the cursors waiting up in the upper left-hand corner and you can start typing, you don't have to open up a new file. The neat thing is if you're in a meeting and you're taking notes and you can set it for certain increments of minutes that pass by and then next time like you open your phone, say it closed, it'll start a new file automatically. Serina: Well that's cool. Jeff: So you're not adding to your recipe you wrote two days ago that's still sitting there, do you want to save it, you don't know if you should save it, it automatically, so if you set it up for 10 minutes, if 10 minutes goes by, it saves it, and opens up a new one, just ready to go, so it's like a new sheet of scratch pad for you, can actually do some markups on it, yeah share it anywhere you want, it's really cool. I do the cut and paste and then just pop it into an email, bang! Serina: I like that, is that a free up too? Jeff: Yeah Drafts is free, I think it's called Drafts 5, there is a professional upgrade, a pro version and that is $20 a year or two dollars a month, but you can do a lot with just the Drafts app. I just love that because when you just want to take down a note, I don't like going into, I use pages because it syncs up with my apple orchard but when I'm at someplace where the meetings starting and I open up pages, you know it has to load up, it goes to the recent, and it seems like, you know all the gears have to spin around five times before anything happens, but this one opens up just bang, it's ready to go. Serina: I especially have that problem using the native Notes app on the iOS devices. Ever since they made it where you've got some notes on your iPhone, some on iCloud, some on Google Drive, or Dropbox or wherever, it's so hard for me to figure out where my notes are anymore that I just don't use that app anymore. Jeff: And that's my second app that I was going to talk about, it's the files app in iOS platform on the iPhone. Files, if you don't know where it went because it says, oh it's stored on the iCloud, or on the desktop in the iCloud, or on the iCloud Drive or wherever, and you start hunting around, but if you go to files and go to most recent, it'll check all those files, all those different drives, all the different places on your phone and everything, but if you go to recent and then if you click up on top you can go back and actually go specifically only to one area where you think it is, but if you put it on all, its checking all those drives that you have synced up with it and you can usually find it, so when I get lost for a second I just open up files and go to the most recent and there it is. Serina: That's a good tip, I didn't know that. I never really knew the point of the files app. Jeff: Yeah check it out, open it up and just see, and you'll see what you've been doing lately. Seirna: So I have one more that you do not know that is my favorite apps to use, any guesses? Jeff: Hope, what do you think it is? Hope: Hmmm, Uber, no it's not productivity, nevermind. [Laughter] Serina: Well technically it is, I do use Uber and Lyft a lot for work actually because I have to go as part of my job, I have to be at high schools and things like that and I am almost an exclusive Lyft user personally. Jeff: And why Lyft over Uber? Serina: I just have found just with my personal experience in the city that I live in that I've had better luck with Lyft drivers as far as friendliness and I have a service animal so, I've never been rejected on Uber, I'm actually, the only place I was was actually on Lyft. I found that the cars have been cleaner and the drivers just seem friendlier and with Uber I specifically am NOT a fan of the, if we wait more than two minutes, we're gonna charge you policy. Hope: Oh that's not good. Serina: Yeah that's a newer policy, maybe in the last six months and that policy just really bothers me especially when you're visually impaired. Drivers will say they're there and you're like where? You know, and if they're automatically gonna charge you, I think it's, I don't, I guess it's maybe like five dollars, if the driver has to wait I believe it's more than two minutes, like that's stressful, it's already nerve-racking like being like, hey I've got a service animal, are they gonna drive right past me, are they gonna pick me up, and then to know they're also gonna charge me an extra five bucks if I can't find them. And then they also tend to do the walk here and meet your driver thing. Jeff: Oh yeah. Serina: And I've never had that happen with Lyft no matter, I've been in downtown Denver and that's not happened before, but Uber will send you up a random parking lot or something to meet your driver. Hope: Oh wow! No thank you. Serina: Yeah so that's more why I'm Lyft exclusive, and then on the driver side I'm not quite sure how it breaks down, I don't remember how much the drivers get but I know with Uber it's not like a set percentage that the drivers get as far as, like I think it with Lyft the drivers get 75% of the fares With Uber, nobody really knows what percentage of the fare they get because they can, I've had drivers say like, yeah I've done rides Denver to you know, the DIA Airport and sometimes I get 60, sometimes I get a hundred, like there's no, I guess transparency with it. Jeff: Mmm-hm. Serina: And I can only speak to you know what I'm told, but I just personally feel better about using Lyft and for those who don't know, Lyft also released an update to their service dog policy saying that an allergy or a fear of animals is not a valid reason to not pick up an individual with a service animal and I feel like that's a very strong policy, and that's telling you where they stand on that very clearly, and I'm not, I'm not sure if Uber has come out as strong as they did. But that's all for a whole another podcast, you have to use all that when we talk about transportation. [Laughter] Jeff: No that's, that's good information because in my neck of the woods my wife uses Lyft, I use Uber and yet, I've been noticing that at certain peak times the price goes way up and other times it's low, and the waiting time changes, but you know, if it were two minutes, it's sometimes it's as low as thirty seven cents, but other times it's higher, you know, so things, I think it's the area you're in that really has, it makes a difference between which one you use, it is productivity because you got to get places and it's nice to know you can get there. Serina: And on time and on your own time. Jeff: Good. Serina: But that was a really good guess that brought on a whole another discussion, I liked it. [Laughter] Serina: But honestly we're on the app right now. Jeff: Ahh, zoom zoom. [Laughter] Serina: But part of my job is to train other people and to hold conference calls and things like that, and to my knowledge as far as like a true training platform where you can record and share your screen and things like that, I found that Zoom is the most accessible system out there that's also used by like companies all over the place. I know Skype is out there, but I don't know if Skype lets you like record the calls and things like that, I don't, like independently, not by pushing it through a different software but just right in the program recording it and having that access to be able to share your screen and still use your PowerPoint effectively and things like that. Jeff: Mm-hmm, and we're doing a neat thing for the first time here and we didn't know if we could do it but Hope sat beside us waiting patiently for us, but we figured it out and we're recording on two ends right now. Serina: Unless I pushed the wrong button again which is very possible. [Laughter] Jeff: Another cliffhanger, stay tuned next week when we find out! Serina: That will be our opener next week. Guess what I actually did it right! Jeff: You know, I'm starting to like Zoom because it's like I can't even tell you, you guys are here, because typically when we're using Skype in my headphones, I have this hiss when other people aren't talking so there's continuous hisses going on and then in the editing phase. So Zoom's really good and I really like the feature where you can send an email and people can just click on the link and they connect right up. Serina: Yep, it makes it really really easy. Hope: So a question I have, you mentioned sharing your screen, how accessible is that with voiceover? I heard through the grapevine that the voice-over will read actually what's on the screen. I don't know if it's true or not? Serina: So I haven't had a chance to test that because at work we don't use any Max, and then when I'm on a Zoom call and I am a participant I'm not usually on my iPhone. Hope: Right. Serina: So if you are leading the meeting and you're sharing your screen, it's actually pushing through a video of your screen, so it's almost like, I just imagine like a webcam watching your screen or whatever. Hope: Right, so I would assume it's not accessible then. Serine: Correct, but and I don't remember the keystroke, maybe Jeff knows, but I know in the latest major update to the OS on the Macs and iOS, you can have it essentially perform an OCR on the screen like live, with the software on the Mac, but I haven't had a chance to truly test that out just because I'm not usually on Apple devices when I'm participating. The way that I work around that, because I do have to present to individuals that use screen readers as well sometimes, is I usually will send my PowerPoint out ahead of time so that they can follow along while they're listening to the meeting, but then they also have access to the chat panel and everything else, it's just the visual of the video that they're not quite having access to but I, I just send it out ahead of time. Jeff: Yeah I haven't dug too deep into this, but Serina told me about Jonathan Mosen's book, and he did a full fledge book on using Zoom for calls and meetings and stuff like that, and yeah, I believe you can get that on Mosen's consulting on the website, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Serina: Yeah the book is called "Meet Me Accessibly" and it's very current based on, because I listen to maybe four or five chapters so far, and it sounds like he recorded it maybe in June of 17 and he does a really good job of letting you hear the screen reader and how it interacts with everything and going through all the different settings and explaining what exactly it is that they all do. Jeff: Yes he does he has quite a few books on Mosen's consulting so when you get there, just look around and he has tutorials on a lot of different topics, he's into the Mac, he's into, no not the Mac as much anymore, but he's into the PC, Microsoft. Serina: All these plugs Jeff, you're going to need to get some royalties! [Laughter] Jeff: Hopefully I get their name right and their website right. Another app that I have that I use and some people laugh at this, I use Dictionary Thesaurus Plus, and if you get the dictionary you can upgrade and you get, its a combination of Dictionary and Thesaurus Plus and I get the word of the day, and I'm just waiting to get that specific word to send Serina because she laughed at me when I talked about this app before. But it's just kind of neat because in there, they have flashcards and I'm on the bottom, they're not labeled but I figured out what two of them are, flashcards, so I took insight today just when I was skipping around there and I made a flashcard so on one side it says insight, on the other side it says the definition, so someone could actually go through there if they have a 10 word list that need to know or learn, like they're in school and they could actually input the word, get the dictionary, and there's also a button that says go to page, so if you want more definition you can just click on it, brings it right to the dictionary page and it's just kind of a neat resource if you're into that you know. If you want to know what words mean. Serina: Well that could you, I mean you just brought up a good point though, that could be a really good study aid for somebody if you're in a class where there's a lot of maybe theories, or specific definitions you need to know, you could load all those in there and while you're on the bus or whatever kind of be going through those, probably a more fun way than just reading the book. Jeff: Yeah and that's why I did it, like when I took Spanish, I made, I made note cards. I took these note cards and I brailled on one side, and then on the other side I had some other Braille, the translation in English to what it was, so I could just go through, and people were like joking with me like, Oh flashcards, it's like it's something for the kids or something, but hey, it's a good learning tool because it's just repetitious and pretty soon it just starts coming to you. Serina: Mmm-hmm. Jeff: So I dug right in when I saw they had flashcards, I went wow! So I really like that and it's, uh I think there's a fee for the upgrade, might be a few dollars but you can get download at all for free and test it and then in the in-app you can upgrade. Serina: Nice! Jeff: Well I think we got a handful of apps here that you know through experience we, we've been trying, we've been using and stuff. Some of these apps if you find them useful click on the show notes, download them, check them out, and if you have any feedback or suggestions on the apps that you want us to do on our next show, give us a jingle, drop us an email at JobInsights@blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Job Insights VIP, and uh, let us know what you think. Serina: What are we talking about next tiem John....John? Wow! Sorry! [Laughter] Jeff: Well Sarah! [Laughter] Jeff: What will our next one be on? Serina: I don't know, we have so many topics, normally I'm like, let's take this, let's let Hope pick the next topic, no pressure! Hope: No pressure yeah right mm-hmm! Let's do transportation since we kind of talked a little bit about it in this one, that would make sense. Serina: Getting to work. Hope: Yeah, absolutely. Serina: Perfect. Jeff: Getting to work, school, college. Hope: Yeah. Jeff: There you go Sarah! Serina: Stop it! [Laughter] Jeff: And if you want to contact Hope, she's on Twitter. Serina: If you want people to have it? Hope: Yeah my Twitter is Fidelco, capital F as in Foxtrot, I, D as in Delta, E, L, C, O, 4, the number four, ever. My email address is hopepaulos@gmail.com, so hopepaulos@gmail.com. Jeff: Well Hope thank you very much for coming on to Job Insights, it's really neat to have you and we're gonna have you back as soon as possible here for our next round table. Hope: Thank you so much Jeff and Serina, it was wonderful being here. I appreciate it! Serina: Yep, you have a great day! Hope: Thank you! Jeff: Do you know it's nearly midnight and you said have a great day? Serina: Well this will come out during the day. [Laughter] [Music] Jeff: It was a real pleasure having Hope Paulos join us on the show today, all the way from Maine, and next week when we're talking about transportation all the way from New York we'll have Joe De Niro, so stay tuned to the next episode of Job Insights. And a big shout-out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music and you can follow him on Twitter at lcheechau, as always thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time bye-bye [Multiple voices] When we share what we see through each other's eyes, We can then begin to bridge the Gap between the limited expectations and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff: For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on twitter at BlindAbilities, download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that's two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com, thanks for listening.  

Job Insights #3: Mastering the Elephant in the Room - Disclosing a Disability in the Job Interview Process. Transcription Provided   Full Transcription Below Welcome to Episode 3 of  Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jef Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. In this episode we take on the White Elephant in the Room, that is, the job interview room. With guest voices answering the question, “Do you disclose your disability during the job interview process, and if so, when do you disclose?” Hosts Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson take a good look at this Million Dollar question from all points of view and leave you with information that will better prepare you for your job interview process. There may not be one set way and being prepared for the job interview gives you an advantage that may help you land the career you want. Check out episode 3 of Job Insights and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email. mailto:jobinsights@blindabilities.com   Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP http://www.twitter.com/jobinsightsvip   Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network.   Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store. Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the Google Play Store.   Full Transcription   [Music] Female voice: And most of the people that worked there did not know that I had any sort of vision impairment or anything like that, and at that time I was not comfortable walking around with my cane. Jeff: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Female voice: Because an interview is not just the employer figuring out if they want to hire you, it's you figuring out if you want to work for the employer as well. Jeff: To help you navigate the employment world and give you Job Insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. Selling yourself, you want to be the best box of cereal on the shelf because when people come down they're looking at all the colors all the things, what makes them pick a certain box? Is it the toy inside, is it the fancy colors? So you had to start selling yourself and be the one they pick. Female voice: If you have more of a obvious disability, you want to make sure that you kind of address that in a way that makes it so that they're not thinking about that, they're thinking about your skills, that's what their inner monologue isn't about you, it's about what they think that you can't do in their bias. Jeff: And you can find the Job Insights podcast on Blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network, with host Serina Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson. And you can contact us by email at Job Insights@BlindAbilities.com, leave us some feedback or suggest some topics that we cover. On Twitter at Job Insights VIP and check out the Job Insight support group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community. [Music] Female voice: I didn't catch them off guard by showing up with a cane, and I found that that approach worked really well for me. [Music] Jeff: Learn about resources for training, education, and employment opportunities. Female voice: I think sighted people just like since video calls exist, they, that's what they use, so it's definitely becoming, it's going to be a type of interview than most people will have I think. Jeff: And now please welcome Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights. Hey Serina! Serina: Hey Jeff! Jeff: To disclose or not to disclose, that is the question I ask of thee. Serina: Have you been reading Shakespeare? Jeff: No, but I have been reading the Job Insights support group page. There's been a topic going on there about disclosure. Serina: Yeah it seems like a lot of people have some different opinions on, do I talk about my disability in the job interview, do I not? [Sound Effect] Female voice: I have a very disability in that I use a cane, and I can't make eye contact and so I find that usually, and this is the same thing that I did after the phone interview but before the in-person interview, I disclosed. [Sound Effect] Female voice: Do I talk about it when I'm doing my cover letter or my resume or not? [Sound Effect] Male voice: If you're applying for a position and it involves using some kind of accommodation, then it's probably wise to disclose it. [Sound Effect] Serina: And I really wanted to see if we could talk about that a little bit today get some different opinions. [Sound Effect] Female voice: If I need to than I do, if I don't need to I don't. [Sound Effect] Serina: Just get it all out there, I know this will be a pretty divisive topic, everyone has some pretty strong opinions on disability disclosure. We're here to offer you some tips on what might help you in the job interview process, when might be a good time to disclose and work to your advantage in a job interview, and maybe when might not be a great time to bring that up in a job interview. Jeff: And when to know the difference, that's um, I think the most important thing. Serina: Exactly. Jeff: Some of the topics that came up really shocked me like, I do my own accommodations a gentleman said, and that just made me cock my head and I had to think about that for a little bit, and yeah I get that, or someone says how dare you can you show up and shock them by showing up with a cane, you didn't tell them, and I'm thinking, like in some situations the resume does not have a spot for that, they may be able to dissect it out of the some of the positions you've held, or some of the companies who worked for, but I think mostly it's one of those situations that you're prepared for either way. Serina: Well and it's interesting that you brought up the I provide my own accommodations piece of the equation. I respect anyone who wants to step up and say here's what I need, I already have it, that's great, but in a lot of systems you can't install your own programs onto computers without having some significant permission. For example I work for a government agency, there's no way they're gonna give me an administrative password and all kinds of leeway to install any programs that I want because who knows what they could do to their network. Of course I know that JAWS is safe and I know that they know that JAWS is safe, but they still have to have some sort of system for managing the programs that are on their server and other network because what if you install a pirated piece of software then what, not saying that you would, most employers unless it's a real small company, it is their legal responsibility to provide you with that reasonable accommodation so why not take them up on it as opposed to using your hard-earned money to purchase those licenses and keep that up on somebody else's computer. Jeff: So having JAWS, having accommodations, and talking to them about accommodations that to, to read the screen, you can even have a person come in to do evaluation of what kind of software they're using, what kind of databases they're using, the see if you can gain access, and further down the line some scripts could even be made to help these specialized programs that they utilize just so you can overcome that hurdle, and it might be just a button that you have to get past. Serina: Exactly. Jeff: So there's some great services that are out there when you're trying to get a job, especially when you're into the job field, it seems like State Services has a whole arsenal of people that are help at that point, or if you're trying to retain a job too. Serina: That's a really good point, yes if you maybe already have a job, gosh I didn't even think about that Jeff, if you, if you already are working, I've seen that and quite a few of the support groups on Facebook, I'm working, I'm losing my vision, I don't think I can work anymore, and just remember that if you are having vision difficulties at work, you are still able to go apply for services at vocational rehabilitation and see what kinds of things they might be able to put place so that you can keep your job. I'd hate to see somebody that has 20 or 25 years in a career and you're just that close to retirement and feeling like you have to give up because your vision is changing with all the technology that's out there now, not saying it's gonna be easy, there's gonna be some learning curves for sure, but the sooner you start getting those services, the sooner you can get back to working in the job like you used to. Jeff: Yeah and that job retention it's a lot, I'm not gonna say it's a lot easier, but what it does is, you're gonna go into some specifics you know, you're just gonna do this to bridge this, to bridge that, to shore up what you're not able to do because it's obvious right away, rather than if you leave the job you go back home then you get to start from scratch like, I want to learn how to cook, I wanna, you know so it's interesting at different points when people are losing their vision, but when we're talking about disclosure, is that's a unique point too. I suppose because I've been blind for so long that to me I can live within my skin, and I think the difference is people who are trying to, especially high partials, or partials, they're either around blind people, there the sighted person around sighted people or they're the blind guy, or the blind person. Serina: Mm-hmm. Jeff: But at a job interview, there's a quandary there, do they use their cane or not use their cane and bump into things or do they bring their cane? Serina: You just brought up a really interesting point because I just thought back to when I was 19 and I started getting cane training from vocational rehabilitation, and at that time I was a cashier at a retail store, and most of the people that worked there did not know that I had any sort of vision impairment or anything like that, and at that time, I was not comfortable walking around with my cane. I'd rather bump into somebody then be seen as the blind girl. So at the age of 19 I would have absolutely said, no way I am not disclosing my disability, I can do it just as well as anyone else. I will just work twice as hard, and struggle at times, but now gosh, 20 years later ish, I think totally differently I, I could never personally see an instance where I would not want to disclose that because I don't want it to be the elephant in the room, when I'm being interviewed. Jeff: Mm-hmm. [Sound Effect] Rob Hobson: It's really up to the individual, some people like to not say a thing, show up to the interview, surprise I'm blind, you know, granted they don't say that. I think to the interviewer that, that's a surprise, but if you want to go that route, that's totally fine it's entirely up to you. But I want you to think about something when you go in for that interview, blindness is that, the white elephant in the room, if you don't address it, you're left to whatever conceptions they have a blindness, positive or negative, but if you address it as in a positive way, you bring up the fact that you are blind, and that you utilize accessible technology via you know whether it's JAWS or NVDA, or a system access, whatever it is you use, explain to that employer why you're the best candidate for the job. The long answer is, it's up to the individual, but if you don't address the fact that you're blind, I think it puts you at a disadvantage. Jeff: And that was Rob Hobson, he's the director of programs at Blind Incorporated in Minnesota. [Sound Effect] Jeff: And that's what it is, it's that the elephant in the room, and if you don't squash that, they're gonna paint their own picture as big as a an elephant any way they want to. Serina: Well and the reality is is that every employer knows that they can't come out and say, what's your disability, they can ask, do you require any reasonable accommodations to perform the essential duties of this job, which is a roundabout way of still figuring it out obviously. But if you're coming to an interview and you're using a service animal, or you have a cane, it's right out there and then they're just wondering, well how on earth is she going to be able to do this, or how is he going to be able to spellcheck documents for me, or access the computer? Because the technology that we use is not mainstream, most people don't even understand what a screen reader is unless they know somebody who has a visual impairment. Jeff: Mm-hmm, yeah and that's the point where you have the opportunity to educate them and sell yourself with the skills that you do have. Serina: Exactly, one of the other panelists did bring up a really good point. If it's a phone interview, that's totally different, they don't see you, they have no clue what you look like, what your abilities and capabilities are, and then what you're selling to them. I don't think I would mention it in that interview type of setting, what about you Jeff? Jeff: No I really don't think so, I think the phone call is a situation where they're just starting to get a good feel of how you, you know your social skills, they want to find out if you're a good fit for the team, for the company. Serina: Correct, because we talked about this a little bit on our very first podcast, if you got the interview then they have already determined that you're qualified for the position, they're just trying to see if you're a good fit for the office but, whether that be the culture, or some more specific questions that they weren't able to flush out in the application process, by not discussing your disability when you have a visible disability, you're almost causing the employers to only focus on the fact that you just walked in with a service dog, or with your cane, and is human as people want to be, and is empathetic and understanding as they claim to be, that's still going to be in the forefront of their mind especially if they're not familiar with your disability. Jeff: That's where Daysha the employment specialist brought up a very good point about where you're just talking about and she called it the internal monologue that the hiring person will be creating. [Sound Effect] Daysha: When you do talk to somebody, especially if it's an interview, you're gonna get that tell me about yourself, you could even get that when you just meet an employer at a job fair or an internship fair, tell me about yourself. You want to make sure especially if you have more of a obvious disability, you want to make sure that you kind of address that in a way that makes it so that they're not thinking about that, they're thinking about your skills. A lot of people make the mistake of never seeing anything and then an employer, the whole time that they're talking is thinking, well because they don't have any experience with vision loss, so they're thinking to themselves, I don't know that I could do that if I couldn't see right, I'm not sure that they're gonna be able to do that, that's what, their inner monologue isn't about you, it's about what they think that you can't do and their bias. Tell how you do things, go into it with confidence, know what your skills are ahead of time, know what you have to offer an employer, and just go into it that way. [Sound effect] Serina: Exactly they start putting those doubts in their mind. I don't know if they'll be able to do this, what about safety concerns? That's a really big one, is my workers compensation insurance going to go up because I have this individual in my office who's presumably, whether correct or incorrect, going to be causing more workplace incidents or accidents. Which we all know if you've gotten your orientation and mobility training in your personal adjustment training, your always more safe than the people who are sighted in the office, because you're not walking around on your cell phone or distracted. [Laughter] Jeff: We'll have to put in ramps and handrails, we'll have to label everything and yeah, but you can control that, and I think at that point, you know you're coming in with a cane and you know they don't know it yet, so that's your opportunity right there, that's your opportunity to call out the white elephant in the room in your favor. You can address it and you can tell them exactly like we said, selling yourself, you want to be the best box of cereal on the shelf, because when people come down, they're looking at all the colors, all the things, what makes them pick a certain box? Is it the toy inside, is it the fancy colors? So you have to start selling yourself and be the one they pick. Serina: It's interesting that you mentioned when you come to the interview, let's say with your cane or your service animal, I have seen situations where individuals do have a visual impairment that warrants the use of a cane and they opt to not bring that to the job interview, and I have seen that cause some problems, because when you don't have your cane or your service animal that could create some super awkward situations when you're trying to interview with the employer. As an example, the employer comes out to the lobby to get you, and maybe your vision is not adjusted or whatever the case may be to that particular office environment, and you're walking not so steady, or unsure about yourself, just think of the assumptions that they're putting in their mind now with the individual that's interviewing for the job, but not walking appropriately in their office, or not making eye contact, or not quite getting the handshake. Jeff: Mm-hmm, yeah and that's very important because myself, I have no central vision, and I can pick up some peripheral stuff, but in an interview you're probably trying to make the best eye contact you can, and I was just in an interview, this was a podcast interview and I told the person right off the get-go, don't think I'm looking over your shoulder or something behind you because that's how I sometimes pick things up by looking away from what I'm really looking at, so I actually made them feel more comfortable than them trying to talk during the interview wondering, what's behind me he keeps looking at, or something like that. Serina: Exactly, yeah. Jeff: In reality I, whatever I'm looking at I can't see anyways, so you can control the situation. They're going to start working this white elephant up in the room, they're gonna start, and not even hearing what you're talking about, all the stuff you're talking about, so you have to get control of the conversation a little bit and that's where you can start saying that, how you overcome doing job details that they want like word document that you use because you use JAWS, or how you can use other type of apparatuses or tools for success that get you to the point where you can compete against anybody that they hire. [Sound Effect] Miranda: I say no because I feel like with as much misunderstanding as there is in the world with with blindness, it's easy for a employer or potential employer to look at your resume and see that you're blind and see all these other resumes that he's got to go through that are just as educated, just as qualified as you are, and to simply just let that one go, like alright, I'm not gonna deal with that. I mean because you're you're talking about them having to deal with ADA and all this, all that other kind of stuff, walk in there confident and stuff, don't disclose before you go in, and just be like, hey this is what I can offer your company. If you made it in there, if they invited you in then that means you're qualified and you should have a shot at it just as everybody else. Jeff: You're listening to the voice of Miranda Brandenburg, she's a certified personal trainer and nutritional specialist. Miranda: The vast majority of people out there have never dealt with a blind person or encountered someone, especially one that is out there making waves, that's out there leading the charge, that's out there willing to work and get in there and travel and do this and do that and get out on the mat and fight and compete with sighted peers on every single level that they can. [Sound Effect] Serina: And it doesn't have to be the first thing you talk about you know, it can be something that, because I've never been an interview that didn't say at the end, do you have any other information like to offer me, or do you have any questions for me, I don't, what about you Jeff? I've never not been asked that? Jeff: Every time and have that question, because they want to know something, so I suggest before you going into an interview, go online, read their mission statement, see what company they are, see what they're all about, what, what's their key words, and that's something that you might want to integrate into your dialogue with them, and then when they come with that question, ask that question, like do you have any questions about my ability to do this job? Serina: And the way that I've approached it, I've only had to do it once, because one was I was applying for a County job at a local Workforce Center, and the second interview was using a white cane, was at the division of vocational rehabilitation. So it could not be more of a comfortable environment. I didn't even have to address it there, but the first one I did come in, I had my white cane, towards the end they said, do you have any more information you'd like to share with me? And I said well, you know, you obviously know I have a visual impairment, I just wanted to give you some information on the technology that I use in order to get things done, and I had gone as far as to print out some real short tip sheets on, at that time I was using a portable CCTV, and JAWS, so that they knew I had already thought about the types of things that I might need on the job and was already skilled in that, so that they didn't have to worry about, okay, obviously I'm gonna have to train her on our procedures, but is she also going to have to get training on her technology needs. Jeff: Mm-hmm, and that's a good point to come in there and let them know how you're gonna access the material that they have. Serina: Mm-hmm, now I have seen some questions in our support group about, do I disclose in the application process? A lot of applications are automated and they, some of them do ask if you have a disability. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that because, yes they might be asking if you have a disability, but if, unless they're breaking the law, that information is not to be passed on to the hiring manager or the individual that's reviewing your application. Typically when they're asking if you have a disability or require reasonable accommodation, that information is used for one of two things. The first would be that there is a program called Work Opportunity Tax Credit which allows employers to have taxes reimbursed to them to offset hiring expenses and things like that for hiring individuals in a variety of situations including those that have a disability, as well as those that are on public assistance, or they're using it because they know that they have some sort of testing that all the applicants have to do, and they really truly are trying to reasonably accommodate anybody that might need those accommodations. So I wouldn't hesitate to answer that personally because that could put you in an awkward situation down the road should you have to take, for example if you're applying at a call center, should you have to take one of their tests and all of a sudden you're asking for an accommodation when on the application you said that you don't need accommodations or don't have a disability. Jeff: And the same thing in Minnesota our Governor passed two years ago, he passed the proclamation that 7% of all employees in the state jobs, they'll hire people with disabilities to fill that 7% goal that they want to have, and so in some applications, some situations, there is a checkbox for that, and that way companies that do want to hire people can have that choice too. Serina: And that brings up another good point, the federal government also has a mandate that they have to hire a certain percentage of individuals with disabilities, and in fact, if anyone has been through that federal hiring process, it's a nightmare to say the least. If you do not check that you have a disability, then you're not going to be considered in any of the priority categories which means that your application might never even get looked at for open position. Jeff: Yeah it's a tough area and a lot of us, like I said on the last podcast, a lot of us aren't fully up on everything that there is to know about blindness when you probably, if you weren't born blind, or you just became blind, there's a lot to learn and there's lots of people that are offering suggestions and no one's really wrong, but I think the best fit is the best fit that you feel most comfortable with because if you're uncomfortable they'll know you're uncomfortable with it so, that's why in Minnesota here at the state agency, they do tutoring on job interviews, mock interviews, where you do get the situation that you know, mister mister boss might ask questions or make you feel awkward in a sense just so you can understand that every interview that you go to, you're gonna get a different person that has different preconceived ideas and it's gonna be in a different situation each time. So if you have an opportunity to try a mock interview, that'd be really great experience. Serina: Well and frankly I remember reading an article, I think it was last year, people are actually scared of blindness, they would rather have cancer than be diagnosed with being blind or visually impaired. So imagine that fear then being put into the situation of, oh my gosh how could I possibly hire somebody that has this visual impairment? If you don't address how you do things in the workplace. Jeff: Mm-hmm that's a great point, another great point is to remember they want to hire someone who can get the job done. Bottom line, get the job done. Susan Robinson, an entrepreneur out in New York and a TEDx speaker, and visually impaired by the way, she told me that she has never terminated a person because they were sighted. Serina: Hmm, that's an interesting way to put that. Jeff: Mm-hmm, she has a job that she needs to get done, she wants to hire the person that could come in and do that job, that's it. Serina: Wow, look at you getting all philosophical over there! [Laughter] [Sound Effect] Female voice: To me it was no different than anyone else doing the same thing with the exception of letting people know during an interview process what I might need from them. So again it was the same sort of self-advocacy to use your wonderful term as I did in college, so in an interview process, the first interviews is sort of getting to know each other, do I think I like working for this person? Because an interview is not just the employer figuring out if they want to hire you, it's you figuring out if you want to work for the employer as well. Once we got to maybe a level 2 or level 3 conversation in the interview process, at that point when it seemed to be a little bit more concrete that the position possibly could be mine, I would disclose and I would say, I just want to let you know I have a visual impairment, it may not be obvious to you, but what that means is I'm gonna bring everything that we've already talked about, my, all of the skills and characteristics that we've discussed, but I am going to need a large monitor for my computer so that I can see things you know enlarged a little bit, and generally people were very receptive to that because again I'm letting them know which is what every potential employer wants to know, can you do the job, are you willing to do the job, and are you going to be a good fit? [Sound Effect] Jeff: Serina, when we had our conversation with Cindy Bennett, a researcher out in Washington and a former intern at Microsoft, she mentioned something that we hadn't even considered, and that was, an interview via videoconference. [Sound Effect] Cindy: I think if I had a video interview I would probably disclose, but I would frame it something like, I'm actually blind so, I might be like, hey does the camera look okay, okay cool, like just like that, just really quick. I do practice if I do a video interview, I always like first of all clean my apartment and look nice. [Laughter] Second of all, I set up my computer on a table in front of my couch and call someone I know, like I video call someone I know and they tell me okay this is good. I found that just like a quick little thing at the beginning of the video interview, I'm like, oh by the way I'm blind, I just wanna make sure that you can see me okay in the camera. If it's an old-fashioned audio phone interview, then usually the person emails me and says we'd like to invite you for an in-person interview and I say thank you and confirm the dates and say, oh just for your information, I'm blind, here's what I need. Jeff: Were you excited when we asked for a podcast that you didn't have to clean your house? [Laughter] Cindy: Yeah [Laughter mixed with inaudible talking] I don't want to do a video call ........ I think they are important things to think about, like I honestly with a lot of my colleagues now that I'm comfortable with them, I'm just like, can we just do audio because then I can just set my phone down beside me and we can go on with our business, but I think sighted people just like, since video calls exist, they, that's what they use. So it's definitely becoming, it's going to be a type of interview that most people will have I think. Serina: I honestly didn't even think about how the video interview, how that would be impacted by the visual impairment, so I'm glad you brought that up because I haven't had an interview for a job since 2010 and it was definitely not when people were doing video interviews or anything like that, so that's definitely something to think about. [Sound Effect] Jeff: It's really great that so many people came on board and shared their experiences, the way they handle disclosing a disability during an interview and the people leaving comments on Job Insights support group page on Facebook. And to sum it up, here's Rachel Hastings, she just got done running the marathon, the Boston Marathon and she's a music therapist. [Sound Effect] Rachel: I've done it both ways, so I've done it one time I didn't tell them that I was blind until I got there and I think it kind of caught him off guard. I mean part of me is like deal with it, but the other part of me is like, well you know, there's no harm in telling them over the phone. After they invite you to an interview, and so because I kind of felt like I made it awkward, so the next time I was first offered a phone interview and I told them over the phone, I'm like, by the way I want to let you guys know that I'm legally blind, but I'm very independent and that, that was after they invited me for an in-person interview. So it's like there was no way they could turn me down but yet I didn't catch them off-guard by showing up with a cane in person, and I found that that approach worked really well for me. [Sound Effect] Jeff: So Serina, next week we're gonna be talking about some apps. Apps for the workplace, apps for productivity, apps for a school. Serina: Yep, I know that I have my favorites. Jeff: Hmm, you gonna save them, you're gonna make us wonder till next week aren't you? Serina: You guys will have to wonder till next week. Jeff: The cliffhanger strikes again. [Laughter] Serina: So I'd like to thank everyone for listening to our show today. As always if you have any questions or topics that you'd like us to follow, you can give us a message on Twitter, that's at Job Insights VIP, or on our Facebook page which is Job Insights, and we also have a brand new job insight support group on Facebook, just search Job Insights support group, see you next time. [Music] Jeff: Thank You Chee Chau for your beautiful music, that's lcheechau on Twitter. We really hope you enjoyed this podcast, thanks for listening, and until next time bye-bye! [Music] [Multiple Voices] When we share what we see through each other's eyes, we can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations and reality of blind abilities. Jeff: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Blind Abilities, download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that is two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.

Job Insights Episode 2 - Vocational Rehab 101: Demystifying the Myths and Planning For Employment Welcome to the second episode of  Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jef Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. In Episode 2 of Job Insights Serina and Jeff break down Vocational Rehab services from eligibility, intake, personal adjustment training, training centers, and your responsibilities as well. Navigating the services may seem daunting at first but with a little bit of information and explanation you will soon fine your pathway to gainful and meaningful employment does not have to be a solo journey. Your Voc-Rehab team wants you to succeed and is their for you all the way.   Full Transcript Below   We hope you enjoy this Job Insights episode and you can send your feedback and suggestions to the Job Insights team by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. A big Thank You goes out to CheeChau for his beautiful music!   Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.   Transcription:   Job Insights Episode 2 - Vocational Rehab 101: Demystifying the Myths and Planning For Employment   Serina: I know sometimes that a lot of individuals can be a little bit overwhelmed by applying for services with vocational rehabilitation and we'd like to hopefully demystify some of the myths and help you learn a little bit more about the process. Jeff: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Serina: Helping you with independent living skills, helping you get around town, helping you with cooking, money management, all those things that you need in order to be successful on a job. Jeff: Learn about resources for training, education, and employment opportunities, to see what best suits you to see if you're prepared to move on to the next step. Serina: Correct. Jeff: Thus it's an assessment. Serina: Correct, it helps the counselor out and it helps you out too. Jeff: We will hear from people seeking careers, employment from professionals in the educational field, teachers and innovators in this ever-changing world of technology to help you navigate the employment world and give you Job Insights, and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. Serina: We would hate to see you move forward with an employment goal that you thought you would absolutely love, only to find out maybe three months into the job that you obtain, that you really don't like it so much, so it helps us save a little bit of time and prepare you for realistic expectations on the job. Jeff: You can find the Job Insights podcast on BlindAbilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities Network, with host, Serina Gilbert and myself, Jeff Thompson. And you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.com, leave us some feedback, or suggest some topics that we cover, you can also follow us on Twitter at Job Insights VIP, and check out the job inside support group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community. [Music] Serina: Sometimes it might be getting more evaluations done with an orientation and mobility specialist, or a vision rehabilitation therapist to see what kind of personal adjustment training you might need. Jeff: And now please welcome Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights. Serina: Hi Jeff how are you? Jeff: I'm doing good how are you Serina? Serina: I'm doing great, how was your week? Jeff: It was good, it was good, the sun has come, spring is finally here. Serina: I don't know, I think you might get some more snow. It's not May yet. Jeff: We're just so glad to have it, I already got the patio furniture out, so I'm excited, I'm excited. Serina: You gonna be barbecuing for me? Jeff: We did that yesterday. Serina: Nice! Jeff: And I didn't even let you know did I? Serina: No you didn't even invite me, even though I'm, I don't even know how many miles away from you. [Laughter] Jeff: I'll waft the barbecue smell west. Serina: Send it over with an Amazon drone you know. Jeff: There we go. I wonder what that sound will be? Serina: They'll probably have like a special Amazon Prime sound for us all. Jeff: Oh yeah so it's recognizable. Serina: Everyone's jealous because we got something from Amazon. Jeff: The dogs will whine just a little bit, it is exciting though when a package comes. Serina: So I heard that we got a ton of positive feedback on our very first introductory episode to Job Insights? Jeff: Yes we did, it did not come by drone, but we got so much positive feedback, it's really exciting. Serina: I think that's great. I know today we were talking about vocational rehabilitation 101, and we'll chat a little bit about the process, what to expect. I know sometimes that a lot of individuals can be a little bit overwhelmed by applying for services with vocational rehabilitation and we'd like to hopefully demystify some of the myths and help you learn a little bit more about the process. And I know, as I talked about on the previous podcast, I was also a client of vocational rehabilitation and I believe you were as well right Jeff? Jeff: Yes I did, but unlike yourself Serina, my ophthalmologist did not send me there, so getting started with State Services was interesting. Serina: At least you got connected, that's that's the biggest part. Jeff: Mm-hmm. Serina why don't we start out by telling the listeners a little bit about what it takes to qualify for services, and if it's a federal or state standard that they go by. Serina: So it's a federal mandate, the eligibility requirements for vocational rehabilitation systems, in general, you have to have a documentable disability that poses some sort of barrier towards you entering into employment, keeping employment, or advancing in the current position that you have. You also have to be able to basically benefit from the services and that's a presumption that most agencies make. Jeff: A presumption? Serina: A presumption of eligibility. Jeff: Hmm? Serina: Another eligibility criteria that helps is, I believe if you receive SSI or SSDI then you are automatically eligible for vocational rehabilitation services. Jeff: So that's usually a process when you go there for services then you probably have to get it to go to a doctor so it's documented. Serina: Well, you can go to a doctor, but if you do not have documentation of your disability, vocational rehabilitation can actually either send out for the records, or send you for evaluations in order to obtain that documentation. Jeff: And that's just one of the steps of the intake process. Serina: So that first step is your intake appointment, which your counselor will go over a ton of different paperwork with you, you'll sign some releases of information for them to be able to talk to necessary individuals that might be working with you on the case, or to obtain medical records, or again refer you for those necessary evaluations, and from that time frame of the first date that you officially apply for services your counselor has up to 60 days to determine you are eligible for services. It can take that long depending on the counselors caseload, but sometimes it's faster, it just depends on the documentation that you already have, and what that counselors caseload looks like. Jeff: Is that the same for when agency is on order of a selection? Serina: Correct, they still have the same 60 days eligibility determination requirements, even if they do have a waitlist or order of selection. Jeff: So if they determine on the intake that you're in, then what's the next step? Serina: The next step is what's called the comprehensive assessment. What happens in this stage is you and your counselor are working together to identify a reasonable and suitable employment goal and also identify the necessary services that might be provided to you in order to help you achieve that employment goal. Sometimes this process could include you trying out work, doing what's called a situational assessment, and that would involve you going to a worksite and trying out the job to see if you like it, see that the duties are something that work well with your personality, in your disability, and also to help you with networking. Sometimes it might be getting more evaluations done with an orientation and mobility specialist, or a vision rehabilitation therapist to see what kind of personal adjustment training you might need. Jeff: Serina, personal adjustment training, can you break that down for our listeners? Serina: Definitely, personal adjustment training might include helping you with independent living skills, helping you get around town, helping you with cooking, money management, all those things that you need in order to be successful on a job. Jeff: And typically you could be sent to a blindness training center or a vendor of the agency? Serina: It depends on this state, some agencies do use the blindness centers, some do have in-house service providers that work specifically for DVR, or third-party vendors like you mentioned, and then I'm not sure about other states, but here in Colorado we do actually have a center based program that the vocational rehabilitation program staffs as well. Jeff: And in Minnesota were fortunate to have three adjustment to blindness training centers, Vision Loss Resource in Minneapolis, Blind Incorporated in Minneapolis, and in Duluth we have the Lighthouse for the Blind, plus State Services for the Blind, and various vendors that will provide specialized services as well. You mentioned doing a situational type of thing where you go to an employer and they do an evaluation, would that be set up with your employment specialist to see if this is an interest of theirs or to see if they like it? Serina: It can be set up through an employment specialist if the state that you work in is structured in that manner, sometimes it's your vocational rehabilitation counselor that's setting it up, and sometimes it can even be a third party vendor that you're working with that is providing that assessment service for us. Jeff: And this is all in an attempt to see what best suits you to see if you're prepared to move on to the next step. Serina: Correct. Jeff: Thus it's an assessment. Serina: Correct, it helps the counselor out and it helps you out too because we would hate to see you move forward with an employment goal that you thought you would absolutely love, only to find out maybe three months into the job that you obtained that you really don't like it so much, so it helps us save a little bit of time and prepare you for realistic expectations on the job. Jeff: So if you do need some soft skills, if you do need some technology skills, and it's determined that you should go to a blindness training center of some sorts, that might set you back six to nine months or whatever it takes right? Serina: That's correct, the blindness training centers are not super short programs, I think the shortest program that they have is the summer youth program for those that are still in either high school or college perhaps, and I believe that's even eight weeks. Jeff: And that's basically like a step program to bridge you into college preparedness? Serina: Correct. Jeff: And if you're planning on going just straight into the workforce then a training center might give you the skills that are needed to help gain employment. Serina: Correct, they work on every skill that you can possibly think of from independent transportation, orientation and mobility, independent living, I do believe they do some self-advocacy training, as well as working on basic social skills because you are living on campus with lots of other people and there's gonna be times when you disagree and you're gonna have to use those conflict resolution skills which will help you for sure once you start working. Jeff: I know we talked about transition aged students quite a bit, but there's also other people adults that have vision loss and they want to get their employment back and so these training centers do adult programs as well. Serina: And it can be quite helpful because I know last time we talked a little bit about an individual maybe who's coming in that has lost sight a little bit later in life but still really wants to work, that's a hard transition coming from having a driver's license and being able to independently transport yourself and work on a computer, to all of a sudden not having those skills anymore and abilities, and those centers and also other field based programs through vocational rehabilitation can certainly help with that transition, and also help you connect with different support groups and things like that so that you can start networking with individuals who've maybe been there as well. Jeff: However, before you move on to this step you must set up an individual plan or employment. Serina: That is correct, and all of the individualized plans for employment can only have services on it that the counselor and you agree are necessary and appropriate, and then they are always purchased at the least possible cost. So there might be times when there's certain products that you really really would like, but the counselor has to follow certain policies and purchase things at the lowest possible cost that is still appropriate for what you need the items for. Jeff: But typically the items will get you to your destination? Serina: Exactly, like as an example, there's lots of different types of computers now, we have our personal computers that maybe would run a screen reader or screen magnification software, and we have our Mac books that also have that same type of software built into it. Typically vocational rehabilitation is going to look at purchasing personal computers more so because we're looking down the road at employment and most employers still use personal computers, so it makes the most sense to get you used to using that type of a technology if you're going to be working in an office environment down the road. Jeff: And when you're saying personal computers, you're talking about Microsoft based platform. Serina: Correct, like a Windows computer. Jeff: Mm-hmm, Serina, can you tell us how flexible and IPE, individual plan for employment is? Serina: Yes, it's a plan, yes it's written on paper, but that doesn't mean that it can't be changed. So it's really important to communicate with your counselor if you feel that something's not going the way that you want it to go, or that you want to try something different, because that plan can definitely be amended, it's actually quite rare that we have the exact same plan from start to finish. Jeff: Okay someone goes through the process and they get their training, making progress, and you're checking the list and moving forward and now they're going to college and they are succeeding, according to the plan, and it comes time to where they start thinking about the job and job resumes, and job interviews, and all that, is there any services for that type of area? Serina: Definitely, it can be considered part of vocational counseling and guidance, which is on every single plan for employment across the country, I don't think there's any plans that don't have that, but it's also part of what we call job seeking skills training, which would be, you either working with your counselor, or perhaps a third party vendor to develop that resume, develop a general cover letter, and also start doing mock interviews, and begin talking about how do you want to handle the interview, how do you want to disclose your disability, if you want to do that at all, and how do you advocate for yourself during that interview. For example if you need an accommodation for testing and things like that as part of the interviewing process. Jeff: Now when it comes to disclosure, there's so many debates about it, and there I don't think there is any one answer, one fits all for this topic. Serina: Correct and I know we're probably gonna talk about that, maybe that'll be our next episode, because that's a hot topic of how do I disclose my disability, and what when and where, am I going to get discriminated against, things like that, I know people are very fearful of that, that definitely will warrant a full episode. Jeff: And that's a big one, so is writing your resume, because a resume is a work in progress, because if you're looking at one job, looking at a next job, it has to form to the job, the keywords and everything, so it's a good skill to have and a good thing to have a template to be able to adjust it for the job you're seeking. Serina: Exactly, we call it tailoring your resume because if you're not putting in specific keywords, a human's not even going to see your resume because there's so many electronic ways that they use, optical character recognition, and scanning the resume that you've submitted either online or even email, where they just scan to see specific keywords and skills and if it doesn't meet that, then it automatically gets denied. Jeff: Optical character recognition, it was such a gift and now it's working against us. Serina: Yep, sound familiar though right? Jeff: Mm-hmm, Serina with all your experiences, what tips would you have for someone who's receiving services and working with the counselor? Serina: So during the vocational rehabilitation process it's really important that you stay in close contact with your vocational rehabilitation counselor. There will be a lot of times when they're going to be asking for tons of paperwork that you might find cumbersome or even redundant. I promise you they wouldn't be asking you for it if they didn't need it because we get a lot of paperwork, if we didn't need it, we wouldn't be asking for it for you. So especially if you're on/in a plan for employment that includes training, every semester we're going to be looking at what grades did you get, what classes are you registering for next semester, do you need any books, did you apply for your federal financial aid? All of those things are things that are required before we can say yes we will pay for your tuition this semester at the school. If your counselor sends you an email asking for something, the quicker you reply the quicker things can move, and just know that sometimes things can't move overnight, if you call us and for specific piece of technology, we might not be able to get that for you immediately, especially if it's not included on your plan for employment, there might be some paperwork things that have to be done and ordering processes and things like that. So we ask that you're a little bit patient with us, but also the more you communicate with us, the better service provisions you will have. Jeff:And staying ahead of the game is the whole thing. Serina: Exactly. Jeff: Yeah, being on the State Rehab Council I get a lot of documents about this it's agencies and I see that one of the highest percentage of closures is because of lack of communications by the client back to the agency. Serina: That's probably actually pretty accurate because especially with my caseload I work with a lot of young adults, so they're still learning how to keep in touch so I do give them quite a few chances but it never fails that as soon as I close a case because I haven't heard from them despite multiple attempts on my end, about two weeks later is when they call me back and say, well I didn't know that you were gonna close my case. And obviously yes you can go back through the process and we can open it again but it's much more efficient even if you just send me a text message saying, everything's all right, I'm still out here, and that'll keep things going for you, but we have to remain efficient and show that the people that were working with are making progress in order to meet our goals and outcomes. Jeff: Serina, this is a lot of great information for someone who is going through vision loss, what advice would you have for someone who is seeking services from their division of vocational rehab or their State Services for the Blind? Serina: If you are a transitioning student and you're at least 15 years old and you are definitely starting to think about employment and what's next and actually some states that's as little as 14, but most states is about 15 or 16, but if you're starting to think about employment, I would say do not hesitate to contact your local vocational rehabilitation, talk to them about services, even if you call and you meet with them and it's not quite the right time, you are at least ahead of the game and knowing what to expect when you do decide that it's the right time for you. If you're an individual that's lost sight a little bit later in life or maybe have never heard of vocational rehabilitation and you're struggling with some vision difficulties, pick up the phone and give them a call, especially if you're looking into employment. All of our services at vocational rehabilitation are for sure geared towards employment now, so any services that we provide do you have to be tied to an employment goal with an eventual goal of being employed in the long-term. Jeff: You know Serina when I first lost my eyesight, I was skeptical you know, I was like worried about what's gonna happen and I didn't know, I didn't know where the blind were, I didn't know anything and I kind of felt like State Services, the agency was kind of a safety net, so I was gonna go out there and forge my own path and if I failed I would head towards the agency and get services, but now today, the more I know about it, it seems like it's a vehicle towards a future, and I've said this many times, but it is, it's it's, it's a resource, it's a place to go to learn about the pathways that you can take towards employment. Serina: And I'm curious what was your experience on the client side? I know you're on the state rehab Council and things like that, but do you remember being your very first experience when you first applied for services? Jeff: You know this is a great question for me because my experience was quite unique I think because when I first lost my eyesight I sold my pickup truck and I bought a brand new computer, I bought jaws and I started doing things the way I thought was best, I did things my own way. I did not understand that State Services for the Blind with an IPE, an individual plan for employment would have set up something of the nature to provide me the tools for me to succeed according to the plan and my goals, and once I understood that there were services as such, I then meticulously figured out what I would have to do for myself, and what they could do for me, and together we could reach the goals that we both set up. So I think part of the demystification of this is, they won't buy you everything, it's not a toy store, but they will assist you in succeeding, and those services do range from, you know, picking the right college that best suits your field, the technology that you'll need to succeed in college or in the workplace, there's so many services that are available there, you just have to make that call, like you said Serina, make that call and find out what they can do for you, and what you have to do as well. Serina: Well and that, someway just popped a thought into my head, I know that some individuals, most you know, most likely receive SSI or SSDI, some sort of Social Security benefits and it can be a little nerve-racking wondering, what if I start work and then it doesn't work out, how are my benefits impacted, there's lots of different rules related to social security and work. So I'm thinking that might be a really good idea for another future topic as well. Jeff: Absolutely, and when a person is going through vision loss it doesn't mean that they're totally educated on all the intricacies that are involved from your State Services, from your DVR, from the government, from Social Security, all these things have to be learned and dealt with and that's why talking with your counselor to learn, to educate yourself, so you can better be prepared for the opportunities that are ahead of you, and I think calling your State Services is one of the best things that a person can do, and that's why they call it a informed choice. Serina: Exactly, so many topics Jeff, we're never gonna end. [Laughter] Jeff: Hmm, that's job security huh? Serina: For sure, how insightful. [Laughter] Jeff: Speaking of something that never ends, I thought winter was the same way around here, but we got grass out back now and the trees are starting to bud, I could feel that a little apple trees with the little buds on them. Serina: That's awesome, you'll start sneezing pretty soon here. Jeff: Mm-hmm, I'm just glad I planted apple trees because I don't think they make PC trees. Serina: Ba dump bum[Imitating comedic snare drum] [trumoet sound effect] Well that concludes today's podcast, but next week we will be tackling that tough topic of disability disclosure, and the job interview. If you have questions you can email us at: Jeff: JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com. Serina: Or follow us on twitter: Jeff: at Job Insights VIP. Thank you CheeChau for your beautiful music, that's @LCheeChau on Twitter. [Music] We really hope you enjoyed this podcast, thanks for listening, and until next time bye-bye. [Music] [Multiple voices] When we share what we see through each other's eyes, we can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations and realities of blind abilities. Jeff: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Blind Abilities, download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that is two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening!

Job Insights: Helping Find Careers and Gainful Employment Through Innovations and Opportunities (Transcript Provided) Welcome to the Job Insights introductory podcast with Serina Gilbert and Jef Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you  the latest innovations from across the Vocational  Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. In this introductory episode we will learn about Serina Gilbert and her job as a Transition Counselor and get her perspective as a person with vision loss and navigåating Voc. rehab. With her experience living with vision loss and working to get clients onto a career pathway, Serina knows what works and wants to share to help you find the career that you want and help you succeed in landing that job. Jeff Thompson teaches woodworking to Blind students, is a board member on Minnesota’s State Rehab Council and has been an advocate for the blind for over 20 years. Check out this introductory podcasts and send us your feedback and topic suggestions by email.   Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP   Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. Thank you for listening. You can follow us on Twitter @BlindAbilities On the web at www.BlindAbilities.com Send us an email Get the Free Blind Abilities App on the App Store.   Transcript    

11/04/2017 Part 4 - How the possible GOP Tax plan could affect your individual plan by USA Financial Radio

Happy New Year! In this first episode of the year, I take you behind-the-scenes of a super quick promotional launch we did for a client that brought in roughly $75k in 7 days, to a small list, with almost no work on hisend. Make sure to SHARE this podcast/episode with your friends, then leave us a REVIEW and get my "101 Conversion Tips" Cheat Sheet... free! Send an email to support@jeremyreeves.com with the name on yourreview. Resources Mentioned * www.JeremyReeves.com Want To Work With Me? Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at Jeremy@JeremyReeves.com Enjoy! Transcript Hey, what's going on there, guys and girls this is Jeremy here with another episode of the Sales Funnel Mastery Podcast and this one is our first of the year! I'm excited about 2016 I think this year's going to be pretty badass. We did all of our are planning for the year, we figured out kind of the 2016 yearly goals, we figured out our vision for the year -- which is awesome -- I actually might do a podcast talking about that, we figured out our first quarter goals -- I don't even worry about 2, 3, 4 yet because things happen in a little bit too fast -- especially with the kind of rapidly growing business to worry about more than the next 90 days. I always do my planning for the next 12 weeks, 90 days. So we got that figured out, we got our first month figured out. We added a new employee so Penny, if you're listening to this welcome to the team, if you're a client you'll be meeting Penny soon, she's our project manager. So she's going to help on just make all the projects go way more smoothly and that kind of thing. Just making a basically better overall experience for the client which is really awesome and then the rest of the team is going to get the results for the client. So basically, our big vision for the year is becoming the only logical choice. If you're going to get a sales funnel done, then we are the only logical choice and we're well on our way to doing that and it's only five days into the year. So yeah, I'm really excited about that. Now, speaking of clients and being the only logical choice, today, I would like to talk about some results that we got a client, his name is Mark and we basically just did a really quick promotion to his list and he had a small list and I made him something like $72,000 or something like that or 76,000 or something like that, give or take -- it was in the 70's and it only took a week and it was awesome, it was a really quick promotion -- we're both really happy, all of his customers are happy because of the way we did it. So I'm going to take you through that promotion and so let's just get right into it. So essentially, what we did we didn't do any huge launch or anything like that, it was essentially -- he has essentially a software, he has training videos for his customers and he has most of them on a monthly subscription, I think they pay 37 bucks a month. The promotion that we came up with was to essentially get all of them to upgrade to a yearly plan. So that's all it was. Taking people from a monthly plan to a yearly plan, there was nothing else, you know, for a good discount. So I'm going to take you to some of the things that we did so that if you want to do a promotion,you can kind of just follow this step-by-step and do really, really well. The results that we got for, in regards to the list that he had, was pretty amazing. So first of all, you know, we had a great offer. Again, it was something like -- in fact, let me go to the page really quick and I'm actually gonna pull it up so I can see the discounts... So basically, we're helping them save 38% off the original price -- it was normally $39 a month which is $468 a year -- so we were saying, 'hey, you're paying 39 bucks a month, you're paying 468 bucks a year, we are going to upgrade you to a yearly plan for $290 a year plus you get 2 months for free'. So that comes out -- basically, saves them 178 bucks a year and that's not even including the two months free, by the way. So it's actually whatever 178 plus 39 times 2 is, I'm not even going to attempt to do the map of my head. So that was the offer and then we also had a team plan where are you can give it to 10 team members and that was 195 bucks a month which is $2,340 a year and we offered them 1,495 for the full year -- it actually also came out to 38% discount. So that was basically the offer, no extra bonuses except for the two months free for the individuals that got it and that was it. So what we did was we sent out -- basically, it was either 4 or 5 emails, I'm pretty sure it was 4, so the first one it was just an announcement of the offer that we're having and essentially, the subject line was 'Exciting News :) (smiley face)', and then we went through -- and I won't read the entire email to you but basically, we went through, first paragraph it was a super quick story -- actually, you know what? I'll read it to you. So the email goes like this -- and I'll try to give you a bridged version of this so... "When I first started (his company) -- and I'm not sure -- I'm going to keep it confidential for now -- so when I first started X company, I had one simple mission... to create the world's largest, most high-quality resource for helping xxx (this certain market), become better at their craft. If you've been paying attention, you know that the past 12 months has been nothing short of explosive for us. We've quickly become one of the most trusted influential companies in the industry because we think of the customer first. For example..." And then I went into some bullet points of some of the things that they did for their customers over the last 12 months -- and then it says... 'but I have exciting news for you. The next 12 months who will make the next 12 months look like child's play" and then there's a link going to the offer page. "And here's why I'm telling you all of this, right now, are offering a small discount to anyone who wants to save some money by investing in a full year membership" and in parenthesis "gives you access to 300+ hours of video. But starting today,until Thursday, October 15th, we're giving you 38% discount." And then there's another link going to the page and then in parenthesis under that because we also how to a thing that for free trial takers, so then it says "you can't even take a 14-day test drive if you're not a customer yet." So anybody was in a customer, for giving them a free trial. "I realize that's an enormous discount, so let me explain why we're doing this", again, I talk about the reason why, when you're writing copy, you always want to have a reason why, "first, I simply want to say thank you for all the incredible support we've received since starting this company, it's truly humbling to know how much my efforts have been appreciated and how much values our customers have been receiving. Second, as you can probably tell, we invest nearly every dime we make right back into finding the best experts on the planet then giving you their workshops with the most high-quality production possible. Having a small production like this allows us to help you by helping you save money well giving us a nice little burst of revenue so we can plow it straight back into even better product development. Here's what I ask from you, go to your boss/employer/HR department, whoever makes decisions like this, and ask them to invest in a yearly plan." On this page and then link to page, "I'll lay out exactly what we have in store for the next few months along with details on how everything works. Talk soon", and then his name and then, "if you're a current member, you can upgrade inside your members area in about 5 seconds." because then people that were already members, all they had to do was walk in their membership area and they just clicked a link to upgrade. So that's it that was the first email, that was the announcement email. as you can see, it's pretty simple, there's nothing complex in there, it was basically just a quick little story up front, telling them about what's happened for the past 12 months, telling them why they're telling them that by announcing exactly what the offer is and then saying -- and I'll get into this more in a sec -- getting to saying what's going to happen over the next 12 months and then in a second I'll explain why why you want to do that, and then it was kind of just like a "hey, thanks I really appreciate that you've been doing business with us" -- it was more of just like a grateful kind of thing. And that was pretty much it and we gave him a reason why we're doing the discount. So that was pretty much the first email. Then in the second email -- basically, the rest of the emails for reminders of the deadline maybe also added in some more stories, we added in a whole bunch of Proof. So like for example, people talking about him on Twitter, customers who gave him testimonials, case studies, that kind of thing. So there was proof in every single email for the rest of the sequence. Another thing that we did was in the second email, we overcame a bunch of the questions that the people were asking and basically, when you're answering questions, I like to do FAQ's on our sales pages because I've seen upticks in conversion rates on the pages and the reason why that happens is because when you do it correctly, your FAQ should be overcoming objections. They shouldn't be just answering questions like, "Oh, what address do you ship it from?", like, that doesn't matter how fast is shipping -- sometimes -- depending on what you're selling, that might matter -- it's things like that. You're overcoming the objections that they're having. So that's what we did in the second email. And then the third and forth emails were basically just adding more and more proof and re-explaining the offer, reminding them that the deadline was about to expire because it went from -- I forget -- it was basically a week, went from Thursday, August 20th, until actually the, let's see, oh, actually, we changed the dates on the -- it was... I think it ended October 15th -- the dates don't matter but -- so those were the emails. So again, pretty simple, you're pretty much just starting off by explaining what you're doing, why you're doing it, with some stories, that kind of thing, adding some proof. The rest of the emails, your overcoming objections, showing them proof that they should join and they should upgrade and then just reminding them of why they should upgrade. Now, in the sales letter, a couple of things I want to go over on the sales letter, we started off by the headline says "help us celebrate with a 38% discount until..." I have September 7th, but again we change the dates, so until, whatever, until October 15th or whatever you change it to. And then it was again a quick little story of what we were doing and then basically the reason why we were doing this so we started off telling them a really quick story which led into the offer that we have and then it was his why we're doing it. And for that, it was basically kind of an influx of cash so that they could improve the product for the customers so it was a very customer-centric reason that they were doing it. Then what we did -- and also it was specific deadlines -- we had a timer on the page -- this is very specific, like, the timer followed them all, that kind of stuff. You want to have the scarcity if you actually have scarcity, I hate fake scarcity, but this actually was, it was only going on for a week, so we have scarcity, and all that kind of stuff. Then we went into it says "over the past 12 months, we had a hundred plus hours of the best xx training in the world -- and again, 'xx', I'm just trying to keep it confidential. So we went into that, we went over everything they did for the existing subscribers over the past 12 months and to really the point of this was to remind them why they were still customers. Then, and this part's important because we had to get into their kind of like psychological nature because if you were saying "ok, you should upgrade to a yearly plan" it's not only about saving money, if you say you're saving 38%, okay that's a good deal but in a lot of people's heads as they're thinking "well, am I going to be here in 12 months? Is this really worth it? Like, what's even going to happen that I'm going to stick around for the next 12 months?" Okay, so that's why we added the section about what the next 12 months was going to bring. So deadline for that is "The next 12 months will be a complete game changer and I don't want you to get left behind" so I add just about a little bit of a dig in there, almost a little bit of a... tiny little guilt trip, a little bit of a dig to the pride, you know, that kind of thing. So I told them about what was coming up and they have some awesome stuff that they were doing so that made it really exciting and then we just basically went into the offers so "save 38% off the original price when you joined today but only until Thursday, September 3rd" again, you know change the date so it was whatever -- October 15th or whatever it was. And then we had -- we gave another reason why again and the reason why we repeated the reason why in the offer and all that stuff is because people skim the page, they don't read it word by word so you want to make sure that when you're writing your copy, when you're kind of laying all this out, you have it in there a few times, all the major important points. So we had a quick little paragraph and then we had kind of a two column box which it said 'Individual Plan' and then it said in print 'Save up to $178' and then the right one said 'Team Plan save up to $45' and then it showed exactly what they're going to get and then it said, just for the Individual Plan, for example, "normally, $39 a month then parenthesis $468 a year, today $298 per year plus 2 months free and then add to cart and then it said "existing member, he may last year and let us know you want it upgrade" and then under that, kind of the two column boxes, it said, "new customer, test this out before committing for the 14-day $5 trial" right under that was some testimonials. That was pretty much it and then on the order of pages, it just explain the offer it said "you're getting access for $298 today and then after the first 12 months, you lock in the regular price of $390 per year" which is still a $70 discount per year from the monthly plan. So that's pretty much what it was. We did it to -- we sent these emails, by the way, to his existing list, his prospect and buyers list and we had slightly different emails based on which list it was going to. We also did follow-up reminders because there were new customers who took the free trial and we wanted to keep in touch with them and we kind of had a snafu with just the way people were auto-billed, so the kind of messed up in the beginning when they were setting it up and instead of having them be auto-billed after 14 days, we actually had to email them and get them to re-subscribe for the yearly thing so it was like they paid five bucks and then we had to actually email them and say "hey, if you wanna keep getting this you have to pay us 290 bucks". So that sucked our retention rate went way down because of that but even with that enormous colossal disaster, which by the way, I had no involvement in, he told me about that a little bit after so we just kind of how to play save the day, we still made over 70 -- it was whatever, 75 grand for that in a week and he did nothing, that's the important part here, he did absolutely nothing. I did all of this for him, all he did was take my copy and have his designer create a page and then just sent out the emails. But yeah, so that's pretty much it. If some of the important points if some of the important points this when you're doing this promotion is number one, you have to have a great offer. Number two, you have to have a specific deadline. And number three, you have to show them the reason why. Like, why are you doing this? Is it like, in your mind, you just want an extra income source, kind of cash influx, you want to have a good reason why you're doing it so in this case, he was actually saying "we want a cash influx because we're going to then put that right back into the business to give you a better product", so we're kind of setting them up for the future, setting them up to want to stay for that yearly program. That's a really important point there, a lot of people wouldn't do is because -- for this promotion, I mean there's going to be all kinds of promotions to do, but for this one, going from monthly to yearly, you really need to tell them why they're going to want to stick around for a year and that's something a lot of people are going to miss when they're doing that so I hope that helps. So that's pretty much it. I hope that kind of gives you a sense of my thinking that goes into these promotions. Another thing is, if you want me to do one of these promotions for you -- super example, with him, I only took a percentage of the profit that we made and I had a good relationship with him, I don't do it all that often, but if you want to do one of these promotions -- and again, there's all different types of promotions like for ecommerce stores, there's a whole bunch of different things you can do, you could go from monthly to yearly, you could give people bonus, you could do like a version 2.0 have a product, I mean there's a whole bunch of different things that you can do. But if you want to talk about getting a quick cash influx into your business, then just shoot me an email, it's Jeremy@JeremyReeves.com and just tell me a little bit about your business, you could also go -- I think it's... I forgot the URL off the top of my head, honestly, but let's see... I'm going to see you really quick if this is the URL... Okay, so I don't know the URL off the top of my head so if you want to talk about doing this and basically just instead of me charging you some big upfront fee, I'll just take whatever the profits are -- we'll figure that out, I will just take a percentage of that. So if its 25% then you keep 75% of the profit, I only take 25% just for an example. Basically, either way, you're going to keep the lion's share, the percentage is going to differ based on how many people you have on your list, what kind of promotion were doing, what niche you're in, what the price point is, all that kind of stuff but just to give you a quick example. Yeah, so that's it. If you wanna talk about doing that, shoot me an email at Jeremy@JeremyReeves.com and just give me some details about your business -- what size your list is, what you sell, how many buyers that you have, like, if your list is whatever you say -- say it's 10,000 people on your list, are they prospects or are they buyers? Tthat kind of thing. I'll probably have a couple other questions for you, and yeah, we'll see if we can make something happen. So anyway, I hope this kind of gives you an insight into a little bit of my thinking as I'm setting up a strategy for some of these campaigns, in particular, promotions, doing kind of one-time promotions -- which by the way, you can do this one-time and then you can automate it into your business and we can talk about that if you want to talk a little bit further. Obviously, I'm only going to be doing this with people with existing, like, you're actually doing good -- so if you have, like, 100 people in your list, there's really no point in emailing because it wouldn't make sense. I would say if you have a minimum of 10,000 people on your list, then shoot me an email and we'll talk about it. Alright! So that's it. I hope this serve you well and again, if you want to get in touch, Jeremy@JeremyReeves.com. I hope you have a fantastic 2016. I will certainly be in touch with more strategies and insights into building your business faster and I will talk to you soon.