While working on yesterday’s post about the success of Gitanjali Gems, the headline of another Harvard Business Review blog post caught our eye even though it did not directly address jobs for people with disabilities. After reading it, however, it may help explain the why companies that hire these individuals are rewarded with enthusiastic and loyal employees.
Cal Newport’s September 18 post, “Solving Gen Y’s Passion Problem,” makes the case that the typical career advice experts give to young people is actually backwards. The assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love has been studying use of the phrase “follow your passion” by career advisers and concludes that its effects have been “surprisingly pernicious.”
Newport’s reasoning is simply that this type of advice is putting the cart before the horse. How can one be passionate about a job they do not have, or have not had for a more than a short time? In interviews with people who love what they do for a living, Newport says he’s discovered their passion for the job evolved in complex ways over long periods of time. He suggests career advice needs more emphasis on “those tough first years on a job where you grind away at building up skills while being shoveled less-than-inspiring entry-level work.”
For many people with disabilities, that entry-level work becomes their passion. This article by Judith McGinnis for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas, demonstrates how matching people with disabilities to small-parts assembly and quality inspection jobs is a win-win proposition for both employer and employee. As Karen Sternadel of the Work Services Corp. program tells her:
Coming to work is more than a job for them, it’s social contact, a place where they can make friends and feel needed… And you ought to be here on paycheck day. The look of pride they have knowing they earned their own money to buy the things they need, it’s heartwarming.
We’ve seen how this initial enthusiasm for the workplace leads to career advancement for people with disabilities. Remember Mitchell Youngkin? The Ocala, Florida, man washed and detailed cars at the Mazda dealership, eventually achieving his goal of becoming an Internet Sales Representative.
Then there is Calvin Fry, who has been promoted twice during his first year on the job at a Vons grocery store in El Cajon, California. Fry got the job through an organization that helps people with disabilities find work through job placement and contract services program. Dwane Brown of KPBS spent a day on-the-job with Fry. The closing shot of him in dancing with a co-worker in the below video illustrates why Fry’s supervisor, Dawn Lee Schlieder, calls him a “super star” and credits him with having “boosted morale at her store”:
Share other examples of how people with disabilities have followed their passion to workplace success in the comments section below.
Image by InaFrenzy (Satya Murthy).