I have written a great many cover letters over the past year and a half. There’s one thing, every cover letter, I have to decide. Should I include it? Or do I not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My visual impairment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few months before COVID I spent a week in intensive care. My vision melted. I was on stroke protocol. Thankfully, I did not have a stroke. There were other issues, however, and my vision never recovered. I can read, I can write, I can operate a computer and drive a car (though I try to avoid driving at night when I can). I appear to be fairly normal. But, as I told one of my Diamond colleagues one day when she asked, “My vision is not as good as I let on.” I have a folding sight cane, and I use it. When I don’t, I look a bit hangdoggish, walking around, looking at my feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never know how to approach this in a cover letter. When I apply to a job online and I’m asked in a form whether I have a disability, I always answer yes. In the early days of my job search following Diamond’s declaration of bankruptcy in January 2025, I would take a sentence to explain why I answered yes to the disability question, until I found out that the recruiter\/hiring manager doesn’t even see that form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until the end of 2025, then, I didn’t reference the impairment at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These days, I take it case by case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I apply for a corporate job, I almost never mention it unless I feel it’s relevant. I’ve yet to interview for a corporate job, though I apply to several every week, so I have no idea if it makes a difference or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I apply to non-profits, I sometimes do bring it up. The cover letter I wrote this morning talks about my impairment, because it’s with a non-profit that works with disabled people. But the cover letter I wrote over the weekend, I didn’t mention my partial blindness at all. When I sat down to write it, I thought I would. I hadn’t entirely worked out how I would relate it to the mission. I hoped there would be “a happy accident” as I wrote, but no happy accident came, and so it was left unsaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s situational, I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This morning I received an alert for a job in the Harrisburg area. I think I would like it and enjoy it. I think I could do things to help them grow. But I’m not going to apply because of my visual impairment. I wouldn’t feel<\/em> comfortable, and I’m not sure it would be safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s something I have to navigate, too, in this job search. Pre-selecting myself out because I know with my degraded sight it wouldn’t work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have written a great many cover letters over the past year and a half. There’s one thing, every cover letter, I have to decide. Should I include it? Or do I not? My visual impairment. A few months before COVID I spent a week in intensive care. My vision melted. I was on strokeContinue reading “Those Ol’ Job Search Blues”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[5457],"class_list":["post-35428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-vision","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}