Transcript of the interview with Keith Willey

Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Engineering

Keith Willey graduated with a degree in Engineering and is now a senior lecturer at UTS. He discusses the challenges he faced when entering the workforce as a mature-age graduate with a disability. He speaks about his approach to disclosure, being able to sell yourself to an employer, and the importance of making the best of your degree.

Keith: My name’s Keith Willey, I’m a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering at UTS. I completed my engineering degree at UTS, majoring in electrical engineering and telecommunications and I did a PhD in engineering as well.

What were your key challenges in looking for work once you did have a disability and how did you overcome these?

Keith: It is difficult, and my situation is probably different to some people here, although the reason that I came to university in the first place was because I did have a disability. Once I knew my injury was more long term, I realised that I had to change the type of work I was doing, and coming to university and re-training was part of that process. But it certainly made it more difficult when you’re trying to get a start, when you’re doing a degree and its not something you’ve had a lot of prior experience in. Once you’ve completed you still have to find a job. And in my case as an older person you’ve got to find a job with a disability, so that can be difficult. So those challenges I suppose are partly: How do you address it with the employer? Will they give you a fair go? The fear of dealing with, ?If I tell them now will I even get an interview, or what will happen?’ It is different in every case, I recommend you don’t tell any lies to employers, and sometimes you don’t have a choice because they’ll send you for a medical maybe before they even conduct an interview. And in that case if you have a disability you may not be able to hide it and the employer may or may not make a decision based on that report. Telling them? I think it’s a good thing. I’ve never really signed a contract without telling somebody. Or I’ve never signed I contract without telling somebody I have a disability. I may not have told them at the first interview but I’ve certainly told them before the processes got too far. I’ve always tried I suppose to find out they were actually interested, and I got a chance to demonstrate to them, at least in the first interviews, what my skills were. And how I could be useful to a company and what I had to offer them. Rather then just making the first statement when I walked in, ?and by the way I have a disability.? Because my disability is not visible to the normal person looking at me, that’s a good and a bad thing. I’ve found that in some cases, and this is probably not a fair comment because I’m only looking from my own perspective, but it appears that they’re almost less tolerant if you don’t look like you’ve got a disability and you have. Because there’s not that recognition or understanding that you’ve got a disability. So there are pluses and minuses. All sorts of disabilities obviously come with different limitations, and so the way you deal with the workplace has to change accordingly.

You said you made your decisions on a case by case basis in terms of when you decided to disclose your disability. Why did you make those decisions at that time?

Keith: I think it gets easier as you get more experience. There’s no doubt now as you get more experienced at your career, you work for many organisations, you’ve got a good track record working at that particular occupation you’re trained for, you’ve got good references etc. Then employers I feel are much more open as to what you can do for them, and they’re actually employing you for the high level skill you are bringing to the company. So, I found anyway, its not as difficult to mention as disability and that you’ll need some adjustments or special tools, compared to when you’re just starting out. When you’re starting out its very difficult, there are a lot of people out there with qualifications, a lot of people applying for jobs. Especially good jobs, and it is more difficult.

When you first started out with not really much experience in your field, how did employers respond to your disability?

Keith: Differently is a good way of putting it. I did suffer some discrimination. I believe that there are a number of jobs that I didn’t get. It’s just an unknown thing, and as I said, once you’ve got more experience and you can show what you’ve done, that seems to alleviate companies thinking about that unknown, so it makes it easier. Other companies are fine, like I’ve worked for the University of NSW, there’s always UTS and they’ve both been fine. When I started at UNSW, I had an interview there and I told them about my disability and it was hardly a breath that it was mentioned, it was fine. And when I told them what I needed they just said ?That’s fine, here’s the money, go and organise that and but the facilities etc. that you need.? They would always judge me then on my work performance and output. Whether I had a disability or not was really irrelevant as long as I can manage to get my work done (and I can with the tools that I’ve got).

You said that employers, when you first start, they often have the question in their head ?Can this person fulfil their duties?? Do you recommend that graduates prepare to answer questions about their disability from the onset?

Keith: That’s a tough question. I think you get better at it the more confident you become in your ability. And you get better at it the more interviews that you do. But I do think that its very difficult. You do have to prepare for the question, I think that’s the first thing, you’ve really got to rehearse your answer in a way. My best advice is always stress the positives. As I said, at an interview I would quite often bring it up at the end, not the start, after you’ve got to really sell your skills and what you can offer the company. Tell them about strategies that you’ve got. Obviously if you’ve done your degree, you’ve managed all that coursework, and you’ve got a disability and you’ve worked out ways to manage that, then you can assure them that you have some management plan. Then they know that’s it’s not going to be such a burden on them. I think a lot of the time it’s the unknown, i.e. ?what happens if it’s like this? What happens if we have to do that?? it scares companies. So if you can reassure them that you know how to manage your disability, sure you may need resources like I do, but you can tell them ?this is what I need?, I think helps them put their mind at ease.

Can you tell us a little bit about how your disability impacts you at the workplace at the moment?

Keith: I can’t write very much at all. I can only write for a very small amount of time, and especially as an academic one of the biggest problems there is marking. I use voice-operated software basically. The advent of computers has made that easier because the accuracy of voice-operated software has just gone up. It might look a bit strange talking to your computer, but I think now people are used to seeing people talk on mobile phones in their pockets, so people actually look at you a lot less than they would have at one stage.

Back when you were a student what do you think you could have done, or what did you do as a student at UTS, to improve your career options?

Keith: To do as well in my degree as I possibly could. That’s the first thing. I think you’ve got to get the degree first, you need to make the most of that opportunity and learn as much as you can. You’ve got to strengthen yourself in anyway you can, and one way to strengthen your position to get a job is to have a good academic record. I think the other thing that’s really important is to try and get some work experience. If you just come out of whatever degree you’re doing with no work experience, there’s always that question ?how will you cope, how will you survive, how will you do this?? etc. Even if you do volunteer work, or you do a summer break job, or you do something. Say you do accounting and you want to be an accountant, then you could go to an accounting firm and spend a day a week for the summer holidays, or something else, you can get in there. Organisations and charities really want people to come along and do some work. I think if you get references, someone who can ring up and ensure the employer that yes you’re capable, it’s not going to be a big burden, or once you’ve stated all the resources that you need it’s not going to be much more of a burden than that, I think that’s a huge advantage in trying to get a position.

Do you have any other advice you UTS students who have disabilities?

Keith: You need more support in some sense. Even if it’s your wife (I was married when I came to university), your girlfriend, boyfriend, your sibling, your family and the people down at the ?Equity and Diversity’ unit etc. It is good to be able to have a chat sometimes about some of the difficulties that you’re having. I always found it extremely helpful to go down and have a chat and sit down and talk to the people there. And they knew many similar experiences from other students, and quite often they could pass on knowledge about how someone else had coped with something. But I suppose the point is this. It’s like anything: You have a disability, and in a sense (while I’m not saying you should advertise it) you have to deal with it. It’s difficult, it may limit your choices of job, it may limit how you can do your course, or how well you can do in your course, but you’ve just got to make the most of the opportunity you’ve got. You’ve got a real learning opportunity at university, and I urge all students to make as much of that opportunity as they can. It’ll only help you in the long run. And it’s the skills that you develop. Because uni is an incredible amount of pressure, you got so many subjects, and exam time’s worse. If you can’t write, and you have to study (and especially engineering has a lot mathematics) so you need someone to write your questions for you to do your problems, well it was a big thing. But some of the skills I learnt for studying I still use.