Beyond the label: people with (d)efficiency

Let's do an exercise. Imagine you are in the process of recruiting a candidate for the communication area of your company. You come across the CV of a 29-year-old with the following profile:

• Degree in Communication Sciences (with 6 months of Erasmus in Spain);
• Master's degree completed with a mark of 18 (eighteen);
• Proven experience in a wide range of companies - from audiovisual to pharmaceutical;
• Member of the Scouts for 7 years.

It is possible that the above topics have piqued your curiosity, right?

However, I purposely forgot to mention one more characteristic: the young man is handicapped, suffering from cerebral palsy. Confess, at this point, after reading this last characteristic, it is very likely that the image created before has been replaced by a less positive and more uncertain one, right? This can be a sign of two things: misinformation or that, after all, your company is not applying well the concept of inclusion.

Ah, about the young man in the profile? It's the same one who writes the article you are now reading.

In society, the disabled person carries the label of incapacity, of being unable. From my experience in recruitment processes (even in those companies that claim to be inclusive), there is still the automatic instinct to lower expectations, to suppress my skills to the labels I carry: disability e cerebral palsy - in other words, they assume a priori that all disabled people have a cognitive deficit. That's a myth.

The truth is that the fact that my lack of motor coordination makes me walk like someone who seems to be constantly under the influence of alcohol, or that another person moves in a wheelchair, does not mean that we are not efficient in the workplace. The sooner you internalise that, the sooner a workplace will become truly inclusive.

So the challenge I leave you with is this: when looking for new talent, look outside the box. Look at disability as just the word efficiency which is, by any chance, preceded by the letter "d". I am sure that if you do that you will be surprised and that you will be an asset to your team.

As for the labels? Let them stay only on the clothes.