Unlocking Untapped Talent: Inclusive Hiring with Marianne Haegeli

Making your platforms, your documents, your employee handbook, your communications in every channel accessible for folks who are blind or low vision makes them way more accessible for anybody who's a neurodivergent learner. And now we're talking not in the single digits of percentage of your employees, but now we're talking 40% of your employees. Many of these invisible disabilities never get disclosed. But if you pay a little attention and make your stuff accessible for blind and low vision individuals, you have just made all of your neurodivergent learners more productive in your workplace. Right. Why wouldn't we want to do that?

Hi and welcome to the show. I'm Johnny Campbell, CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And this week on the podcast we're talking with Marianne Hegley about untapped talent pools. Marianne, you're very welcome to the podcast. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind giving our audience a little bit of introduction to yourself, your organization, what you do, and where we find you today.

Yes. Hello and thank you for having me. I really appreciate this opportunity. Like you said, I'm Marianne Hagley. I'm the director for learning and leadership leadership at NSight. That's NS I T E and I have about, well, more than 25 years, I hate to admit, experience in learning development and leadership development through a variety of experiences. I started with for profit consulting work to nonprofit and international education. And I'm now working for NSight which is also a nonprofit providing career skills training and employment readiness training primarily for job seekers who are blind or low vision. I've had some really cool jobs in my life and this one takes the cake. NSIGHT is a very small nonprofit. We're still in startup mode and it is our ambitious goal to build career skills training for our core audiences that that spans a variety of career tracks. Typically, organizations like ours who provide these kinds of training programs. Focus on one career track and you may get training for a career in contract management. Let's say what we are trying to build is a portfolio that spans a variety of opportunities to give people a choice. So it ranges from communications. Yes. Contract administration, HR sourcing, recruiting. We even have a track for aspiring blind entrepreneurs. And our parent company is the National Industries for the Blind and they have 85 plus years experience in creating employment opportunities primarily on government contracts. What we're trying to do is provide what is known as competitive integrated employment. So really regular jobs in the private sector, nonprofit or government.

So, Marianne, I love the work that NPSYC does. I've been really passionate about the program you run the results and I'm dying to dig into them. And we had some of your colleagues joining us originally, maybe four years ago when we first launched the podcast. And I'm really excited to get the update and to reintroduce yourself to our audience and talk about how you're leveraging what I feel is a really fantastic pool of untapped talent and describing them and letting our audience get to know them. But maybe before we do that, I wonder, could you maybe set the scene so more broadly and maybe let's stick with the US Market if you're more comfortable for the moment. Marianne, what are the stats around employability and employment levels for those who might be disabled? What are we talking about when we have this disability? Just characteristic and category, Then maybe, maybe people might dig into the particular segment of that, as you said, the blind and low vision, visually impaired talents out there. Talk to me about what it looks like, you know, demographically, but then what does it feel like to be someone like that? And what does the employment market look like if you're visually impaired or blind?

Yeah, it's. It's actually really depressing. And I've only been in this field of blind professional development for about three and a half years now, and I was shocked to see what the statistics look like. So we have an unemployment rate of somewhere a little over 4% nationwide in the United States, that employment or underemployment rate for folks with disability is way higher. For blind folks, it's around 70%. And that has not changed in decades. Right. So there were some efforts, like I said, about 85, over 85 years ago, to create employment opportunities, particularly for the blind and visually impaired community. And our parent company has been one of the largest employers or facilitators for those kinds of employment opportunities. The challenge recently is that folks no longer are necessarily interested in going into these, what used to be traditional disability employment opportunities. And that makes perfect sense given what technology has brought us. Right. So we're trying to catch up in two areas. The first one is to provide the career training that in our case, blind and visually impaired folks need to be able to compete in the regular workforce. And that's almost a smaller problem. The bigger problem is that you have employers who truly don't understand that there's this huge untapped workforce with tremendous talent and experience, that they can look for talent within that community. And so our two core constituencies are, yes, blind and low vision individuals and professionals who are looking for jobs, but almost more importantly, connecting with employers who have open positions they may find difficult to fill and let them know that we have a huge pool of talent here that they haven't even considered.

So, Marianne, walk me through some of the roles that folks who worked with NSIGHT in the past have gone on to work in or even just the communities that you work in some other role. Because I guess for a lot of us, we may not have somebody as a colleague or a friend who is visually impaired or blind. And so therefore it's maybe harder to fully understand what somebody could or couldn't do. Like, I imagine there's obvious roles where if you're visually impaired, you can't do you, you know, tons of things we could probably think of, but it's harder to think of all the roles that somebody is perfectly capable of doing even if they're visually impaired. Could you walk us through those roles? What you've seen, some of the examples or stories you can tell?

Yeah. So I think the most important thing to note is that blindness doesn't mean necessarily you can't see a thing. Right. It's a spectrum. So that's why we call it blind or visually impaired or low vision. So imagine if you're opening up your computer, your regular office job. There is very little, I cannot imagine an office job that a blind or low vision individual could not do because there's now assistive technologies that they can use. So if you're low vision and you need magnification, then there are applications you can use to make that happen. And you can function the exact same way that somebody who has perfect vision can function. If you're completely blind or your low vision is to a point where you're better off working with a screen reader, then you do that and you listen to what's happening on the screen and get the same work done that everybody else gets done. It's really difficult for somebody with sight like me initially to walk into this environment because I cannot imagine myself functioning on a computer if I can't see what's going on. Of course, if I'm blind, I can't use a mouse. So there are keystrokes I can use though, to navigate the screen and the screen reader will tell me where I am and what to select. But so any office position that requires the use of a computer, for example, is perfectly doable for somebody who's blind.

Or low vision, which is so many different professions and roles. Marianne, I believe we have, you know, I'm sitting here in Dublin, Ireland. You're sitting in the US but in where I Live in Europe. We have the European Accessibility act coming into force over the next couple of months, which I think is a real brilliant step forward in terms of making it a requirement for all sorts of levels of accessibility for websites, for software, for products that will require software to be accessible for those who have low vision and many other different requirements. You know, when you and I remember, you know, originally speaking with one of your colleagues, Doug, who himself has low vision around, you know, trying out social talent several years ago, and I was quite stunned and surprised to realize that we were not compliant. We didn't make it easy for someone who had low vision or was blind to use our products. So it's not everything that is out of the box ready. There are, there are products and softwares that perhaps aren't there, but regulation seems to be catching up with that. The likes of the ACT in the EU that's coming out this year and others, you know, is that gap shrinking, do you think, worldwide? Do you think you see more, more tools available and accessible, or are there other tools that people invent to get in the middle and fix those gaps or what's your view of that?

Yeah, I think things are improving all the time in terms of just the way the apps are built or the programs are built or designed. I come from instructional design and I have to tell you, I'm mortified to think how little attention I paid to accessibility of my products and my programs before I joined nsight. And it is so easy if you think about it from the beginning. So if you keep in mind that blindness is a spectrum, the first thing you need to look at is what are the contrasts of the colors I'm using. If there's not enough contrast, there's a bunch of people who literally cannot read what's on the screen or in a document. If you build a PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft has a built in accessibility check. You build that presentation, you run that check, and the system will tell you to check the reading order so that the screen reader reads the slides, the content on the slide in the correct order. It's that simple. So if you think about that in the beginning, it is neither cost prohibitive nor difficult to just think a little bit about how you design this. And again, I'm coming from instructional design. I think constantly about my target audience and how they learn best and how I can present my content so they can absorb it easily. Why wouldn't I just add accessibility features to that? It's the same thing, right? And yet it's a bit of a stretch for us, sometimes it's an adjustment.

So, Marianne, you know, our audience might be thinking what we're going to do is talk about the accessibility of advertising, your jobs, applying for your position, and how recruiters can perhaps think of those things. But actually your program goes one step further. Can you tell us a little about the NSIGHT program as it relates to recruiting, some of the history of that, how it got up and running and what you do and who you partner with?

Yeah, I absolutely wish I could take credit for this program, but I can't. It actually was established before I joined Insight by colleagues of mine that you already referred to. And obviously when we design new training programs, we look for careers that are conducive to folks who are blind or visually impaired. And anything that can be done remotely is inherently easier for them to thrive in, obviously. So sourcing was one of these areas within recruiting so that, you know, they can do a lot of work from their home office as long as they have the right technology. And so the partnership was forged and it was actually a triple and quadruple partnership. NSIGHT partnered with Social Talent for the Learning Content because of your state of the art programming, so that folks could take the online self paced program. But then we would meet once a week with them and debrief and do additional exercises with them in a virtual instructor led setting. And for that we partnered with a corporate partner. Now we're actually employing a blind recruiter who can tell our blind participants what some of the challenges are and how to overcome them. But then we also have a corporate partnership with Bristol Myers Squibb. They actually provide the second part of the training program, which is an eight week work experience on their talent acquisitions team. And so our participants get to live the life of a sourcing, a sourcing specialist, and work with talent acquisitions in a corporate setting to figure out how the systems work, what to look for in a hiring manager interview, how to make sure that the job postings make sense and highlight what attracts the right talent and then source the right candidates.

I love it. Like, so this example, maybe you can explain how long does it take? Who are these people who join the program? What are their backgrounds? And then maybe if you wouldn't mind sharing some of the success stories at the end of the program. What does that look like?

Yeah. So typically we work with state agencies in the United States. Each state has a vocational rehabilitation agency and they have a number of clients with a variety of disabilities whom they're supporting in their efforts to become gainfully employed. So we get our clients that way, our trainees, our participants come either to us by themselves because they found us, or through their state agency. And we run them through a vetting process because we only want to enroll folks who actually can succeed in the program. And if we see that something's lacking, we, we recommend other training for them first before they're ready for this program. So for this program in particular, we run 12 weeks of blended learning, social talents online sourcing curriculum combined with our once a week hour long virtual instructor led session. We do that for 12 weeks. During that time we also help them create their personal brand. We help them with their LinkedIn profile, we help them with their resume writing to make sure. Because without a good LinkedIn profile and without a good resume, they will not be able to enter into the eight week work experience with Bristol Myers Squibb. We love that combination. And by the way, we built that into all of our training programs because you can be upskilled to the, to your teeth. If you don't have a personal brand that is compelling, you're not going to find a job. So after the eight weeks of the work experience, after full 20 weeks of training, we issue the successful graduates a digital credential that validates their achievement that they can share within social media, especially LinkedIn. We recommend that you do that. And together with the certificates that they get from social Talent, this is a really powerful portfolio that shows that they have the skills to succeed in a sourcing career.

You mentioned at the start though that this isn't just about providing someone with the skills or training. It's really about employability. So what has that looked like with previous cohorts? And how does that compare to say, some of the other programs that you run?

Yeah, this is, we're very proud of our employment outcomes. In fiscal 23, we, we had some kind of involvement in the placement of 93 individuals who are blind or visually impaired in into regular employment. That's amazingly high. That's more than most states achieve. So we're very proud of that. The sourcing program has one of the better employment rates for graduates coming out of the program. And we're unbelievably proud of that. The interesting thing. So let me just say we had one. Well, first and foremost, once they complete the work experience, typically Bristol Myers Squibbing will extend job offers to the best and brightest of the cohort. And we've had one cohort, I think the first one that ran when I took this job had nine participants and they extended three job offers to Our graduates. At the end of that running time, one other participant got a job offer from Johns Hopkins in a sourcing role. And we had another participant who applied for a recruiting position that didn't work out, but she got a different position on the strength of the transferable skills that she had learned in this program. And to me, that's the most important thing. Right. If we can show them how to upskill, yes, with an eye on this career, but then also feature the skills that they've earned to apply for other positions that they're now qualified for, that is really what we want.

So for anyone listening to this who might be thinking, how does it work? Somebody who has low vision or is blind sourcing talent, okay, you can get around the use of the tools. Are there perhaps advantages that somebody might have who's got low vision over somebody who's got near perfect vision in such a role, do you think?

Well, from my personal experience, I can tell you I see folks in this community who have two key skills that every employer is looking for, no matter what the field. And the first one is figuring out a solution. When you face a challenge, get really creative. My blind colleagues are finding workarounds on a daily basis that I can't even imagine having to find solutions for. That's the one thing. The other thing I find is that many of our trainees have amazing active listening skills, which makes them brilliant in interviewing or even through email exchanges. Right. Any exchange with a candidate becomes very meaningful because they use that active listening. They remember things to a level of detail and that I need to take notes on. So I find that they compensate the lack of eyesight with other incredible so called soft skills that are absolutely hardcore that make them desirable employees for any organization.

I love this. On Tuesday, I ran a webinar for 105 recruiters to try and teach them, in part, active listening skills. And it can be challenging, um, I think for any sales role as well. You know, somebody who's good in this environment, which is largely digital, less so in person these days. Whether it's recruiting or selling, we are trying to engage over some medium like this, a digital medium. And if you have somebody who has, you know, through, through necessity developed those additional skills or focus areas. And I think your point around overcoming hardship is phenomenal. You want resilient folks, right? This was something that I remember 10 years ago speaking with a friend of mine who was in academia, formerly in hr, and she was trying to teach resilience to graduates who are 19 and 20 years of age because Their, their generation, their cohort were displayed an unusual lack of resilience. If you've grown up with a visual impairment, you probably have overcome an enormous amount already by virtue of applying for your program. Marianne, you probably have already proven yourself to be somebody who is, who is tough, who's tenacity, who, who, as you say, finds their way around difficult challenges because you've probably had to do this all your life. And that's something that we strive for.

Yeah, that, that level of engagement. You experience that and you really sense that. Right? It's undivided attention. I sometimes wish there were fewer distractions around me. I feel like so many of our learners here and my colleagues have a single focus on what is at hand right now. And that really is an amazing feature that leads to success, I think, in many ways. And you know, I wanted to add one thing. Making your platforms, your documents, your employee handbook, your communications in every channel accessible for folks who are blind or low vision makes them way more accessible for anybody who's a neurodivergent learner. And now we're talking not in the single digits of percentage of your employees, but now we're talking 40% of your employees. Many of these invisible disabilities never get disclosed. But if you pay a little attention and make your stuff accessible for blind and low vision individuals, you have just made all of your neurodivergent learners more productive in your workplace. Right. Why wouldn't we want to do that?

You're 100% right. I remember doing some research on this last year and something like one in four, you know, Americans in the workplace have a disability, but the largest share of that is those who are neurodivergent, which is a visit distributed a disability you can't see. You know, it's not apparent because we have this international symbol of the wheelchair for, for disability, which probably is now a minority of those who might be in that category. But your point is that, you know, building programs that are, that are, that are better for someone who has low vision or better for someone who's. No, neurodiversion is better for everybody. You know, to your point, what's the clarity on your communication, on the structure, all these different things make it, make it better for everybody, not just know you're not just building for one cohort, you're building actually for everybody by using the standard of someone who might come to the table with lower vision or with a different way that their brain works. So, so, so when I think about, you know, the cohorts and the success Marianne, it's wonderful. It's. It's a testament to how you structure the program and how you work with those different individuals. Are there any kind of tips or advice you might give to those who are not of low vision, who might, you know, find themselves contemplating working with somebody or are working with somebody with low vision? Any adaptations that you can recommend or things that can be. You can do to support a colleague or perhaps, you know, to think about somebody, even an interview process, how you can be more supportive so that they, if they do have the best skills, that they have a fair contest in that interview process.

Yeah. So I think that first and foremost, make sure your platforms are accessible. And I hate to say it, but many recruiting platforms are not, and that creates a real problem. So if you provide an alternative means to get a resume to you, if you haven't done a check on your platform, that's the first step. Typically, I found that my colleagues and the people we work with don't mind at all talking about their level of blindness. Right. Asking questions is really important. They know that I can't relate at the same level that they're experiencing every day to the challenges that they're facing. So I made it a habit of just asking a ton of questions and saying, okay, how do you perceive this? What if I do that? And I'd constantly share my documents with my blind colleagues for a sanity check. Can you actually get this? And so, for example, when we have a class, our model practice is we send class materials that we distribute that are not available on a platform a day in advance so that if you're completely blind, you can run the documentation through your screen reader, you take notes, you know what comes where, and then it becomes a much better learning experience because they don't have to try and catch up. And, yes, we work with our facilitators to help them get really proficient at presenting in a virtual room where your audience is blind and you're sharing a screen. So pointing out everything that's in red on your screen is not going to be helpful for those learners. Right. So there's a little bit of a couple of tricks to that. Not rocket science, but if you build it into your processes from the beginning, you'll have huge success.

So, Marianne, you primarily work, as you mentioned, within the US but you've actually had some international candidates who've come on board. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that's expanding?

Yeah, so that was a really cool story. So we had a candidate for the sourcing program from the uk. He's in London. He hadn't been employed in years. He started taking this course and at the end of the social talent portion of the course, between the end of that and the beginning of the work experience, he found a job in a sourcing role. He's doing extremely well. He's been there for several years now. It's been a huge success story, what we're trying to do. So obviously we have time zone challenges with the virtual instructor led pieces, but we would love to expand further into, I'm going to say English speaking spaces for now, but because I think we have unique programming, the sourcing program being one of them, and we're looking towards the next step being a recruiting certification through social talent so that we have career advancement, not just one track opportunity, but advancement within those roles. But we have a really solid IT program that we would love to offer to English speaking audiences around the world. So logistics are a little daunting, but I think we can make that happen.

But to your point, you typically have a community who are willing to overcome such challenges and probably spent their life overcoming those challenges. If somebody is listening and they perhaps have low vision themselves, or they have a family member or friend who might have low vision or is blind and want to be a participant or find out more about these programs, what's the best way for that person to reach out and apply or find out more?

Yeah, the easiest way is to visit our website and that's nsite.org because we're a nonprofit. So if you find us online, we have a whole page of training opportunities and programs that we offer. Reach out to us. You will see my email address all over that website. Send me an email. We want to hear from you and find out how we can find solutions for folks who are interested in training. Find us on LinkedIn and follow us on LinkedIn because we announce new programs or interesting resources on a regular basis. So LinkedIn is also a good place to connect with us.

We're going to share those links in the show. Notes Marianne. If you're an employer listening to this, we have a lot of recruiting leaders who listen to the show. And you're thinking, this could be a valuable way for me to find untapped talent from my recruiting team or I want to get involved. First of all, how would I find out more? Does it cost me money? What's the level of commitment? How could I engage with NSIGHT to perhaps see this as a, as a source for my own talent, for my own team?

Yeah, I love that. So if you're an employer and you're looking for blind and visually impaired talent, also go to our website, we have a curated job board we called NSIGHT Connect and you can subscribe to, to that job board. It is only listing positions that are meant to be filled by folks who are blind and visually or visually impaired. So we're not going to post bus driver jobs. Right. And we vet all these positions, but we have 500 plus candidates, job seekers who are blind or low vision, who are currently looking for positions. So if you subscribe with us, then you have access to that talent and you can do your searches and do your own sourcing and find out whether we have the right people for your job. We also have a colleague who deals with making this perfect match between employers and our talent, whether they're on our job board or not. So check out NSight.org and look for NSight Connect and find out what opportunities there are to partner with us to find the right talent.

Marianne, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show today to share more with the story. It's one of those stories that I'm just, you know, always so, so proud to be involved with, you know, something we've partnered with Insight for, for several years now. I just love the impact that it makes on folks who have had, you know, a disproportionate lack of access to employability to bring more diverse folks into our industry as well, with different perspectives, different strength is wonderful, really, just to make that impact on people and to give them real employment and, and to your point, not just giving, you know, somebody who's low vision a job, it's actually great sources and recruiters. We're producing actually, you know, in some ways better people with really good qualifications, really good training, great mentoring and experience. I think it's, it's a type of talent that a lot of our listeners are looking for and it's great to be involved. I'm delighted to see you do this work, Marielle, and hopefully we'll, we'll have you rejoin us again a few years to tell us some more success stories and hopefully we'll hear from some of our listeners who might reach out to see if they could help extend the program, expand it, whether it be more candidates or more employers to work with you.

Ariane, love that. Thank you, Johnny, so much for your partnership throughout these years. I have to say the way you have embraced what is required to make your platforms and your training accessible to our audiences has been absolutely amazing. And I look forward to many more years of working with you all and bring more amazing talent to this career track.

And thank you Marianne. Thank you for listening. And if you have a story to share or you think there's, you know, a community that we could help as well in Social Talent, do something similar with other folks who perhaps could make excellent sources or recruiters do reach out to us. You can reach out to me personally. Johnnycialtalent.com don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter@socialtalent.com on the website or follow us on LinkedIn. We'll be back next week with another great show, another story of hiring excellence and TA leadership. Until then, take care. We'll see you next week.