Second Lieutenant, 2nd Armored Division, United States Army, Fort Knox, KY 1992–1996
Commissioned as an officer in ROTC; served as trainer/instructor on small arms range.
Skills/Abilities
It is sometimes worthwhile to include a special section of your resume dedicated
to enumerating any special skills that you may have. These are things that may be
found between the lines in other areas of your resume; however, in some
circumstances you should consider spelling them out. When an employer has a
certain skill set in mind, it helps if that skill can be found right on your resume.
This is particularly true if the skills are not usually held by all applicants.
Things that you could include in the skills section of your resume include any languages you speak; any special tools/machinery that you can operate; any computer programming languages or programs with which you are proficient; as well as any other skills or abilities that are directly related to the position for which you are applying.
Skills/Abilities Proficient in C++, Cobol, and Visual Basic.
Experienced in establishing LAN and telecommunications networks.
or
Skills/Abilities Licensed to operate 4-axle, 18-wheeled tractor-trailer rigs. Experienced with pneumatic pallet-jack.
Fluent in Spanish.
Athletics
In the same manner as military experience, athletics can help you develop
important skills and attributes. If you played intercollegiate sports, you can put
this on your resume under a heading such as “Athletics.” You could also put this
information in any of a number of other sections. For example, if your athletic
experience is related to a community organization, you may want to include it
under a heading such as “Community Activities” (see below).
If you gained your athletic experience as part of a disability-related organization, you will need to make an important choice. By including something like “Special Olympics Gold Medal for 5K run,” you will do two things. First of all, you show that you have been involved in athletics, and that the reader can make assumptions about the attributes you possess (discipline, teamwork, etc.). The second thing you do, however, is alert the reader to the fact that you have a disability. This may raise questions in the mind of the reader about your ability to do the job.
In cases like this, the decision is, of course, up to you. Unless you know the person reading the resume, or unless you have a strong secondary connection to the individual, or unless you know that the company that is hiring has a strong history of nondiscrimination toward people with disabilities, I would suggest that you omit this information from your resume. You can mention this accomplishment later, in an interview.
The risk of including the information is that it gives the employer the chance to screen you out of consideration based on prejudice or misinformation. If the person suspects that you have a disability, you are no longer in control of what they think of you. They will begin to fill in the spaces between the lines, based on their own perhaps limited encounters with people with disabilities. They may make assumptions about what you can or cannot do, without giving you the opportunity to elaborate on your skills and how you could use them to accomplish the responsibilities of the position.
The fact is that your disability may have little or nothing to do with your ability to perform the job in all of its dimensions. In fact, if you have done your homework and have followed my suggestions regarding self-assessment, you will know exactly what the job requires and how, with or without accommodations, you can meet those requirements. But when the person sees that information on your resume, they could assume anything. They might assume that you are deaf or blind, or that you are a quadriplegic. You will have no control over what they think.
You can clear up some of the misconceptions by including in your cover letter information about the exact nature of your disability and how it affects you. Chapter 5, “Writing a Great Cover Letter,” discusses this strategy further.
Omitting indirect references to your disability from your resume does not mean that you need to somehow hide from those accomplishments. It is my belief, however, based on a decade of working with people with disabilities, that employers are much more likely to discriminate against someone who has a disability than they are to discriminate in favor of someone because they have a disability. At the risk of sounding repetitious, a resume is intended only to pique the interest of the employer enough that you are granted a job interview. If the employer is more likely to use disability-related information against you, why not wait until you are face-to-face with him or her to approach the topic? This will give you the opportunity to directly address any questions that the employer may have.
In its new context, the information may serve to humanize your candidacy even more. Having been a “Silver Wheels” football player will appear even more impressive when you can explain the commitment, dedication, and stamina that it requires, as well as the fund-raising experience that comes with it. Using the interview as the vehicle for describing this activity also provides you with the opportunity to give evidence of how you have been successful despite your disability. This may help the interviewer understand how you will be able to be successful in the workplace as well.
Community Activities Listing community activities, particularly leadership positions related to those activities, gives you an opportunity to show another dimension to your activities and employment. It can show that you are willing to go the extra mile to help people, on top of your regular employment. Or, in the absence of relevant employment, your volunteer activities can still demonstrate that you have skills, experience, and character.
Sometimes community involvement comes in the form of experience with tasks that can be valuable to an employer. In these cases, rather than just including a bulleted list that may give the impression that you are just a “joiner,” you can provide a sentence or two that describes your involvement in the activity.
COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES
Marketing Manager, Names Project AIDS Awareness Activities: May
1993–June 1994
Directed a public relations effort related to the public display of the
AIDS Quilt at the Koessler Center in June, 1994.
Member, Kiwanis Club of Des Moines: 1985–Present
Led the Holiday Jellybean sale, netting profit of over $15,000 in 1997 alone.
Before I leave the topic of community activities, I offer one word of caution. Sometimes people will make judgments about you based on the type of activities in which you are involved. If an activity is related to a religious organization, or to a political cause or party, think twice before you include that information on your resume. You do not want to provide any reason for a person to discriminate against you.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, remember that the resume is a tool that you use to get face-to-face with an employer (or at least on the telephone). After an employer has met you and sees what a wonderful person you are, they may overlook the fact that you were in charge of the lawn signs for the Ventura for Governor campaign, even though the employer voted for his opponent. Without knowing your personality, the employer can use only the resume to make decisions about you, and they may rely on preconceived notions about people from groups that can be considered by anyone to be “controversial.”
As for your involvement in any disability-related groups, be selective. Raising money for Cystic Fibrosis or planning a benefit auction for the Attention Deficit Disorder organization shows only that you are involved in worthy causes. Being the treasurer of the local Tourette syndrome chapter or the founder of the Atlanta Amputees Association can raise questions in the mind of the employer.
It is worth noting that there is nothing “wrong” with being a member of a disabilityrelated chapter or founding an association for amputees. The trouble is, people who read resumes are human, and they will use assumptions (right or wrong) to fill in the blanks about people. If they see that you got your degree from Harvard, they will assume that you are likely to be bright and rich. If they see on your resume that you were the captain and linebacker for the Oklahoma football team, they may assume that you are big, and that you have lived on a farm. It is only in an interview that you can begin to straighten out those assumptions and allow the employer to understand that you went to Harvard on a full-ride academic scholarship (the employer was only half-right!).