Small Business Toolkit: Recruit Job Seekers with Disabilities

Small businesses can use a variety of strategies to attract and recruit job seekers with disabilities. These strategies may include partnerships with community organizations, inclusive messaging and outreach, and accessible recruiting processes such as alternatives to interviews. All these strategies will help your business hire qualified employees.

Establishing Partnerships

• Partnerships to Build Your Talent Pipeline: This resource explains the important role partnerships play in identifying candidates with disabilities and how to collaborate effectively with community organizations.
• Build the Pipeline: Outreach and Recruitment: This online training course shares ways to build a sustainable talent pipeline.

Inclusive Messaging and Effective Outreach

• Job Descriptions: This page outlines the components of inclusive job descriptions and the role they play in the employment of people with disabilities.
• Encouraging Applicants with Disabilities: This checklist should be used when developing a job listing. It helps ensure that job descriptions and announcements convey that your company is an inclusive and accessible place to work.
• Inclusive Branding and Messaging: This page offers strategies to ensure you are communicating a commitment to inclusion in all recruitment materials and across all online platforms.
• Online Recruitment of and Outreach to People with Disabilities: This fact sheet contains research-based practices that may increase your chances of attracting job candidates with disabilities.

Accessible Recruiting Processes

• Ensuring Accessibility in the Recruitment Process: These strategies help you to assess your workplace to ensure all doors, including virtual doors, are open to all applicants.
• Accessible and Authentic Interviews for Candidates with Disabilities: This checklist helps you to ensure your organization's interview process is accessible and welcoming to candidates with disabilities.
• Interviews: This page offers tips to ensure your company’s interview processes are inclusive of disabled people, such as include inviting employees with disabilities to participate in the interview process.