Let me introduce myself, I’m Tehani Taylor and I live in Wales. I’m lucky enough to work part time for visualise within their communications team. I am register blind but I have a small amount of usable sight.
My experience of finding employment as a person who is registered blind
In this day and age, finding a job is one of the most difficult things to do because there are a huge number of applicants for every single job. Finding a job with any kind of sight loss issue is even more challenging.
After my degree in Media and Communications I took some time out to have my little girl who is four now. I started job hunting when she was about one and a half. After applying for numerous jobs and getting nowhere I decided to refresh my holistic therapy certificates and start up my own business. Even though my pricing structure was good, people just didn’t have the money to spend on luxuries such as massage and I had to close the business and carry on the job searching.
I quickly came to the realisation that I needed help, some work experience or something to get me moving forward rather than getting upset and frustrated about my lack of a job. In every interview I did the feedback was good but the same thing was repeated over and over again. They always said that even though I was qualified for the vacancies I applied for, my lack of work experience counted against me. There was always another candidate with more experience than I had.
I joined my local work choice programme which proved to be an absolute blessing. All at once I had the choice between a part time paid job or a twelve week voluntary work placement where I could learn new skills and gained some much needed valuable work experience. Some people would say, “Go for the paid job, that’s the right decision!!!” I however, chose to go with the unpaid voluntary position because I felt that work experience would enable me to move forward and allow me to find employment in the future that was suited to my skill set, and it turned out that I was right.
Now I’m in a part time job and it’s paid and I’m starting my own business in a field where my experience as a blind person will count for me, rather than against me.