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Rodney Haynie Profile: "I Decided to Talk Myself Out of the Job"By: Jim Hasse
Summary:
Five years ago, Rodney Haynie was a top programmer/software developer when he acquired Retinitis Pigmentosa. Here's what he has learned about disability employment while creating his new career path in information systems. 
School
Job Search On the Job Rodney Haynie was on top of his career as an advanced programmer and software developer when he decided, in 2001, to change careers -- a change that wasn't exactly voluntary (see "Evolution of Rodney Haynie, Software Developer Who Is Blind)." He had acquired Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) and realized he couldn't keep up with the changing complexities of the integrated development requirements for each programming language he was using on his job. He stopped working and went on disability in October 2000. This article profiles Rodney's career journey over the last five years and what worked (and didn't work) for him as he made adjustments, due to his disability, in how he approached mainstream employment opportunities. Go to Top of Page School Rodney's first step in his career change was going back to school. In April 2001, he started using the Internet to take college courses in Management of Information Systems (MIS) and received his B. A. degree with honors in MIS in May 2004. Looking back on those four years, Rodney, the only student in his classes with a visual impairment, offers these four tips for making such a transition easier:
A book that is one-inch thick, he says, would take him about an hour and a half to scan. Go to Top of Page Job Search Rodney started his job search in February 2003, more than a year before he was scheduled to graduate, and he found the job market in information systems was in a recession. His state's vocational rehabilitation department helped him get what turned out be five informational interviews with employers who had no job openings in his field. By mid-summer 2003, Rodney had received only an occasional e-mail response to the resumes he posted on job sites such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com and in the Philadelphia Inquirer's job wanted section.. But, in July 2004, he got an e-mail from InfoMC, Inc., in King of Prussia, PA, about a job requiring Microsoft Visual FoxPro, a language few people know. Rodney had seven years of FoxPro experience, and he decided to leverage that experience in applying for the job, even though earlier versions of FoxPro were not accessible and the latest version was only about 30 percent accessible (allowing him to do code and back-end work). During his initial telephone (screening) interview, he discovered the person on the other end of the phone knew about JAWS for Windows. That opened the door to an in-person job interview. During a telephone call confirming his job interview date, he also learned that two people at InfoMC knew him from previous client site work and gave him good recommendations. "I arrived for the interview with my cane," Rodney recalls. "I couldn't see faces, but I recognized one of the two people I knew at the company in the hallway, and my confidence dropped. I realized I had to live up to the reputation I had with the two people I knew from previous client-site work." Rodney brought his laptop to the interview, an arrangement he had made with the company's HR person, who had previously asked what accommodations he needed - an awareness he attributes to the person's past recruiting experience in a larger company. "I installed their software to my laptop and took a test on FoxPro on regular interface," Rodney says. "They gave me more time to complete the multiple choice questions." He scored on the upper side of the grading scale. But the real-time skills test on products in which he had to locate and fix bugs was difficult for him because he had to open up forms and go down to different levels to get code. Using JAWS, he had to access each level one at time, which he found frustrating because it ate up his development time. "I knew what I had to do," Rodney explains. "I just couldn't get JAWS to work fast. It took me 20 minutes to do what others could do in 10 seconds. I couldn't get where I wanted to go. My face was beat red. I had to quit the test. I basically decided to talk myself out of the job." But the Interviewer said to Rodney, "Tell me what you would want to do." "It was four hours into the interview," Rodney relates. "I was meeting with the manager of the development office and then scheduled to interview with the CIO. I was tired and embarrassed. I left without seeing the CIO." Two days later, Rodney received a call from InfoMC, asking him to come in to visit with the company's CIO. "The CIO asked me to prove that JAWS would work for me," Rodney remembers. "His proposition was this: Test JAWS and use our facility to get JAWS to work with FoxPro -- at no pay." Rodney started using the company office four to six hours a day three to four days a week to work on the project, scheduling the time so he could get cheap public transport because he was still on disability. "After two weeks," he recalls, "I had made some headway, and I gave the CIO a report about it. After he read the report, I was offered a contract position full time. I took it so I could prove myself." Three weeks after that, InfoMC offered Rodney a full-time position. That was in August 2004, and he's been with the company since then. For the last 14 years, it has specialized in software managed claims in the behavioral health field. In his own words, here's what Rodney says he's learned from this experience about job interviewing:
On the Job On the job, Rodney is now using JAWS 7.0, Focus 80 Brailler and Display 80 (from Freedom Scientific), a Pacmate notetaker, and CCTV. He uses the braille display about 15 percent of his time each week for typing in code, formulas and variable names. At InfoMC, no one had worked with a visually impaired person before they met Rodney, and it was Rodney's first job as an individual with a visual impairment. One of the first lessons Rodney learned as a new employee was to pay attention to voices. "When I would walk down hall with my cane, people I would meet wouldn't say anything, so I would end up saying, 'Hi,' to everyone, maybe several times to the same person," he explains. He tries to avoid a "teaching role" as a person with a disability, preferring to show how people can interact with him by just interacting with them. People learn on their own, he points out. "If you prefer visiting with people on your left side, just say so," he recommends. Their likely response: 'Oh, yeah, sure.'" Avoid taking a person's actions as negative, he cautions and adds, "They're just gaining experience in working with someone who is visually impaired." Rodney sees this as an exciting time for job seekers with disabilities. Computers are becoming faster. The patches for JAWS are better. And there's more opportunity to work from home. "I'm working two days a week now from home," he says, describing a setup which allows his colleagues to see what he's working on from home on a screen at the office. And he's looking forward to the time when he'll be able to work from home up to four days a week. Go to Top of Page Bookmark this article to: 
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