How can this new employee-centered work assignment approach and flexible job responsibilities increase productivity by hiring more disabled applicants

How can this new employee-centered work assignment approach and flexible job responsibilities increase productivity and workforce diversity by benefiting from hiring more people with disabilities?

 

This writing turned into an explanation of the necessity for deserving help in convincing somebody to hire me as bioinformatics post-doc before my Optional Practical Training (OPT) work permit expires after only 3 months. I initially responded to a Facebook reply when I gradually realized the urgent need for affirmative action, i.e. an approving affirmative response, answering the central question:

 

Can I request - as a disability job accommodation for my legal blindness - to have all my job tasks, which I cannot do well, replaced by others at which I am better?

 

Which are the best methods for determining the most qualified applicant and which criteria should be used to evaluate, compare and rank their job performance?

 

The main problem, which prevents me from getting hired, is that hiring decisions are based on finding the best applicant, who can finish the assigned task bundle fastest by considering all the tasks and steps belonging to his/her job responsibilities as a single atomic, indivisible unit - whereas a mutually much more beneficial way would be - to find the fastest employee for each little task regardless from which job it originated. Therefore, no job description should ever be considered as final or set in stone - but instead - it should remain flexible by dynamically reflecting any changes in the ranking order of employee-specific differences in completing the same task by conceptualizing all employees as team members desiring to win as a team by maximizing their company's overall productivity instead of being quickest and best in completing only the tasks, which were arbitrarily assigned to their job responsibilities when they were hired.

 

How should the objectives of the hiring-decision-making process be changed?

 

The goal of the hiring-decision-making process must be changed to seek the most promising candidate for raising the overall company productivity even if he/she could not compete with the most qualified job-seeker, who has proven to be faster in completing all the tasks / steps of the job sequentially. 

 

What are the new job performance evaluation criteria?

 

Hence, instead of evaluating only one applicant at a time in isolation, his/her expected beneficial impact on the overall company performance, i.e. maximizing its productivity and profit, must be ranked to determine the applicant, who gets the job offer if he/she is less qualified by direct performance comparison between job-seekers. 

 

Does faster necessarily mean better?

 

Using this new much better criterion for making hiring decisions might result in the job not being offered to the fastest applicant, who was the best in completing all tasks / steps of his job fastest in sequential order, but to a slower competitor - who, despite looking less qualified for the job - appears to have a skill set, which seems better suited for reassigning the company's tasks to different workers in such a way that improves the overall company productivity more than if the faster, i.e. more qualified looking applicant, would have joined the already existing team.

 

Why should we replace our single job-performance-centered concept with an overall company-performance-centered team concept?

 

In order to maximize productivity and profit the hiring manager should conceptualize the resulting group of employees as a single functional unit, i.e. like co-expressed genes forming a single functional unit, or like a winning Olympic sports team consisting only of highly collaborative members, who are putting their team's, i.e. their company's interests over their own by first worrying maximizing their company's productivity and profit before thinking about raising their paycheck. Ideally, the employees' behavior and priorities follow the rationale that - if everyone devotes everything he/she can towards maximizing their company's profit first - then there is a better chance for everyone to get a higher raise by their employer than when insisting that the pay-raises reflect the difference in job performance between each worker.

 

How should the the current job-centered approach be replaced by the better more profitable task-centered approach?

 

For any job duty requiring reading I am too slow. But if my job duties would only be typing, then I'd be faster than most people. Therefore, I want my employer to give all my reading tasks to somebody else and give me their writing tasks instead. I want to convince employers that it is better for them to find the best and fastest employee for each task, i.e. to consider each task separately even when they are part of different job-descriptions (task-centered approach), instead of looking only for the job-candidate, who can perform all job duties when considered as a group faster than his competitors (job-centered approach). 

 

This could save lots of money for the company because if a new person gets hired and he/she is better or faster at a certain task than all the others, then the boss moves this task to him/her. This means that nobody's job descriptions stay the same, but instead, get changed because the manager should start optimizing the overall employee performance by trying to find the best and fasted employee for each little task even if he needs to assign unrelated tasks from different job description to the same employee as a result of optimization. On the other hand, tasks from the same job may be completed by different employees to maximize their combined strengths while minimizing their combined weaknesses.

 

What does it mean for me personally and how does it impact my chances for finding a paid fulltime job?

 

Some tasks are harder than others and certain employees may have disabilities that prevent them from performing some tasks altogether. For example, I could never drive even if my job requires it. In this case I'd feel bad if not being able to drive is the reason for not getting the job. I'd request as an accommodation to take all driving tasks out of my job responsibilities and give me typing tasks instead. This would mean that my co-worker will lose his typing tasks to me and gets my driving tasks added to his job responsibilities (especially since I can type faster than he can).

 

Every day each company must complete certain tasks. I demand that I can pick out of these total task pool only those that I can do as well as others or even better and that all the tasks, which I could never do well, such as driving and reading, be given to my coworkers.

 

Although I can still read with magnifiers I can only read with 1/10th of the regular reading speed, i.e. I can only read as fast as a second-grader. So if I get paid for performing reading tasks, it costs 10 times more.  But assuming I can blind-type twice as fast as my coworker, who had the typing in his job description before I was hired, the company would save half of its spending expenses.

 

I just want people to understand that job descriptions should never be considered as being set in stone - but instead - they are dynamically changing because they depend on, who - of my workers - can do which tasks best. 

 

And the job description may change each time when a new worker gets hired or fired if this affects the task performance ranking between the members of my new group of employees.

 

Only in this way visually impaired people can get a job because - lets say I can type twice as fast as anyone else - but I can only read 10 times slower than anyone else and the job description of the job, for which I am interviewing, requires the same amount of reading and writing tasks, then overall, I'd still be 5 times slower than everyone else. But this would limit the hiring decision-making process by considering all the tasks of a job descriptions as indivisible atomic unit. Therefore, only the applicant, who is the fastest in completing all job tasks in sequence, will get a job offer.

 

But if my reading tasks were transferred to my co-worker and replaced by his/her writing tasks instead, I can suddenly save money for the company, because - in the same time - I can type twice as much. Does this make sense? At job interviews my slow reading speed was the reason why I did not get hired. I did not know how I could convince my would-be bosses that - if they replaced all tasks at which the shortcomings of my disabilities slow me down (e.g. reading, driving) by the few tasks, which I can complete faster than my coworkers (i.e. typing), both - the company and me - would benefit a lot.

 

Or I have to be allowed to work in a team - like at SAP with PJ - where it was understood that I can delegate my reading tasks to my team members and compensate by doing their writing parts instead? Does this make sense? If only a single employer could understand that we'd both benefit a lot from a more flexible employee-centered skill- and performance ranking team approach, then I could escape deportation by getting hired before I would lose my OPT work permit after only 3 months.

 

During the 6 weeks I was fortunate to be part of the Enterprise Readiness Academy at SAP's Autism at Work program this summer, I made the experiences that there a few tasks, which I can do better and faster than the rest, while being slower at most other tasks.

 

I tried to convince my supervisors to be allowed to refuse tasks, which others can do faster, and pick from all SAP tasks only those, at which I am the fastest - even if they were not initially part of my job description - and bundle them up into a new job description designed to accommodate my disabilities while simultaneously benefiting my employer. A good side effect of this approach is that I can suddenly become the most qualified applicant despite competing against much better adapted phenotypes.

 

This would save SAP money and allow me to escape from the prison of unemployment and fate of deportation. I'll email this to my SAP supervisor because this is the very first time I am trying to explain in writing why each little task, which can taken from different jobs, must be assigned to the fastest employee (i.e. new employee-focused approach), because - instead of keeping looking for the fastest to complete all tasks / steps, which have been arbitrarily grouped together into a single job (i.e. the old job-focused approach) - this speeds up most the overall team of employees. 

 

In the past hiring managers failed to aim at maximizing the overall team performance because they inadvertently made the mistake of seeking the best applicant for their job, which consisted of tasks / steps, because they don't seem to be aware that the best way of improving the company's ability to deal most effectively with the entire set of little tiny tasks and steps, which the company must complete single every day, and that were arbitrarily grouped together into different jobs, is to search for the best employee considering each tiny little task independently regardless to which job it initially belonged.

 

Can everything be boiled down to an optimization problem?

 

This transforms the hiring decision-making process into an optimization problem by altering the composition of team members in a way that allows each of them to only focus on his/her strengths without being limited by his/her weaknesses. This applies regardless whether the team includes disabled members because the range of difference in job performance, especially in coding, between non-handicapped people is much larger than the range of performance differences between disabled and non-handicapped workers.

 

Do disability-induced shortcomings tend to invoke superior coping skills?

 

But since handicaps tend to interfere with the normal way of doing things they increase the chances for developing compensatory copying mechanisms. For example, because I am legally blind, I cannot read my handwriting. Since my only other option to take class notes was typing I have much more typing practice allowing me now to type at least twice as fast as my peers. 

 

This is why enhancing workforce diversity benefits the whole team because - unlike in metabolic pathways - the fastest - instead of the slowest team member - is setting the speed. Therefore, even if my low vision causes me to be too slow to get hired for 99% of the tasks, this one percent of the tasks, which I can do better and faster using alternative coping methods, i.e. being forced to be the only high school student to type instead of write his class notes, allows me now to type about half as fast as people speak, i.e. which is at least twice a fast as the average non-handicapped person.

 

Hence, hiring managers should try to hire the applicant, who - by joining an already existing team - allows to reassign the each tiny task to the most qualified employee; thus, maximizing the total overall company productivity.

 

Why does nobody object to the current policy to limit diversity only to citizens?

 

But despite this powerful and absolutely true personal example of the powerful way, by which workforce diversification and inclusion benefit the overall team performance, nobody seems to be bothered about its application to remain limited to the lucky 5% of the world's population, who were fortunate to be labeled American citizens or permanent residents. Unfortunately, nobody seems to worry about the loss of potential contribution of remaining 95% of the world's population to diversity because they are not allowed to join the workforce. America is the country with the strongest commitment to diversify its workforce. But why then is the federal government making it so unnecessary hard for foreign handicapped university graduates to join the workforce after having already invested a lot in training them to become gainfully employed after graduation?

 

If the legislators and political decision-makers could only understand the concept of my writings we could easily double our productivity. But instead, I am forbidden to work most of the jobs I could realistically get. How can I convince bioinformatics employers from the overall benefit to hire me? How can I convince the people in charge of deciding, whom to offer a post-doc position, that the loss in diversity will be much bigger when everyone keeps ranking the applicants by their publication records; thus, placing me always last. Nobody seems to be aware that the loss in diversity of bioinformatics methods is much bigger if nobody hires me because this will force me to leave America for good after being giving only 3 months to hunt for jobs for which my disabilities make me look less qualified than other applicants with the same degree.

 

Then everything I have developed throughout my post secondary education to remain in good academic standing despite being legally blind will get lost because without a job to apply my alternative ways of coping with the limitations of vision loss I will forget them. Hence, only a few years of inactivity would create exactly same situation as I'd be in, if I were never given the opportunity to come to America and benefit a lot of the empowering concept of workforce diversification according to which being disabled is not a necessarily always a bad thing. 

 

I am certain that analogously to my example how my low vision doubled my typing speed by slowing down my reading, I can find also niches in bioinformatics given enough time to figure out by trial and error what works and what does not. This is actually the basis on which my PI has been working with me. He never punished me if I could not figure out a way to complete his assignment - but instead - he gave me new ones, until only by trial and error, I was able to complete enough work for graduating. I am worried that I cannot find post-doc supervisors, who are as understanding as my current PI, because before I got him I had others, who insisted that I'll complete all tasks only own my own. Unlike my current PI, who emails me the articles, which he wants me to read, the previous one felt, that anyone, who is struggling with finding relevant papers, cannot complete the PhD requirements.

 

I am writing all this because I feel its my only chance to convince at least a single supervisor to hire me. The biggest hurdle will be to find somebody, who thinks it is worth his/her time to read until the end and really tries to understand and help.

 

If anyone, who is reading this, can think of any PI, who could potentially be convinced by this writing from overall benefit of hiring me for mankind as a whole, of which every single human is a team member regardless of citizenship, please forward this to him/her or email me his contact information to Hahn5Thomas@gmail.com

 

Please communicate any suggestions for modification of content, length, media and tone by any of the communication channels to get in touch with me, which I have listed at the very end of this email under my name.

 

Is there hope for jobs if not too far fetched for immigration laws to follow my logic?

 

As I discovered at SAP, many problems, regardless whether its in bioinformatics, genomics, biology, medicine, supplies, cars, or return on investments, can be boiled down to optimization problems, whose optimal solution can be best approximated by comparing different machine learning algorithms and optimizing their parameters. For my dissertation I optimized machine learning algorithms' parameters to minimize the error of my yeast age predictor, whereas SAP is optimizing the parameters of its machine learning algorithms to minimize the differences between predicted and actually earned profits.

 

Will machine learners be given as much freedom for job options as statisticians?

 

Statisticians on OPT work permit are lucky because they can apply their statistics in almost any field, but bioinformatics jobs must at least have some biology and some computing component because its about discovering computational solutions for biological problems, except - maybe - for text-mining. But what about machine learning? If it can be used to find the optimal solution for complex problems in any area of specialization, then it can - like statistics - be applied to anything. Consequently, foreign machine learners - like statisticians - should be allowed to accept a wide range of jobs while on OPT because they can apply what they have learnt in school to almost any field of study. So should I try to increase my job options by claiming to be a machine learner, who applies machine learning to maximize Primerica's profits, because that was the only company that offered me a job at the UALR job fair? But unfortunately, I already declined their job offer because I could not think of a way to argue that optimizing profits earned from selling life insurances policies is related to bioinformatics by any stretch of imagination.

 

Thanks a lot in advance for trying to understand.

 

Thomas Hahn

(unsuccessful bioinformatics post-doc applicant)

 

Office: EIT room 535

Office Phone: 501 682 1440

Smart Phone: 501 303 6595

Flip Phone: 318 243 3940

Google Voice Phone: (501) 301-4890

Skype ID: tfh002

Work Email: TFHahn@UALR.edu

Private Email: Hahn5Thomas@gmail.com