myAbility launches unique career portal for people with disabilities

Vienna, February 17, 2020

myAbility.jobs, Austria's largest job portal for people with disabilities, has expanded into a versatile career portal. At www.myAbility.jobs/karriere you will find success stories, concrete tips and profiles from interested employers.

The social management consulting enterprise myAbility has posted more than 30,000 jobs on its job portal in the past ten years and, consequently, has developed into the largest job board for people with disabilities and chronic diseases in the German-speaking area. But now it's time for something new. "We don't want to just advertise jobs, we want to help people in finding their career path", emphasizes Wolfgang Kowatsch, co-founder and managing partner of myAbility.

Therefore, myAbility launches a unique career portal that is integrated into the popular job portal. At www.myAbility.jobs/karriere you will find specific tips, accessible application templates for prospective employees with disabilities, interviews and success stories from role models with disabilities, as well as information on the myAbility Talent® program, which brings together talented students with disabilities and inclusive companies. In addition to this, job seekers can find out more about myAbility's partner companies, who present their activities and their open approach to the topic of disabilities.

Career development with disabilities and chronic diseases

Kowatsch explains, “We are actively working on connecting companies that have recognized the potential of people with disabilities with people with disabilities. It is equally important that the applicants know their individual skills and competences, and find the right way to communicate them. With our career portal, we offer the community specific information and content in order to support them in their career development.”

The role models in the success stories under the hashtag "#I can – having a career with a disability", demonstrate how diverse their career paths are and how they made it. One success story is that of Evgenia. After completing her master's degree at the University of Vienna, she worked in the university's research department before working for a leading pharmaceutical company. Today, the 31-year-old works as a laboratory technician. Her hearing impairment has never slowed her down from reaching her career goals. "It's important not to give up and to believe that if there's a hurdle in your way, you can't go any further. There's always a way," she emphasizes.

Less job-hunting through traditional employment exchange services

“Our career portal works towards the goal of community building – something like this has never existed before for this target group. This is unique”, ​​says Kowatsch. The future lies here. “In the future, searching for a job will be done less via traditional employment exchange agencies, where potential employees have to comb through one agency after the other trying to find a suitable position. Instead, it will take place in communities where people can find all the resources and networks that are useful to them.”

Kowatsch plans to expand the career portal into such a hub over the next few years. “A good example is LinkedIn. It is not primarily a job portal, but rather a community focusing on careers and networks. This makes a major difference especially for people with disabilities. It is often due to a lack of encouragement and invitation to deliberately pursue a career. Because for a long time there was the prevailing assumption in the job market that they should be happy to get any job at all. We can observe that this conception is increasingly changing. The launch of the career portal makes a significant contribution to this”, concludes Kowatsch.

For more information see:

www.myAbility.jobs/karriere