EOP Logo

Equal Opportunity Publications
EQUAL
OPPORTUNITY
Equal Opportunity Cover
WOMAN
ENGINEER
Woman Engineer Cover
MINORITY
ENGINEER
Minority Engineer Cover
CAREERS &
the disABLED
CAREERS & the disABLED Cover
WORKFORCE
DIVERSITY
Workforce Diversity Cover
HISPANIC
CAREER WORLD
Hispanic Career World Cover
AFRICAN-AMERICAN
CAREER WORLD
African-American Career World Cover



CAREERS & the disABLED Magazine, established in 1986, is the nation's first and only career-guidance and recruitment magazine for people with disabilities who are at undergraduate, graduate, or professional levels. Each issue features a special Braille section.

CAREERS & the disABLED has won many awards, including several media "Award of Excellence" acknowledgments from the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.

This magazine reaches people with disabilities nationwide at their home addresses, colleges and universities, and chapters of student and professional organizations through a paid subscription.


CAREERS & the disABLED

» Featured Articles
» Subscription Information
» Reader Survey
» Companies Actively Recruiting

 A LUCRATIVE FIELD

Amanda N. Wegner
 
 
COMPUTER SCIENCE IS AN IN-DEMAND FIELD.
 
FROM THE CREATIVE MINDS WHO DEVELOP NEW PROGRAMS AND PRODUCTS TO THE INDIVIDUALS WHO HELP GET THOSE NEW PROGRAMS AND PRODUCTS TO MARKET — AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN — THE COMPUTER SOFTWARE FIELD IS ONE OF HIGH DEMAND. HERE, FOUR INDIVIDUALS WORKING IN THIS LUCRATIVE INDUSTRY SHARE WHAT MAKES THIS A GREAT FIELD.
 
NOVELL: ACCESSIBILITY IS AN ASSET
WHEN YOUR COMPANY OFFERS A GOOD PRODUCT, TODD KIRBY SAYS SALES IS THE PLACE TO BE. KIRBY IS AN INSIDE SALES REPRESENTATIVE FOR NOVELL, A LEADING PROVIDER OF COMPUTER SOFTWARE, INCLUDING NETWORK CONNECTIVITY SOFTWARE, A LINUX-BASED OPERATING SYSTEM SPECIFICALLY FOR BUSINESSES, COLLABORATIVE TOOLS, NETWORK SECURITY PRODUCTS, AND MORE BASED IN PROVO, UT.
 
“After I graduated with my degree in business/finance, my first job was working in the revenue operations department at Novell,” remembers Kirby, who has been with Novell for 13 years. “I worked in operations for a number of years and was very successful, however, I started noticing that there is good money to be made in sales. I worked closely with many sales reps, and they finally convinced me that I would be a good sales rep and so I made the move to sales. I have been working in sales for six years now and love my job.”
 
Kirby covers a ten-state territory and works with about eight field sales representatives, selling new business and renewing existing customer contracts. Inside sales, explains Kirby, does not require travel to customer sites. Instead, he works with each field representative, helping them structure and close new business deals. “I make sure the deal is going to work within the program guidelines and contract terms. I am 90% responsible to maintain relationships with existing customers and get them to renew their software maintenance contracts on time,” states Kirby. “I work with very large corporations and large dollar amounts, so the sales cycle can be very long.”
 
Kirby is a T5 paraplegic, the result of a car accident when he was 16 years old. Luckily, he reports, his disability does not affect his work at all; in fact, the Novell headquarters is very accessible, making it easy for him to get around and hit his sales marks. The accessibility is just one of the assets that makes Novell a great place to work. His co-workers are another. “The people and environment are what make Novell a great place to work,” says Kirby. “All of the buildings are very well maintained and everything is accessible. Novell has an onsite cafeteria that makes it easy to get lunch. Novell also has an onsite gym, and the company just added more exercise equipment specific for me so I can get a good workout.”
 
Kirby’s degree in business and finance, as well as his previous position at Novell, helped him succeed in his sales roles. Of the transition, he remarks “it was easy for me because of my experience gained from my operations job, so the learning curve was easy from day one. I was able to start selling day one on the job.”
 
He adds that hard work and never taking no for an answer the first time are critical to success in sales. “In sales, working hard and always taking the time and making the effort to learn more about your company and your customers every day is important,” advises Kirby. “Be a positive contributor, not somebody who is difficult to work with or is negative.”Learning about what customers want is not only a critical skill to find success in sales, but it’s also critical to stay relevant in this fast-paced industry. The software industry changes every day and we have to do our best to make sure we change with the trends and customers’ needs and wants, according to Kirby.
 
CARDINAL HEALTH: A GROWING GLOBAL COMPANY
NOT EVERY JOB IN THE COMPUTER SCIENCE INDUSTRY INVOLVES LINES OF CODE AND PROGRAMMING. “I’M ON THE BUSINESS SIDE OF IT, WORKING WITH INTEGRATING OUR MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS INTO OUR ENTERPRISE IT DOMESTICALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY, AS WELL AS OTHER LARGE-SCALE PROJECTS,” SAYS CHRIS CARR, SENIOR CONSULTANT OF IT PROCESS MANAGEMENT FOR CARDINAL HEALTH, A GROWING GLOBAL COMPANY.
 
Carr led an initiative to expand the company’s IT internationally, creating an integrated support model for Cardinal Health offices in China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Malta, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. Moving to common tools and processes has enabled the Cardinal Health IT team to work globally as one cohesive IT organization, with shared services and enterprise application functions centrally managed by U.S.-based IT teams and many business-specific applications and technologies supported more locally. The implementation of new tools and processes gives the leadership team visibility into work around the globe, providing an easy way to log and route work and a common measurement system for performance and measurement of client satisfaction. “Cardinal expands every day, and we need an agile IT model to keep up with the growth,” he notes.
 
While that project took about nine months and wrapped up in June 2013, Carr is now ramping up new projects to expand on these services. With Cardinal Health for 11 years, about six years ago Carr fell two stories off a ladder, landing on concrete and crushing his feet. While he’s had multiple surgeries and has relearned how to walk, he was initially in a wheelchair, requiring his off ice to be reconstructed. “Because of the nature of the accident, my legs were out and in front, so getting around took a lot of space,” recalls Carr. “The HR and facilities teams were great to help me get back to work as soon as I wanted to come back.”
 
Accommodations like this one, and more, have been critical to Carr’s continued success, both on the job and at home. “Steps saved at work during the day are steps with my children at the end of the day. But when it comes to it, it’s about making a choice to overcome, persevere, and be a role model for my children and others. My disability affects me as much as I want it to, and that’s as little as possible,” he declares.
 
While the people he works with make Cardinal Health a great workplace, they also bring a tremendous amount of passion and a commitment to give back to the community, which includes work done by the company’s seven employee resource groups, which seek to educate, support, and empower employees on a variety of issues, as well as serve the greater community. “Our employees strive to make a difference not only in health care, but our own communities,” says Carr. “And our resource groups are as strong as the passion of their members. The work they do is pretty impressive.”
 
In addition to this deep passion, innovation is a key component of Cardinal Health’s continued success. “There is an intense focus on serving the customer, innovation, and finding new and different ways of running the business, and everyone does that wholeheartedly. We’re always asking the question, what’s next? Our leadership team challenges us to do what’s next, the next acquisition, the next big project, the next big innovation. This is a company that wants to be cutting-edge and out front in health care,” Carr states.
 
In fact, passion, innovation, and a desire to be challenged are necessary to succeed in the computer software field, advises Carr. “You have to be broadminded and have a passion for change. Technology does not change year over year, but day over day. To be successful, you need a passion for change and innovation. The skills you learn in college are a springboard; the learning never ends, and you have to want to know what comes next.”
 
JACK HENRY & ASSOCIATES: GREAT PEOPLE DOING INTERESTING WORK
WHEN CUSTOMERS OF MORE THAN 2,200 FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND CORPORATIONS LOG INTO THEIR ONLINE BANKING ACCOUNTS, THERE’S A CHANCE THAT GEORGE CALVERT AND HIS TEAM AT JACK HENRY & ASSOCIATES HAD A HAND IN MAKING IT A GREAT USER EXPERIENCE. CALVERT IS THE SUPERVISOR OF NETTELLER CUSTOM PROJECTS AT JACK HENRY & ASSOCIATES, WHICH PROVIDES A VARIETY OF FINANCIAL AND DATA PROCESSING SOFTWARE FOR BANKS, CREDIT UNIONS, AND OTHER FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANIES. NETTELLER IS THE COMPANY’S ONLINE BANKING SOFTWARE, AND THERE’S BEEN A TREMENDOUS DEMAND IN RECENT YEARS TO CUSTOMIZE IT FOR JACK HENRY’S CUSTOMERS.
 
“My role is to make sure my teammates have the information, resources, and support they need to design, develop, test, and deploy customized versions of our software,” explains Calvert, who oversees a team of 15 software developers, business analysts, and quality assurance specialists. “With my team I am finding whatever ways I need to help, whether that’s helping a business analyst who is having trouble gathering requirements from a client, sitting in on a call and asking questions, or working with the projects coordinator to iron out scheduling and more,” adds Calvert.
 
With a background in development, he can also assist with technical problems. This kind of team attitude is critical to succeed in software development. “No matter what technical role you might pursue, the ability to communicate and collaborate with other people is, in my opinion, the single most important skill you can have. As someone who has just begun living with a significant disability, I’m finding that much of what I learn, such as patience, persistence, listening, and focusing on what’s truly important, actually makes me a better contributor to Jack Henry,” he reports.
 
While Calvert earned a law degree and spent eight years as a banking attorney and in-house counsel for the FDIC, he spent the past years working in the software field as a developer, consultant, and manager. “I discovered that I loved programming as well as collaborating with other technical professionals to create software,” recalls Calvert. “Jack Henry and Associates offered the opportunity to do both, and now I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
 
Calvert started at Jack Henry in March 2007 as a developer, but after suffering spontaneous retinal detachments in both eyes, he completely lost his vision in and moved into his current supervisor role. “I resumed a completely functional life after I lost vision in my left eye, but when it happened in my right in January 2012, my vision loss was a huge barrier to continuing to write software,” says Calvert.
 
At about the same time, with demand up and the team’s workload increasing, adding a new level of supervision for the NetTeller custom projects team was a natural fit for the company. “I had a tremendously supportive manager, and she helped me transition to a management position that allowed me to build upon my prior role within the team,” comments Calvert. “I’ve been with this team five years, I know the people and the product, and even though I couldn’t see, I could continue to play a valuable support role, providing management rather than providing software development. I feel so incredibly fortunate to be in that position at that time.”
 
Like many companies, Jack Henry has great people doing interesting work in a supportive environment, but what makes the company unique is its unusual mission statement: “Do the right thing, do what it takes and have fun.” “I’ve not come across many organizations where people actually know and live out their mission statements. We do,” states Calvert. “And I believe our mission statement provided a clear and simple recipe for how to re-integrate a person with a vision disability back into our company.”
 
MICROSOFT: LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION
HAVING ACCESSIBLE COMPUTER PRODUCTS IS CRITICAL TO KELLY FORD’S ABILITY TO SUCCEED, AND FORD HAS A HAND IN THIS TECHNOLOGY AT MICROSOFT AS A SENIOR SUPPORTABILITY PROGRAM MANAGER ON THE CUSTOMER AND PARTNER ADVOCACY TEAM. “I AM COMPLETELY BLIND, SO THE ACCESSIBILITY OFMICROSOFT’S SOFTWARE DOES PLAY A ROLE IN MY WORK,” SAYS FORD. “WHEN WE DO A GOOD JOB, IT CAN MAKE MORE OF MY JOB EASY TO DO. IN THE AREAS WHERE WE HAVE ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT, I’M ABLE TO DEMONSTRATE TO THE RESPECTIVE PRODUCT TEAMS THE IMPACT OF ISSUES AND HELP ADVOCATE FOR PROGRESS.”
 
Ford works across the company to improve the accessibility of Microsoft’s products, including working with teams responsible for experiences such as online support, the Microsoft Store and Microsoft homepage, and related offerings to ensure these experiences are as accessible as possible. He is also part of an extended team that guides Microsoft’s efforts at its answer desk dedicated to accessibility, which offers assistance to customers with accessibility questions or who use assistive technology such as screen readers and screen magnifiers. Through this job, he works with many product teams to provide data on the customer experiences around accessibility.
 
“One of the joys of my job is that I don’t necessarily have a typical day,” enthuses Ford. “It can be quite fast-paced at times, so the ability to handle multiple items at once is a key to a successful day, but the work is always interesting.”
 
Interesting, as Ford became active in the field of Web accessibility, he wrote a review of MSN Explorer product and accessibility issues in the software. Soon after that, the product team had an opening for someone to help them better understand accessibility and Ford joined the company. With Microsoft for 13 years, he had a long career with the Internet Explorer team, testing various parts of the browser over the years, before he moved to his current role in December 2012.
 
Ford’s work supports the company’s long-term commitment to accessibility, says Keami Lewis, director of global diversity & inclusion. “At Microsoft, our commitment to developing innovative accessibility solutions started when the corporation was in its infancy,” notes Lewis. “As we have evolved to be a technology leader, we’ve recognized our responsibility to lead the industry in the area of accessibility. Our technologies inspire people of all ages and abilities to make the most of their potential—eliminating barriers, improving lives and strengthening communities. Today, Microsoft is among industry leaders in accessibility innovation and continues to build products that are safer and easier to use.”
 
As a leader in the technology field, Microsoft is strongly committed to diversity and inclusion and integrating both into its business strategy. Employing 99,000 people worldwide, Microsoft has a number of employee resource groups and employee network and has won many awards for innovation, commitment to diversity, and flexible work arrangements. The company also offers a variety of programs to accommodate people with disabilities in the workplace.
 
“We know that technology created by a diverse group of people has the potential to serve a broader set of consumers and drive business success. We are committed to ensuring that diversity and inclusion are a part of our everyday business, and we are a leading advocate for building a strong, innovative, and diverse workforce in the U.S. and around the world,” declares Lewis.
 
While a strong educational background is important, Microsoft prides itself on its individuality and tells job candidates to come as they are and do what they love. “We look for those who have proven themselves though leadership and innovation in their education. We want people who are willing to discover potential they didn’t know they had, push their limits, turn ideas into reality, and make a real impact on the industry and the world. The common thread that attracts us to candidates is their passion for their work and the desire to make an impact—in their careers, in the community, and on the world.”
» Feedback for the Editor
» Request Article Copy

All Content ©1996- EOP, Inc. Website by: Webscope