New Deaf/Hard of Hearing IT Specialist Tips

Hi,

I am a team leader and on-the-job coach for a new IT Specialist we brought on board this Monday. The new person is in a first job—not just a first career-track job. She is deaf and has some Java training which we hope to develop further so we can put her on a Java-based development project. She is our youngest employee; everyone else in the organization has more than 10 years professional experience and many of us are either preparing to retire or are getting closer to retirement dates. In refreshing contrast, our new employee is also a full-time student who will get her degree next year and hopefully come on board full-time after graduating. We hope she will choose to stay with us.

My interest is not only in providing our new employees a “survival manual”, but also in providing or at least thinking about the tools needed to make our shop a great place to work, and thus reduce the chances of losing our trainees. This book could help me think about the tools needed. I don’t own the shop, but perhaps I can help make it a little warmer and less daunting to the new folks.

I am excited to see this book is in development, and I plan to buy copies for myself and my team members. I wish I had something like this to go over back in 1981. At that time there was just a lone paperback on dressing for success which appealed to our Vice President. Perhaps now we will all be able to pass on very helpful career tips to entry-level programmers everywhere.

Thanks

Bob Cochran

Hi Bob,

Thanks a ton for your comments. I’ve worked with 2 deaf programmers and one who’s strongly vision-impaired, so I’ll go bug them for tips!

A couple things I can think of offhand for your new employee:

• Assuming she lip-reads to a degree, make sure you’re facing her and not blocking line-of-sight to your mouth when speaking. (Lots of people look around or turn away when speaking, prop their arm up on a cube wall, and so forth without thinking about it.)

• Try not to “umm” or “uhh” when speaking, this makes lip-reading harder. Just pause when you need a moment to think.

• Signing takes a while to learn, and you’ll never sign to deaf standards, but I’ve never met a deaf person that didn’t appreciate my halfway-ok-for-a-hearing-guy ASL.

I’ll pester my pals for more.

BTW, my first company never had the “dress for success” book on the shelves… and it showed. ;)

Best regards,
Josh