People who change their routines and everyday environment always go through hard times. The adaptation period is tough for all people, but even more so for veterans with disabilities because they have an extra burden to deal with in the process.

A study has shown that more than 20% of war veterans live with some form of disability. Unfortunately, the service-connected disability is only one side of the problem as they also struggle to find a job due to the health condition.

Bearing this in mind, veterans with disabilities are dealing with one big question: Should I disclose a disability on a resume? In this post, we will give you a straight answer to this question.

Before we move on, you should know that you are not legally obliged to disclose disability while applying for vacancy announcements. According to CV writing experts at AussieWritings.com coursework service , this is not a legal issue but rather an ethical dilemma, so you should think about what happens if you don’t mention a disability in your CV.

Here are a few things that might happen:

They will find out sooner or later

A potential employer will realize you have a health issue sooner or later. In such circumstances, it is smarter to reveal it immediately to avoid surprise and confusion when you arrive at the job interview. For instance, HR managers will be aware of your condition and they won’t be stunned to see a person in a wheelchair.

They will find a reason anyway

If you are facing a recruiter who is not willing to hire an employee with the disability, he will find a reason to turn you down anyway. It’s an awful but true conclusion – and also one of the main reasons why a large number of veterans live under the poverty line. When you run into this type of employer, it doesn’t matter when you disclose a disability, so why not do it straight away?

Prove courage and honesty

Mentioning a disability on your resume, you prove to be an honest and direct person. It takes a lot of courage to do it, so you also confirm your readiness to cope with problems openly. If the recruiter is smart enough, he will realize that you are going to do the same thing with professional challenges.

Show capability despite disability

When someone reads your CV and sees that you’ve performed some serious jobs despite the medical condition, it must reveal a thing or two about your professional capabilities. An experienced HR manager would always give a chance to the candidate who proved to be successful in his earlier positions in spite of the disability.

After everything we mentioned above, the only reasonable answer is that veterans should disclose a disability on a resume.

How to mention disability on a CV?

Now that you know the answer to this dilemma, you need to understand when and how to mention your disability. Big companies are much easier to deal with because they follow official quotas and always hire a certain number of persons with disabilities.

In some cases, it could even be the advantage because they need to fulfill a legally required minimum of positions for persons with disabilities. Therefore, don’t be afraid of stating your medical problem clearly if you are applying for the job announcement in a large corporation.

On the other hand, smaller organizations demand a more subtle approach. We recommend you mention disability in the “Professional Experience” section because that’s more or less the only part that recruiters read carefully.

However, you should be smart enough to link the disability information with one of your professional achievements. For instance, you could say that you increased results of your 12-member sales team by 12% despite the fact that you are a wheelchair user.

That way, you don’t only disclose a disability but also prove that it doesn’t affect your work. On the contrary, your results were very good and HR managers won’t be able to find a reason to eliminate you from the recruiting process.

Conclusion

Being a veteran with a disability is never an easy situation, but it gets even more complicated when you want to apply for a job. You have to face some serious dilemmas, while one of the biggest is this – should I disclose a disability on a resume?

In this post, we showed you why you should do it and how to do it properly. Feel free to use our suggestions and don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have interesting experiences to share with our readers – we’d be glad to hear how you handled job applications and interviews with HR professionals!