Australian Disability Network is proud to offer two Award Winning programs that embed disability confidence into your teams while guiding and coaching the career of a jobseeker or graduate with disability.
With our support your team can experience inclusion in action and change the life of a person with disability.
Career Mentoring
Exclusively available to Australian Disability Network members, Career Mentoring is designed to foster an inclusive workplace culture by pairing your employees with jobseekers who have a disability. This program promotes education, awareness, and disability confidence across your organisation, contributing to a more supportive and inclusive workplace.
Over a series of six to eight meetings within a 16-week period, mentors offer valuable guidance and coaching to help mentees develop career skills. These sessions cover areas such as CV writing, interview techniques, understanding workplace dynamics, and exploring career paths.
We run the program twice a year with an Autumn cohort from April to August and a Spring cohort from August to December.
Find out more about Career Mentoring
Hear the 2024 Mentors and Mentees of the year speak about the impacts of the program:
How does it work?
Our dedicated programs team manage all aspects of the program—from recruiting mentees to matching, training, supporting and evaluating outcomes – making participation streamlined and hassle-free.
The first step for is for member organisations to register for the program. This is done by the key contact who manages the relationship with Australian Disability Network – usually someone in your Diversity and Inclusion team.
Once registered, we will guide you on how to get your team involved as mentors.
Our programs team then match mentors with mentees, provide pre-briefings and training.
Mentor pairs meet over a four-month period – usually once a fortnight, where mentors discuss, coach and guide to empower their mentee on their next steps into the workforce.
By participating in the Autumn 2024 Career Mentoring program Hanes Australasia experienced significant improvement. Over 90% of their employees who joined the program reported improved skills in improving and supporting an employee with disability.
Find out more about Career Mentoring
Stepping Into Internship: Host an intern
One of our most successful initiatives is our Stepping Into Internships program.
This is where we match suitable university students and recent graduates with disability to member organisation’s who are building their disability confidence and looking to provide a paid internship.
We run two cohorts of the program each year (Winter and Summer) and provide our members and interns support and training throughout the process.
Read our internship information for employers
Ready to host an intern
Matching will take place in February for the Winter cohort and August for the Summer cohort. Please complete your application within the deadline.
If your organisation is ready to host an intern, follow these steps: –
- Complete the Position Description template. You will need to attach this to complete the application. Here is a sample Position Description to help you.
- Save the Position Description using the file name convention ‘Position Description – <Organisation Name> <Role Title>’ It is important to keep the file name and not shorten it.
- You will need to login to access the application. If you don’t have a login please email applications@AusDN.org.au.
- Complete the online application form and submit. Read our internship information for employees or contact applications@AusDN.org.au or call 1300 363 645 for further support.
Apply to be a Stepping Into host
Everyone’s a winner
The employer then hosts the student or recent graduate as an intern in their winter or summer semester breaks. The employer gets practical experience of working with a person with disability, helping them build their disability confidence, while the intern gets practical experience and confidence in the workplace.
A proven record of success
We’ve been bringing employers and interns together like this since 2005, and our record stands for itself: our interns are more likely to be employed than students without a disability.
See how the NSW Department of Customer Service benefits from internships.
Increase your talent pool
Many organisations unintentionally exclude people with disability from their pool of available talent, simply because they’re not making it easy to employ them.
Break down the barriers
For a person with disability, unconscious biases and barriers to entry are abound. Your organisation may be bristling with these without you being aware of it. Here are some common examples:
- your website may be inaccessible
- your staff may not have the disability confidence they need
- your recruiters may not know they need to provide a wheelchair-accessible room or an Auslan interpreter
- your job description might list a driver’s licence as an essential requirement even though it’s not actually needed for the role.
To help you find out, we do a deep dive into how you and your recruitment agencies work together. We identify and remove any unintended barriers and make it easier for people with disability to approach you as potential employer.
Small changes, big difference
Often a few small changes can make a massive difference, and open up a pool of talent that was previously denied to you.
Become a member to benefit from our recruitment process deep dive.
See how Australia Post removed unintended barriers.