Transgender Job Bank
The website "T-Job Bank" has recently come online and is expected to announce its official launch soon. I spoke with the developer, Jillian Barfield, who started working on TJobBank around September of last year. She was spurred to do so after attending the 1st Annual Transgender Career Expo at the Southern Comfort Conference in 2006. I previously blogged about this career expo at length two years ago, when it was in the news because one of its sponsors was a military contractor. The transgender experience in the job market is a subject discussed on numerous occasions in this blog. The website seeks to alleviate some of the problems suffered by transgender employees by alerting them to jobs in which discrimination based on gender identity is not an issue. At this time, there is no cost to use the T-Job Bank site, either by candidates or employers. Given the diversity difficulties experienced in all segments of industry today, it will be interesting to see whether the site can attract a significant number of users. You can find it at http://www.tjobbank.com/
Ms. Barfield has had some personal experience with transgender job discrimination. She was fired from her job as a corporate vice-president because of her transsexual status. Despite her credentials and experience, she has found it very difficult to get a foot in the door with recruiters. "When you think about it, a recruiter's job is to find a candidate that they feel will be the best fit for a given position, but they tend to present candidates that will be "acceptable" with as little opposition from their customer - the employer. They have no incentive to present a trans-person for a job."
She also had some very unpleasant experiences in job interviews. "Even if I 'passed' unquestionably, a background check outed me every time. It was such an unfair process that I decided to do what I could to help trans-people find work." She volunteered to help with the Career Expo 2008, sponsored by Southern Comfort in partnership with Out and Equal, and she has been working on the event planning committee to help with this annual event, which takes place in early October.
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