Am I ready for a Job?
by Brent Kennedy
If this has been you, you’re not alone. And you’re not wrong to feel it. But readiness doesn’t usually look like what you think it looks like.
At Gateway, you don’t need a diagnosis to work with us. Disability is broad, and it doesn’t always come with a label. Maybe you don’t think of yourself as someone with a disability at all. But life can still leave a mark on how your brain and body work, even without a formal diagnosis. Living on the street. Sex work. Getting sober. Collecting bottles and cans to get by. Carrying the knowledge of a homeland or culture that most employers never ask about. Holding Indigenous ways of knowing that don’t fit inside a job description. Experiences like these can shape you in ways that are just as real as any diagnosis, even if no one ever gave it a name. Almost every time, the skills born from these experiences are already there. They’re just hard to see from the inside.
I call it the snow globe problem. When you’re inside your own experience, everything is swirling too close. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s hard to tell what’s actually valuable when you’re standing right in the middle of it. From the outside, someone else can often see the shape of it clearly. That doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means you need a different view, even just for a minute.
There’s real research behind this, too. Trauma and long-term stress can make it harder for your brain to organize and recognize your own strengths in the moment
(Lu, Yanos, et al., 2017; Ugwuanyi & Formella, 2024).
So, if you’ve lived through something hard, and you can’t easily see your own skills, that’s not a flaw in you. That’s a normal human response. You deserve to know that, instead of carrying shame for something that was never your fault
Try this: the surfacing exercise
You can start this on your own, before you ever walk through our doors. Here’s a simple version of what we do together.
1. Pick one experience. Something specific. Not “I’ve had a hard life,” but one moment or one stretch of time. For example: I used to collect bottles and cans to get by.
2. Ask what skills it took. Not how it felt, what it took. Staying safe. Knowing which streets to work, and when. Keeping track of where you’d already been. Doing all this while tired, in weather that wasn’t always kind. That’s not just survival. That’s planning a route. That’s tracking supply, experience working in all kinds of weather, making quick decisions to stay safe, without anyone ever teaching you the words for it.
3. Compare it to the words employers use. A hiring manager might ask for “logistics experience” or “the ability to manage inventory.” That phrase and your bottle route are closer than they look. The job posting is just wearing different clothes.
This works the same way no matter the experience. Collecting recyclables. Early recovery. Carrying knowledge from a culture that Canadian workplaces are only starting to understand. The skill was always there. This exercise just hands you the outside view.
What now
You don’t need to have it all figured out before you reach out. Readiness isn’t a finished resume. It’s being willing to look at your own life with someone who isn’t standing inside the snow globe with you.
Written by Brent Kennedy, Career and Inclusion Consultant, Calgary Employment Resource Centre.
