The Workforce Recruitment Program for College Students with Disabilities

The Workforce Recruitment Program for College Students with Disabilities (WRP) is responsible for recruiting and referring driven college students, and those who have just received their diplomas, to employers offering summer internships or full-time jobs to people with disabilities. The WRP, which is supported by the Department of Labor and Department of Defense amongst about 20 others, has placed more than 4,000 students in the workforce since 1995.

Last year alone, 67 recruiters representing 15 federal organizations targeted approximately 250 university campuses across the country. With each stop, they collected additional information that ultimately was entered into a database containing profiles of over 1,800 disabled students. Hailing from all concentrations of study and levels of education (e.g., freshmen, graduate, and law students), in excess of 400 students were hired by 17 different agencies.

The WRP, which runs once per year throughout January and February, mandates that students interested in applying interview with a recruiter during a recruitment trip to their college campus. To qualify as a candidate for the WRP, students must be attending school as a full-time undergraduate or graduate student with a disability, or have completed their degree no more than one year after the publication of the database the previous March. For instance, to be eligible for the 2009 WRP, a student could have finished school in spring 2008 or later.

To take part in the WRP, institutions of higher learning must be accredited by any one of eight Regional Institutional Accrediting Agencies validated by the US Department of Education. The college also must be able to produce an agenda which includes no less than eight qualified students that will meet with the on-campus recruiter during a given day. The WRP does not coordinate meetings directly with students and prefers to work with school faculty to schedule interviews instead.

Keep in mind that students who rely on devices such as wheelchairs, lift chairs, respiratory aids, etc. to assist them with their disabilities must also be US citizens to pursue a career through the WRP. If you meet all of the aforementioned requirements, contact your college’s disability services or career services counselor, and request that they reach out to a WRP coordinator on your behalf via email at wrp@dol.gov. Only emails from official school faculty members will be answered.