Counselors Campus to Careers Toolkit

For career counselors who guide student veterans
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A career counselor focuses intently while arranging colorful sticky notes on a board

Making Sense of It All

Laws, services, and programs that touch student veterans

What Do You Know?

Question 1:

Only veterans who have service-connected disabilities have rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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Answer: False

A disability does not have to be service-connected to be a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Question 2:

Veterans have a right to a job accommodation whether or not they disclosed their disability during hiring.
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Answer: True

The choice to not disclose a disability during hiring has no bearing on a veteran’s later right to an accommodation, if hired.

Question 3:

When applying for a job, a veteran should decide about disclosure and accommodation and then stick to that decision for every job application process.
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Answer: False (well…partly false, anyway)

It is true that veterans should think through disclosure and accommodation decisions before applying for a job. But, what’s not true is that these decisions need to be the same for every job application. Because each job and employer is different, disclosure and accommodation choices might be different for each job application.

Question 4:

Employers who are federal contractors/subcontractors are held accountable for recruiting and hiring veterans with disabilities.
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Answer: True

According to VEVRAA, employers who have federal contracts/subcontracts of $100,000 or more must create benchmarks around hiring veterans with disabilities (and others) and report their progress in meeting these benchmarks.

Question 5:

Veterans who are collecting VA disability compensation benefits don’t need to work.
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Answer: False

Veterans collecting disability compensation should and usually do need to work. Most veterans getting disability compensation for a service-connected disability do not receive full compensation. Rather, their compensation level depends on how much the disability is estimated to impact job earnings. Also, with a few exceptions, veterans’ disability compensation income is not affected by employment earnings.

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