Katie Coleman stood face-to-face with a choice no job seeker should ever have to make. She could tell her prospective employer she had stage 4 kidney cancer, the most life-threatening stage of all.
Or she could stay mum.
She knew she risked losing any shot at the job by being honest about her diagnosis — or risked losing her self-respect by keeping quiet about it.
This may sound like the plot of an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.” It’s not. It’s the decision that confronted the 31-year-old resident of Austin, Texas, who has been battling the deadly disease for nearly three years.
“The number of ppl advising me to not disclose my [diagnosis] is astounding,” she tweeted in mid-April. The concern was that employers might worry about the costs and absenteeism that can result from such a condition — even though federal law prohibits employers from taking health issues into account when hiring.
Yet, while interviewing for the high-pressure software engineering job she desperately wanted, Coleman shared her diagnosis with the CEO of MDisrupt, an Austin-based company that connects clinicians and scientists with digital health companies.
Ruby Gadelrab, CEO and founder of MDisrupt, was unfazed. Moments after interviewing Coleman for a job, she tweeted: “Today I met a candidate who applied for one of our jobs, and she might just be the most inspiring person I have ever met.”
Coleman’s personal story is both hair-raising and hop …