Aspergers Syndrome/Autism and job interviews

[Alfie]

Good luck would live to hear if you got it.

I just had my first two interviews 4 days ago. To be honest it went horrible and great at the same time.

I had two days to prepare for the interview but when i sat down to talk my mind literally froze. I spent the first ten seconds awkwardly staring in silence, then i kept on stumbling over my words, correcting myself, and pausing in the middle of my sentences. I had practiced what i would say to basic questions before, but i literally forgot everything. I tried to relax and loosen up and smile but my mouth would just twitch; i had this heavy gut feeling of fear and panic in my stomach. The worst part is that throughout the interview the manager kept on giving me these looks and smirking, like she thought i was pathetic. In the end i felt like i had gone jogging, i was sweating so much. This sounds like i'm exaggerating, but this is actually what happened; ive never been to an interview before and was scared ****less. However to my surprise, she told me to arrive the next day for another interview.

The second interview i decided i really needed to prove that i was confident, happy and a hard working person. I didn't practice any of my answers to questions and focused on being energetic, happy and fun. And i don't know how i did it, but i am amazed at how well i acted the fake "social and relaxed" role. I made the manager laugh, we talked about her career, where she thought the company was going, etc. That was two days ago, and now i'm waiting to hear back from her.

I'm not sure if i will be hired, but i feel a little less nervous about interviews now. Still, i'm really worried i won't get the job, i hope all this emotional torture and roller coaster was for something.

 

[Soup]

Job interviews are stressful under the best of circumstances (when you're full of confidence & have all the right qualifications & you're in 'go-getter' mode NOT "I really NEED this job mode."). My turn is coming up next week as I intend to return to the classroom full time in Jan.

What helps in my case is that I look normal & can dress conventionally & do good NT drag when I have to, so no interviewer is going to really notice distinctly odd behaviour patterns.

The problem: every school has its own 'philosophy': a bunch of high-minded, flowery, smart-sounding, moral high-ground-sounding bull$#!T that they allegedly subscribe to. Usually, the school philosophy is written in calligraphy on parchment, framed & prominently displayed. Often, there is a Latin maxim in there too (although I'd bet my Roots kanga-hoodie that not one of them even speaks Latin!). This is meant to impress & make parents feel confident that they're leaving their kids in a good place.

WEEeeeeellll... Beneath this is another layer of nonsense: each teacher is expected to have developed his/her own individual teaching philosophy! In the interview, they always ask you about the school philosophy & what your personal teaching philosophy is. As a parent, I believe that, after all these centuries that formal education has been in practice, that parents & most of all the kids deserve much more than some asinine philosophical musings.

The problem I see is that, in looking at this framed statement, there is no means to assess or measure how effective this philosophy has been! HOW do they put it into practice? How do the gauge whether or not it is even appropriate or effective? If this philosophy was established when the school first opened in 1935, hasn't the school evolved in meaningful ways since that time?

One school I recall has a framed quote from Rousseau. He abandoned all 5 of his kids to the hideous public French orphanages (even though he could afford to keep them) where they were never heard from again. His philosophy on educating children has long been debunked as unfounded & disastrous! Read what he said about educating girls & their role in life. I'd bolt for the hills as a parent out school-shopping.

In order to survive the interview process, I'm going to study the school's philosophy & utter some (hopefully) coherent drivel that appears to be in line with whatever it is they believe. As for a personal teaching philosophy, I've researched several of them to find one that seems to jibe with the one held by the school so I'll use that.

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

I almost always interview very well. I've got that script down after all of these years. However, after several months I can't keep up the facade of actually finding small talk interesting or the office socializing becomes completely boring (honestly it makes me want to scream, I'd rather just work, thank you very much), and the struggle begins. People begin to find me stand-offish, they can't understand why I don't want to go out with them after work, etc. It goes down hill from there, and I become overwhelmed with stress because I feel as though I am working in a hostile environment.

Whoa. I didn't mean to let all of that out like that! Well, there you have it. I interview well and then things go south.

I'm the same bay ... I am pretty good at the interview part ... its the keeping it up part that I find hard. The longest I ever had a job was probably a tie with working in fast food and my job at an electrical retailer. Ironically in both those jobs I had the same person as a manager (its how I got the second job because he knew me from my time at the fast food restaurant). I think I lasted so long at the fast food restaurant because its pretty hard to stuff that up ... you would have to a really idiot to not be able to follow their instructions. And the electrical retailer I did well at because I love to talk about computers so it seemed natural.

Other jobs I have felt he falling apart not long after I started. The worst was when I was a trainee engineer and they expected I would just pick up all these things about the job. Then a year in they were stunned I hadn't picked them up because I needed someone to tell me and they thought it was obvious. They also thought telling me meant there was something wrong with me. And then when I did ask questions to try and learn more I was told those questions were inappropriate. So go figure. Of course I didn't know about the aspergers at that stage.

Interviews are easy to get through because there is always a standard sort of formula ... especially for things like government interviews. There's always a question about difficult customers for instance. So you remember a difficult customer, expand a bit and practice before the interview. there's always that question of sell yourself. There's usually an opportunity for slipping in a great customer story or something. Usually there is a format and you can generally go in with your answers before the interview ... employers are pretty stupid in that regard because they don't think to ask different questions they always seem to stick to the standard list. Like they get it off a website. And usually if you take time with your appearance that helps. I read that something like 90% of a person's opinion of you is formed in the first 30 seconds of meeting ... so make sure you look perfect for the job and all you have to do is fake it with a big smile for a few mins and a hi how are you? and a firm hand shake. You want to fake your confidence for a few mins at least so they can then forgive nervousness in the interview.

 

[Dragon's Tooth]

@soup ... I wish my future kids would have teachers like you for when when they go to school ... You pretty much summed up my faith in the education system!!! I'm already planning for when my kids get to school how I'm going to get them through what will probably be the worst years of their life because the school system here in australia is set up to go at the speed of the slowest child while not considering that some children need to be challenged. And my kids haven't even been conceived yet!!

If you want to talk about f'ed up ideas ... there is no pass and fail any more in school systems in Australia and New Zealand ... they took that out because they didn't want kids to feel bad about failing. OMG ... the real world is going to chew these kids up and spit them out.

 

[Daniel]

I'm having a similar experience to others on here -- I put up a good enough show in the interview to get my foot in the door. I was great around the office during the first month because I had my trainer with me practically all the time (and he's a Newfie (Canadian slang for someone from Newfoundland)--there's a few of them in my office, and they're the nicest, sweetest people you could ever meet), people in my company are really quite friendly, and they like to make new people feel welcome.

But it got worse with each passing month, the more people realized I was busy doing my damn job, and no, I'm not going to stop what I'm doing and chat with you just because you saw me (it was an open-concept office, and I was right near the entrance/bathrooms/VP's offices). The job is kind of role where your success is practically a function of how much heads-down work you put into it, and my freak-show organizational skills made me good at it, so it pissed me off that they expected me to sacrifice my work to waste time and energy on meaningless chit-chat.

I got good at interviews through practice and trial-and-error. I put on a smiley, friendly face, give a firm handshake, and pretend like I'm an outgoing, sociable person. I realized that if you want them to know something good about you, like how good you would be at the job, you have to look for ways to guide the discussion towards your good qualities.

I think of it like being a politician preparing for a debate. You want to keep your message simple and stay on message, so you prepare a bullet-point list of your main points, that, when repeated enough and taken together, communicate the basic idea--you are a good fit for this job. And make sure you have a lot of concrete, specific stories about your experiences that show what good things you have to offer.

I also accumulated a decent portfolio of my work experience--report cards from college, academic awards, plus printouts of Excel spreadsheets I had created to manage projects, writing samples. I made the message about how my technical skills were right for the position. And I talked myself up big time--I told the interviewer that I'm normally quite modest, so I seldom get a chance to brag, so here goes.

I had no idea I have Asperger's until this week, but fortunately, on that day, she had no idea either!

Another tip -- One of the problems I had was trying to think on my feet. I would stumble, stutter, misspeak, and eventually spit out something weak. I found that some interviewers are quite forgiving if I say, "Good question! Let me think back over the years and find a really good example..." and then take my time to formulate a complete answer in my head before starting. It's also an opportunity to break eye contact and look away because, you know, you're really taking their question seriously, like Rodin's The Thinker.