People wonder why a large percentage of autistic people are unemployed, but we don’t talk enough about how an interview is literally the exact same process as being on a game show…
You’re sitting in the hot seat, being fired questions that you have to answer on the spot, and usually if it’s a professional level job, there’s more than one person in the room. You could have a whole committee - I’ve been in interviews with 10 people! That’s what we call an audience, friends.
You don’t really have time to fully process the information before you answer - or you look slow. Things like stuttering, repeating yourself (typical neurodivergent things) are points off. You can’t be too honest. Your answers should be thorough but not rambling. And all of this while you are trying to make eye contact with the 3-7 other people in the room - which I don’t know about you, but that alone requires half of my brain’s energy to manage all by itself.
Oh and if you have anxiety (like me), you’ve already been battling a never-ending attack for DAYS while you build everything up in your head and relive every other bad interview experience you’ve had - and depending on your age, there have been MANY.
Honestly, I cannot speak for the rest of my neurospicy brethren, but I will tell you it’s an achievement to even show up and get through it.
So yeah… I think it’s a miracle I’m employed. And there are very good reasons why many of my autistic peeps are not. Imagine being able to have the questions in advance, or being able to write responses instead of the Jeopardy or Die format where you’ve got a time limit - but you have no idea how long that is because no one will tell you if you’re answers are too short or too long while they take notes about every word you say.
We have to work to eat, we have to eat to live, and yet managing that is like walking through 3 rings of hellfire…
