A hundred moments in autism - The job interview

Job interviews are not a great place for an autist to find themselves. Read any guide on how to do a good job interview and they will stress the importance of good eye contact.  It’s a pointless rule which adds to the difficulties autists find getting a job. Throw in the tendency to be overly truthful, difficulty using ‘appropriate’ body language and the job interview process is one of the main reasons that a high proportion of autists are out of work.  

Having been made redundant from my job for a small charity, and having moved to Cambridge to move in with Mrs Oblong, I was about to leave public affairs and return to university admin, my first profession.  

And then I saw a job advertised, near King’s Cross, commutable, a public affairs role for a disability charity. It was temporary, a five-month contract, but it was focused on social care, which was my area of expertise. A tailor-made role. 

In the job interview they reveal my main task, which is to participate in the government’s latest social care consultation, using the results of a survey of members they have conducted. They show me the report.  

I am horrified. The charity represents a disabled group which affect 300,000 people in the UK, yet the report I am supposed to be lobbying government with is based on a survey of just a hundred people. It wasn’t even a detailed survey, just four yes or no questions, the results of which added precisely nothing to the social care debate. 

I couldn’t stop myself (autists rarely can). “Well we can’t go to the government with this,” I said . “It’s far too flimsy. I can improve on that response.”  I mapped out a strategy for achieving a representative and useful survey in the 5-month window and how I would use the results.   

In my previous role at Parkinson’s UK (a condition affecting just 100,000 people), I had produced a similar report based on a survey of 2,000 people with Parkinson’s, launched, analysed and completed within a 3-month window of a green paper consultation, with the questions in the survey exactly matching the questions in the consultation, which meant that where they agreed to do so, the survey could be forwarded on to the government’s consultation, which meant that 10% of the people responding to the government consultation were people with Parkinson’s.    

The government couldn’t help but notice. A few months later Parkinson’s UK was just one of four organisation invited to a top table meeting to plot the detail of a social care bill.   

I need hardly say I never got the job. They wanted to hear “This is a great report, I’ll have the government eating out of my hands.” Unfortunately, autists like myself are too prone to tell the truth, it often gets us into trouble, and is another reason we never get the job.