Published on 12, July, 2020
I thought others might be interested in sharing their experience of job interviews.
I am in the lucky position now of not having to work but I found it very hard in the past to get a job because I found the interviews so wholly traumatic.
In fact, the last years of my working life I worked for agencies because then I didn't need an interview.
Possibly the worst: I was being interviewed as a secretary for a Church of England Cathedral. I was asked 'what part do you believe that the Church of England plays in the lives of ordinary people today?'. My reply was that I feel it is irrelevant to the majority of people, who only really find it relevant at Easter, Christmas, Weddings and Funerals.
I knew immediately that although I spoke as I felt it was completely wrong and I should have lied. Their faces dropped and I think they would have liked me to leave the room immediately.
Now I understand why I spoke as I felt in the light of my autism diagnosis. I find saying what people expect/want me to say very difficult, despite many decades of 'masking'.
Job interviews (and jobs) are a huge test of a person's social skills and their ability to dissimulate, I think.
Does anyone else have a story to share?
I once went for an interview to work at a Odeon cinema and the last question they asked me was "What movie character do you most identify with?" I said Will Smith in I Robot because I think differently from everyone else and see the world differently and I can see through things that other people cant see through. I didnt even know I was autistic at the time. Needless to say, I didnt get the job. I think they expected a more run of the mill answer
I hate interviews but, due to the fact I cant cope with jobs for long, I have had so many of them that I kind of learned a script and just repeated that same script each time to the point where I actually got quite good at them. Similar to what I did for first dates.
Havnt had one in 3 years but am likely to have to soon so am pooping myself about that as I have forgotten my script
Oh, the scripts! Scripting was always a big part of my masking and sometimes I'd even write them out, not just in advance of interviews, but even everyday conversations, especially at work.
I always felt like an infiltrator, marking time and gathering an income for as long as I could before they rumbled me and, in one way or another, ousted me. I got edged out socially, this spilled over into my work as the environment became increasingly uncomfortable and people spoke as if I wasn't there, then I felt so anxious and inhibited that I couldn't deal with meetings or even some queries very well. It was a total mismatch and the only way in which I was eventually able to resolve it was in working for myself.