Getting a Job

There seem to be two very different things we are discussing here.

1:   Whether people are not being hired for jobs that they can in fact do perfectly well, purely because they have a label of ASD.

2:    Whether people who have ASD are unable to hold down a job.  If you have acute anxiety, cannot concentrate, have no social skills, you will not be able to carry out a job satisfactorily.  If you go to an interview, and it is clear to the interviewer that you cannot concentrate, they will be absolutely right not to give you that job, just as they would be right not to give you a job you did not have the qualifications for.

The more complicated question is whether some people with ASD can carry out some jobs with some support from the employer and with some specialised training to start with.  Obviously the short answer to this question is 'Yes'.  For instance, when I used to work in programming, almost every team I was on had that one person who never talks to anyone.  You just give them their work and they sit down quietly and concentratedly and carry it out.  They're a valuable member of the team;  you just don't ask them to talk to the users.  And with hindsight I suspect some of them did indeed have Aspergers.

But, given that everyone with ASD is different and every job is different, how do we get all this to fit together - finding who can do what jobs and what support they need.

There seem to be two very different things we are discussing here.

1:   Whether people are not being hired for jobs that they can in fact do perfectly well, purely because they have a label of ASD.

2:    Whether people who have ASD are unable to hold down a job.  If you have acute anxiety, cannot concentrate, have no social skills, you will not be able to carry out a job satisfactorily.  If you go to an interview, and it is clear to the interviewer that you cannot concentrate, they will be absolutely right not to give you that job, just as they would be right not to give you a job you did not have the qualifications for.

The more complicated question is whether some people with ASD can carry out some jobs with some support from the employer and with some specialised training to start with.  Obviously the short answer to this question is 'Yes'.  For instance, when I used to work in programming, almost every team I was on had that one person who never talks to anyone.  You just give them their work and they sit down quietly and concentratedly and carry it out.  They're a valuable member of the team;  you just don't ask them to talk to the users.  And with hindsight I suspect some of them did indeed have Aspergers.

But, given that everyone with ASD is different and every job is different, how do we get all this to fit together - finding who can do what jobs and what support they need.