Autism and recruitment consultants

Reviews of First Choice are not looking great:

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/firstchoice-uk.com

Lots of 1 star reviews about non payment, being a scam etc. I would avoid them on the basis of these reviews.

I've worked with and for recruitment agencies many times and always found that the service you get very much depends on the agent you get. If they understand autism and have the time to spend with you then it can be a great thing, but most are focussed on making money fast and this needs them to get low needs candidates (typically neurotypicals who know how to interview well) and who are much more likely to last in a job (since they lose their commission if the candidate does not last more than about a year typically).

I don't see Duncan Munro in a recruitment capacity on LinkedIn which is a bit of a red flag as this is the go-to place for networking in recruitment.

I've come to expect recruitment consultansts to be cowboys unfortunately and I've rarely been dissapointed. Even the good ones get tempted by the big bucks they can make by bringing the right candidates quickly.

When you are a good candidate you get tempted with shifting from job to job once the minimum time is up because they have a better salary to offer somewhere else. If you are fine with the constant change and decent money then it is OK but I don't think this suits many autists.

Out of interest, what sort of support do you want to find from recruitment consultants in relation to autism?

At least I'm doing research at the moment rather than connecting with an agency. I just want a place or person who has connections and understanding about a person who is on disabilities that can pinpoint to get into a job role and able to get my foot in the door without all this crap that comes with it.

Like the old days you walk in ask for a job and then meet with the boss and BANG job in place. But it's not as easy as that anymore and I feel like going in cyles.

When I go via the job centre (had a meeting last week with them) they end up going through things that may help but I still have to do things myself, they made it look good for themselves as me as a number rather than saying what jobs there are and they can help to connect me with that job place. 

Ended up talking about, Disability Confident, Access to work site, National carers services and doing the skill assessment, listed the government help site and health event spring event they got going on the 10th,

Reading reading reading, and looking into things but then no job at the end? 

What I would love to have, is someone or a company that understands autism who has the right connections who can contact places to say who I am and then get my foot in the door, as of now I have to do it myself and it's not easy doing it yourself who is also autistic and never had a job with nothing to say on the CV. My CV is bad nothing to add down.

I can work, I want to work. I have downs and ups as we all do, Autistics person also.

Going in cycles, even jobs that I try and apply for, never hear from them, no response nothing. Applying online at times feels not right, in terms of not the same going and seeing and talking to a person 

Empire said:

Going in cycles, even jobs that I try and apply for, never hear from them, no response nothing.

This is quite common in the job market now and isn't caused by being autistic.

When I changed jobs (about every 1-3 years as I was a contractor) I would go through 200-300 applications to get a handful of interviews. I had a very impressive CV, all the current qualifications in my field and plenty of good references but stuggled to get the interviews.

Luckily I interview well so I didn't need many opportunities to get a job but it does highlight that there are loads of vacancies advertised and I suspect faily few of them are real.

When i have been recruiting as part of my role I found I would routinely have the HR dept put out vacancies in my team that I knew nothing about and that were never going to be created - it was just some weird scheme they had for a tax break or to justify headcount.

Also when recruiting for an actual position I was often told I had to recruit a specific profile of person (typically female) but I was not aloud to write this to anyone or put it in writing. Very shady stuff but it was the way they used to balance the male/female balance in the team without using sexism to discriminate against men.

I was told by my boss that it would go badly for me if I made a scene or tried to put it in writing - easy for them to defend as it was only ever verbal so they had plausable deniability.

In the end it wasn't worth the risk to my job to fight it and besides it did address a historical sexism (although unintention) imbalance in the team. I got easily 100 times more male applicants than female so I cannot is all concience say I recruited the best people for the jobs.

Anyway, the point of this is to say that what you are experiencing is normal - there are no recruiters that will get you though the door ahead of NTs or give you any meaningful advantage over the competition.

You need to be better than them at least in some areas so I would start building stuff to add to your CV. Find out what courses are on offer at the job centre, the local colleges etc and spend more of your time studying, learning, practicing things in the field you are interested in.

Can you learn to lay bricks, plaster, garden etc? Try to take up the courses you can and at least it will keep you occcupied and the contacts you make can sometimes to job offers if you prove to be competent at the skill.

All the time your CV grows with your skill set and hopefully confidence.

Job hunting is often an 8 hour a day process so it needs constant effort to look for advertised jobs, look for local companies and send your CV with cover letter to them to ask for positions and practice interview skills with anyone willing to help you.

If nothing else it is good practice to manage your time and develop discipline for when you do start a job.

Empire said:

Going in cycles, even jobs that I try and apply for, never hear from them, no response nothing.

This is quite common in the job market now and isn't caused by being autistic.

When I changed jobs (about every 1-3 years as I was a contractor) I would go through 200-300 applications to get a handful of interviews. I had a very impressive CV, all the current qualifications in my field and plenty of good references but stuggled to get the interviews.

Luckily I interview well so I didn't need many opportunities to get a job but it does highlight that there are loads of vacancies advertised and I suspect faily few of them are real.

When i have been recruiting as part of my role I found I would routinely have the HR dept put out vacancies in my team that I knew nothing about and that were never going to be created - it was just some weird scheme they had for a tax break or to justify headcount.

Also when recruiting for an actual position I was often told I had to recruit a specific profile of person (typically female) but I was not aloud to write this to anyone or put it in writing. Very shady stuff but it was the way they used to balance the male/female balance in the team without using sexism to discriminate against men.

I was told by my boss that it would go badly for me if I made a scene or tried to put it in writing - easy for them to defend as it was only ever verbal so they had plausable deniability.

In the end it wasn't worth the risk to my job to fight it and besides it did address a historical sexism (although unintention) imbalance in the team. I got easily 100 times more male applicants than female so I cannot is all concience say I recruited the best people for the jobs.

Anyway, the point of this is to say that what you are experiencing is normal - there are no recruiters that will get you though the door ahead of NTs or give you any meaningful advantage over the competition.

You need to be better than them at least in some areas so I would start building stuff to add to your CV. Find out what courses are on offer at the job centre, the local colleges etc and spend more of your time studying, learning, practicing things in the field you are interested in.

Can you learn to lay bricks, plaster, garden etc? Try to take up the courses you can and at least it will keep you occcupied and the contacts you make can sometimes to job offers if you prove to be competent at the skill.

All the time your CV grows with your skill set and hopefully confidence.

Job hunting is often an 8 hour a day process so it needs constant effort to look for advertised jobs, look for local companies and send your CV with cover letter to them to ask for positions and practice interview skills with anyone willing to help you.

If nothing else it is good practice to manage your time and develop discipline for when you do start a job.