25, female, Black British, autistic, and unemployed for a year

Many businesses have quotas to fill now to make their workforce more accurately reflect the demographics of the country.

Being pearly white & born in England ain't a guarantee of an easy ride when it comes to getting work, and has not been for quite a long time now. Not that I am complaining, I live in a democracy, where the constitution of it's members has changed during my lifetime.

Work is much more of a "meritocracy" now that it used to be, the trick is finding an employer who prizes what you have to offer. 

In my case across my entire employment history  no-one has ever wanted to employ me based on my own efforts to write a job application and C.V. so except for the time (13 years or so) when I had someone who could do that for me.

I've been struggling with the basics of economic survival, and feelings of alienation and uselessness all my adult life.

Then in my sixties I find out that I have Autism as well as ADD, and suddenly I know WHY. 

The dodgy trickcyclist (I looked him up on the internet) who gave me my formal diagnosis on the Autism told me that "there's no treatment for what you have" (although the reefers I like to consume seem to reduce the severity and frequency of meltdowns, and because they subdue my ADD seem fairly useful, with the added bonus that I don't actually go crazy if I have none unlike with the medicines that some people take for to help with their minds which you can never get off without careful supervision if at all. When things are actually going well for me I simply smoke a lot less dope...

I could get by on my intelligence and skill if I were living in a more P-P (person to person) society and have evidence to back that up from my travels, but in this society where everybody lies, and an adjustment factor is built in automatically for that when people view your "presentation", (cv and covering letter) then I'm screwed, unless someone ese does my presentation. 

As a contractor with someone else doing my applications I was very successful, bought me a nice house and car really quickly, paid my way and largely pleased my employers, but the moment I was thrown back to doing my own applications despite having good pre-existing material to work with, I was back to being unemployable, except if I walk up to a place and talk my way in. But those jobs never pay much more than minimum wage, it costs an hour of work to pay for getting there in the first place, (assuming I start out with a serviceable vehicle) then the next hour and a half to two hours is done to pay my tax leaving me the rest to try and "pay my way". It can only work if I actually enjoy gong to work and am not being picked on on the workplace for being a bit odd..

So for me I've concluded, "work doesn't work". Except when it does. But that's no basis in this "regular payments on the dot" society any basis for making a life. So "credit" is simply useless to me, and my "credit score", an irrelevance.

I've started very late, but eventually I bought a small plot of land for £9K by selling & leveraging my main convertible assets, a plot of land (in the city centre) which is MINE, no rent or regular payments required, although I'm still on the hook for 4K worth of "loans" that were made to me by people who were sanguine about the possibility of never seeing their money again. It was six, but I got some hours of work during the pandemic.

I started building a 10x20ft concrete building to serve as a private workshop/ personal storage facility (AKA emergency temporary housing if I get made homeless again!) and FINALLY had a measure of "security" that cannot be snatched away if I can't make the payments.

Note that a temporary building (AKA compton garage) isn't "rateable" either and unless you live in it full time (and someone can prove that) or make money out of it (neither applies) it isn't going to require regular payments.

If it were not so the "Rich" would be crippled with rates or taxes on all their land. 

its always going to be a lottery getting a job as the my job is the lowest type of low wage manual warehousing job and yet they had a direct hire one time and for that one job they had 1000 people applying for it... and yet they didnt hire a local, they hired a person directly from india who wasnt even in the country yet, because they know they can push harsh conditions and not get complaints off indian workers taken directly from abroad. just the way our economy is, employers want to push harsh conditions and low wages and for that they want imported labour from countries that dont have workers rights.

Yeah I've heard about that. However, most of the roles require years of experience, and i've been in education most of my life

Funny thing is, employment is a lot for me also. I deal with burn out a lot, which makes me question whether working is for me. In my internship, they were aware of my disability, yet could not understand why I approached tasks differently to other colleagues or needed time to recover from a long commute.The countless rejections also fuelled that thought as well. But I do want to be independent and build a life for myself, so I need a job. 

I have tried a couple of agencies but have been unsuccessful in landing any work? Maybe I'm targeting the wrong ones?

Have you tried the civil service? They do name blind CV assessment to remove disadvantage in the interview process. I would've got in had I not failed the abstract reasoning test (but I've always been weak with abstract reasoning)

Hi Debbie,

I have tried a number of agencies but have been unsuccessful in landing any work, even with no experience as they claim to not care about. Preferably I would want a remote job as I get burnt out and overwhelmed with commuting easily.

Do you know of any agencies that provide remote work?

i was fine with it. employment stresses me out a bit too much so im probably healthier and better unemployed really so its more of a case of how do i cope with employment lol which i do that by trying to keep goals in mind and perhaps work towards plans to make a way to not need employment such as hoping some investments pay off and then perhaps in the future seeing if i can capitalise off any savings i have to invest in something that can gain me a income..... sadly to say the only thing that comes to mind on that is landlording, it seems the only real way in this system to get a passive income outside of work and to allow yourself to not require work. but yeah i was lonely unemployed and that is part reason that thrust me out into employment, that alongside having a big lump sum of cash from a investment i did which i used to get myself a property which then also required me to work for that.

i got super lucky on getting a job though, i think its because it was a agency job and agencys take on anyone without a interview and even without caring about their cv or experience. the employers dont ask questions and agencies just throw anyone at any job. so id try agency work if you need a job, that seems to be the easiest on ramp for jobs these days.

There's a barometer on the wall here also next to shelves containing books too (although not as comprehensive a collection as yours). I've tried to insert a photo of it here but it's failed.

Sorry to hear that. The 2008 recession caused so many problems and kicked off a hard-right reset for capitalism that's making things worse and worse. I was 23 in 2008 and fresh out of uni with no experience, so spent 2 years unemployed in the post-recession employment crisis. I've somehow managed to get a career going since then, but it's been a colossal drain on my mental health, as with so many people.

The main thing to remember is the job market is horrific right now. And has been since the 2008 recession, frankly

I was always employed or in education pre-2008 and have been unemployed since 2008 as it happens. Pre-2008 I had no diagnoses and little/no awareness or acceptance of my mental ill health or autism sadly, overall.

I was reading about opportunities at London Stock Exchange Group LSEG internationally today www.lseg.com/.../contact-us With your qualifications in Maths+Economics maybe you'd like and get on well there somewhere.

My latest degree was an MSc in Statistics, I study science out of general interest.

Ahh what a coincidence! We both studied Maths. 

I saw you mentioned 'first degree', did you study something else as well?

Are you into STEM-related subjects? I can see from glancing on the image a biology and physics book?

I think that whenever I show fear or desperation during any interview, I'm never hired. So no matter what negative feeling or negative life circumstance I'm facing, but I just learned to walk into the interview, smiling, friendly, and enjoying my time there. 

I mean people will teach you to be prepared, to write a good resume, and to answer questions that the interviewer might have, but they never teach you how to interact with the interviewer. If you seem friendly and have a good and positive personality, they'll hire you. 

If you think about things from an interviewer's perspective, they'll have so many people come in all anxious and fearful, like it's a dreadful experience for them to come and see you, and it's just awful to spend the entire day knowing that you're meeting with people who look at you like their life is going to end. It's actually a nice change for the interviewer to meet someone who gives them some kind of positive interaction and has a good conversation with them. It gives them a good feeling on the inside, and that's that "good impression" that you want to leave them with. 

I guess this kind of thing, like leaving a good feeling or good impression, could go into other areas of life as well, like for relationships, friendships, and etc.

My first degree was in Maths.

At the moment I am trying to survive the winter at home.

I mostly read books, this is part of my collection.  It's better than most public libraries.

Have you thought about self-employment? What was your degree in? What are your interests? Maybe you could start something based off of any skills you have?

I've lost count how many times I got through all the assessments and into the interview stage.  Now I'm living of my savings because my health is poor.  I can barley go outside to shop for food.

Sorry to hear this was your experience. Are you still job hunting?

That's great you finally managed to get into employment. Well done.

How did you manage dealing with long-term unemployment?

It is so hard out here!

Are you in employment now? How did you cope with it all?

Hope you are keeping well.