This could basically be a checklist to determine “is this person not autistic”?
When are we going to reckon with the fact that job interviews are designed to keep the neurodiverse out?
This could basically be a checklist to determine “is this person not autistic”?
When are we going to reckon with the fact that job interviews are designed to keep the neurodiverse out?
Knowing how to stall while you think of an answer is also a strat. It gives you that illusion of confidence while you scramble for a plausible answer.
You flatter their ego while thinking [fabricating/repackaging/searching your word doc for] your response “Wow that’s a fantastic question, there’s a few ways that I could take this, do you mind if I think for just a moment while I consider the example that best responds to your question?” or “I have a number of examples that I think would perfectly match what you’re looking for, but to give me a bit more direction, would you prefer one which is more customer-relations focussed, stakeholder focussed, or upwards management…?”
They’ll be like wow this person can talk. I wrote down about half a dozen of these stalling scripts and rehearsed the absolute shit out of them.
You should write an effortpost of protips and hacks. I do this stuff fairly naturally for someone who’s pretty neuro divergent, or I used to, I crashed out bad and am NEETing and terrified of re-entering the workforce in case it destroys what is left of my sanity.
I had a decent effort reply on an old (deleted) acct I wish I’d saved it. I’ll jot some notes down if I can but I think I respond better to prompts/questions than to self-directed long form drafting… will lyk if I get anything together
Neat. I’m hitting that save post button on your original comment now, because I realise like, just reading what you wrote gave me hope that I can probably succeed enough to stop feeling like a total waste of love and resources. It’s a terrible mentality but I can’t seem to reorganise my mind in a healthier way.
Anyway the point I was originally going to make is you already helped me with your post, but my suggestion that you could effort post comes from a feeling that you have the right tools and perspective to help a lot of other posters manage the mindfuck of doing job applications and interviews etc.
You should feel no obligation to do so though. Like I said you already helped me. Thank you.
tl;dr Rehearse your responses and behaviours and if you lie, just make it fit within the larger context of your work history so it’s plausible
I’m very glad I could help. I was unemployed for most of 2023 and had to study, introspect and practice all of those interview and job hunting things anew, and realise how so much of it is this strange set of inculcated norms.
But the flip side of that is that recruiters do put out these resources that you can reverse engineer and practice like scripts, and I found that I was able to learn them and ‘act’ (like in the sense of an actor) the role convincingly for long enough to get through online interviews.
My main technique for online interviews was to have a word document out with pre-prepared responses against each of the main selection criteria, written out as dot points into an STAR format. When I got a relevant question, I would use a stalling reply from above while scrolling through the doc for the best example.
I’d have rehearsed each of these multiple times before the interview so I could recite them fluidly and hit on major points while still giving the appearance that they were off the top of the dome. It was exhausting.
(Fortunately they were still mostly doing them online in 2023 but the return to offline only would be a whole nother mountain to summit. The other thing I’ve seen is that some online interviewers insist that interviewees share their screen so that they know that they’re not using an LLM to spit out answers. The trick here is that you can cradle your phone underneath the camera and load the LLM up there while maintaining something similar to ‘eye contact’.)
About 30% of my responses are lies (as in it’s truth and lies mixed together for an aggregate 30% mistruth). Firstly because I will shoehorn any rehearsed example into a response because it’s better to have a fluid, prompt response than to have dead air. Secondly, because if I stumble and misspeak I do not stop to correct myself because this fails their ‘fluency’ test and makes you look untrustworthy or forgetful.
You kind of just have to barrel on. They will take everything at face value, so if you make something up they may ask you about it to expand upon. E.g. if you misspeak and say you were reporting to a section manager (more superior) instead of a line manager, then you kinda gotta roll with it. Just port across whatever action you took with the line manager and say section manager instead. They probably won’t ask why you were reporting to a section manager instead of a line manager because unless the place you’re interviewing for is /very/ similar in structure to the one you’re getting your example from, then they’re in no position to call you out.
The only thing that will most likely trip you up is lying whole-cloth. You’ve got to make your lies fit within the context of your CV (embellished ofc).
Ye ye, thank you. That’s approximately the strat I have been using.
I’m just working on the Big Lie that covers for my mental breakdown and subsequent 4-5 years of unemployment. Or a collection of fabrications to rewrite history a little bit. It’s a slow burn process because I’m just not quite ready yet but it has to be sooner than later.
Such a great post btw. You are a gem.
Any time. I was ‘working for an overseas startup’ and doing private tutoring over that period. In theory, employers aren’t allowed to discriminate against people with caring duties, so if you were ‘caring for a family member’ for some of that time it could pass the sniff test. In practice they’ll drop you as soon as they find out you’re not available 24/7 so you’ll need to lie and present it as something resolved in the past. Sounds like you’re across most of it. Getting your narrative consistent and mustering the immense energy to start the gruelling, life-denying trudge of job hunting again is like getting into an MMA octagon after only practicing on wii boxing. It’s worthy of all my respect and encouragement.
You too. You’ve clearly been down this path and found your way. I admire this. Well done. I see you.