Feedback from Interview

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I went for two interviews for Administration jobs last week but didn't get either of them. I can understand why though as I just didn't feel my heart was in it. I've been unemployed for the last two years but only started looking for a job in June/July this year. This is the longest I've ever been out of work as an adult, and it feels like I've got used to it and I'm not sure if I even want to work any more as even being in a working environment for the short time while I was waiting for the interview to start made me feel I just wanted to get away as it reminded me of what it's like and how stressful it all is trying to fit in and pretend to be sociable/just like everyone else (and failing badly at it!). I seem to have lost the drive to want to make all the effort involved due to being away from it for too long.

During the first interview I seemed to go out of my way to make a point about several issues in a manner that I know would not go down well with interviewers - it was like I'd already decided I didn't want the job and was just using the interview as some kind of soapbox platform to express my views while I was there! I hadn't disclosed my Asperger's diagnosis when I applied for the job as in my experience it can lead to not even getting an interview.

I asked for feedback on the 1st interview and told the person I spoke to about the Aspergers and she said it helped to explain things. She said I had lacked warmth and had come across as aggressive/angry at times. This was very accurate but it got me thinking - how exactly is 'warmth' defined? - what is it exactly that a person does or says that leads them to be called a warm person and if I'm not able to emulate it successfully what can I do?
I think I try to be a good person and do the right thing but when I speak it can often come across as cold, robotic, blunt and clinical to other people. I see it as being logical and intelligent and knowing what's what but others seem to be judging me badly for lacking this warmth element - a quality I would feel unable to fake as it's just not me.

Can you fake warmth? Is being humorous a sign of warmth? I think I can be funny/witty but my sense of humour often doesn't come across well with a lot of people; it's not mainstream enough and it's not easy to fit humour into an interview anyway.

I completely understand. I've done the interview-self-sabotage a lot recently. In the past, I've gone in playing the role of "Perfect Candidate #1", pretending to be as normal as possible. While I've accurately shared my skills and experience, I've buried my personality under a facade. However, as I've been in too many environments that I've really hated, I've been getting on the soapbox more and taking a "Here I am, if you can't deal with it then I don't want to work here anyway" attitude. It's not working out so well :/

I think that for the interview, you need to play the role and get your foot in the door. Even NTs do it, so it's not like you're doing anything unexpected. I think that part of the problem is that, by NT rules, if you're even slightly "off" in the interview, you're going to be 100 times worse once you get in the door. It's not "normal" for people to be themselves in an interview, so you're going to set off alarm bells.

Clunky honesty can make people feel warm towards you. "my Aspergers can make me seem a bit cold, I'm really not. People also tend to think Aspergers means you are very smart and very capable, that bits true"

As long as you are generally confident about the skills needed for the job, I think some some self- mocking, followed by a big smile would generate a lot of warmth towards you.

Warmth comes for me from big smiles, playfulness, connecting (you might really care about the same things). I think you need to be genuinely pleased to meet people to create a warm impression.

NTs are also often perceived to be wee bit "off" too, because they are faking it.

You can actually artificially turn that warmth on, but without "faking it" If you can make yourself genuinely feel it, by pumping yourself up into being in a really good mood with the world, with good will for all people it goes a long way.

I've been able to do a passable emulation of 'goodwill to all men' in the past but life has left me jaded and I basically don't like how most people are and prefer to avoid them. I feel resentful at having to pretend to like people/be friendly towards people when most are not like that towards me; I have to put in 110% effort to get even a lukewarm reaction off most people and I'm so fed up of it I wouldn't care if 99% of people vanished off the planet overnight - I would not miss them! I seem to mainly underwhelm people, which is fair enough but don't expect me to be thrilled about it! I'm better at feeling goodwill towards others as long as I don't have to directly interact with them, as interactions rarely leave me feeling better and often I feel worse! People who love being around other people are usually getting enough positive feedback from them to make it worth their while - that's a fact.

I used to be a manager in an IT department and I conducted a LOT of interviews. I'm now a sociology grad school.

Faking warmth is fairly impossible and will probably result in you seeming like a weirdo. I think it's best to disclose the Asperger's (as long as you're comfortable with that) AND give your own self-serving definition of it along with it, like the other poster suggested. I would include in that definition that you know that you come off as a little "robotic" but that you like contributing to a team and working hard makes you feel good about yourself.

This gives them a look at "what might be going on inside", which will be appreciated since they probably can't gauge that from your face and voice, and of course what I just wrote makes it sound like you're a perfect worker.

And you know sometimes you'll be hired on purpose for being a little "spergy". Once I hired a guy like that because I had two other employees who talked to each other all day long. They wanted me to hire another girl for them to be friends with. I said nothing doing and hired this guy, who kept his head down and worked all day long. They hated him, but he either didn't notice or pretended not to. I loved him! When I left the company he got another job closer to his house making more money. I like to think that I helped him by giving him experience with his first job.

That probably explains my lack of success, both in dating and (less so) in interviews. Bottom line: while I'm usually a nice, well spoken person I can't fake or BS at all and what you see is what you get. If you were to meet me you would know what to expect right away as there's no hidden side to my personality... most of the time. People must assume "if he acts like this in an interview, he'll be a terrible worker". All the jobs I got were because I could demonstrate in no uncertain terms why I would be successful rather than talk about it.

At two interviews I walked in, cut the BS and just said "your logistics suck, here's why and here's how I can fix it". Got one immediate job offer and one very serious look for the other. Goes against everything a counselor would say but it was highly effective. I had to leave that job because as an Aspie it was laughably easy although nobody wanted to touch my job with a ten foot pole saying how hard it was. It's always hard getting a job but once I get it I quickly rise to the top due to my strong reliability, honesty, refusal to gossip and attention to detail. It just sucks I can't get a better job due to my poor communication (read: BSing) skills.

Absolutely. But here's the thing that sucks about being an aspie at work: just like women, Black people, old people, and disabled people, people with Asperger's (and I'm talking specifically about AS here) get shafted when it comes to pay and promotions. Aspies lack the social skills needed to promote themselves. So they get stuck in the same position forever.

Very true and it's only now I realize this. I'm unionized and I am very thankful for that set in stone pay scale because I have horrible salary negotiation skills. You could easily convince me that I make way too much and as a result I made a whopping $10 an hour at my last job and I poured by heart and soul into it and I was convinced I was overpaid on top of that! I was also stuck in the same position for a L-O-N-G time before I finally quit. I also didn't have the skills to convince anyone my idea was right because my social skills suck(ed). They usually get proven right and when I try to mention why and what my ideas were they either fall on deaf ears or I'm considered an arrogant jerk because I'm very blunt and direct. I've had a few people in the know tell me I should be making close to double my current salary because of my high intelligence and excellent work history. To reference another topic, its the same reason I'm eternally single. It defies all logic until you realize what Aspies lack that most take for granted.

I would have laughed at the 'women, blacks, seniors, disabled' not getting ahead 5 years ago but you are absolutely right and I've seen it with my own eyes many, many times. No wonder I get along with these groups better than my Caucasian male counterparts as many of them are in the same boat as us Aspies. I used to think individuals from these groups didn't get ahead because they whined too much and expected (and received) handouts rather than work hard (same as I've been called lazy) but I got slapped hard with reality a few years back. By far the two best workers in my department are a black male and a senior and NOBODY even looks at them as promotable. Damn shame! These kinds of stories will NEVER make the evening news.

One plus side of being an Aspie for me is that I have a TON of respect for minorities, retail/foodservice workers, immigrants, and the working poor because you have figured out how the world REALLY works and understand the negative stereotypes are generally a load of BS. I live in a lower middle class neighbourhood and my neighbours really respect me because I don't look down on anyone and don't judge someone just because they have a bad job, smoke, drink, are unemployed, etc (well, I do look down at everyone but not figuratively ).

Things went wrong for me when I got a higher position at another workplace, supervising other IT Support staff. I didn't have the people skills for it (not surprisingly!) and ended up being referred to occupational health, who referred me to see a psychiatrist, who referred me to his neuro-psychiatrist colleague, thinking I might have Aspergers Syndrome and I ended being diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. From there onwards it was all downhill as I didn't feel able to return to my supervisor position as all my confidence had gone as the Asperger's Diagnosis had convinced me I was way out of my depth in my supervisory job, so I got another job. I did one further IT support job after that, which I ended up walking out of, and three administration jobs and I'm currently on disability benefits. So the Asperger's diagnosis was the worst thing that could have happened to me, career-wise.

Can you smile with your eyes? It's a good, simple way to show "warmth".

I don't know

I'm on anti-depressants and I think they affect how my eyes look/flatten my emotions generally

I'm far too vulnerable to very bad depression off the tablets though

Because I generally avoid people I think my fake act of friendliness/sociability is probably seen through

Apart from friends and family, when I interact with another person it's in a 'let's try and get this over with with the minimal amount of pain!' manner, as I've learned from hard experience that to make any more effort than this is doomed to failure! So yes, I probably do fake badly but I'd say it's because I can't be bothered to waste effort on people who don't give me a chance anyway. I prefer to save my energy for people who are actually interested in what I have to say.

I'm not a people person at all - I only seem to get on with a very rare kind of person who is as sensitive and focused on the actual truth of matters as me. I find most people annoying, shallow and often very cruel. Most people seem to instantly see me as beneath them/not someone they want to know as I'm not going to enhance their social status in any obvious way - rather than agreeing with this judgement of me, I judge them right back and avoid them! I think I have things to offer the world, just not to shallow people who are impressed with surface glamour (which most people are)

A lot of the time in my life other people display the very opposite of warmth towards me, on first sight, so what is the point in smiling warmly at people like this?? I've had it with convincing obnoxious people that 'I'm ok really'.

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made."
- Jean Giraudoux (1882 - 1944)

One of the things that helped me most with interviewing was a "job search" class that we had to go through before graduating. As part of the class, they did mock-interviews which were videotaped and then critiqued by the class. I know that I found it very easy to detach myself from that person on the screen and analyze my own peformance. It was also very informative to hear other's opinions (though I found many of them irrational and illogical and I would have challenged them if it hadn't been against the rules of the class

I think that even now I'm able to remember that experience and I can detach myself during the interview (this is kind of hard to explain unless yóu can relate to it). I can get into a state where I'm kind of running my body by remote control. I'd call it acting, but I don't feel immersed in that "role". I can notice the mistakes, lapses of timing, fumbles, etc. but it seems like people are wired to gloss over them and just see what they expect to see rather than the reality. When I'm looking from the "outside", I'm more aware of the interaction and creating a scene that works and it stops me from going down rabbit-holes in my head. The whole process is more like running a meat puppet while watching from the side rather than being "in" the interview.