bad at interviews; good at jobs

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I was going to post this in pieces as replies to other posts, but I thought in would be better all in one place (and someone might benefit from it) so I started a new thread.

I am really bad at interviews, and first impressions of all kinds, but I am good at what I do. If I can get hired, I do well, and I am usually given a lot of respect and promotions, and my aspie tendencies are tolerated, and I am just considered eccentric. I normally don't disclose I have AS to my coworkers and bosses until I have several years' of track record to rely upon. Last March I was laid off because of the bad economy from a good job I had for nearly six years. It was the third layoff they'd had in two years, and they had at least one more last year. With my job experience, I thought I would be able to land another job without a problem, but that wasn't to be the case. In six months of sending out an average of 4 resumes a day every day, I had a total of 5 interviews, all for jobs I was perfectly qualified for. I didn't get any of the jobs, and I just chalked it up to the economy and other, better-qualified people going for the same job I was. Then the holiday season came and I applied for a seasonal job at a big box retailer where my best friends wife worked in the HR department, and she put in a good word for me. They estimated i had a 90% chance of getting the job. I applied and got interviewed by 2 of the managers there, and didn't get the job, even though I had plenty of experience. So she asked the managers who had interviewed me, and they said I failed the interview. Based on what they said, and looking back at the other interviews I had had in the previous months, I can see where I made similar mistakes in each of them, causing me to be passed over for them as well.

In retrospect, most of the jobs I have had in the past came not from good interviews, but from people observing my job performance, and I was able to use that to my advantage to get hired not once, but twice since then. (Three times, actually, but I will get to that shortly.)

I've only had a few jobs where I was interviewed and then got the job, but in all cases they were either hiring a lot of people, had high turn over, or were desperate for someone qualified, or a combination of all of the above.

Case in point: I had a similar situation of not being able to find a job in 2003 when i was a student at UCF in Orlando. I had been working there, but got injured and had to leave the area for a few months to recuperate (I left as a matter of finances and not being able to pay rent) and when I returned, they didn't have any openings. after several weeks of looking for a job, I finally went to a temp agency and asked for anything they had. I did all sorts of jobs for them, including manual labor, but because I had good data entry skills and good reports from my temp jobs, I picked up a permanent 1-day-a-week job at a national freight company's dispatch office. Then I landed a 2-week assignement at a machine shop for someone to enter data from one computer system to another that they had just started. They like my work so much, they offered me a permanent position in receiving and shipping, without even knowing that was my strongest area. I accepted, and it was there that I worked until last year, when they had the multiple layoffs.

Knowing I had success with temp agencies back then, I applied at several during my time off, and got a few assignments, but they had too many people, so I didn't get anything decent, however all my temp employers gave me good feedback, so I got better ones as time went by. As the holiday season approached, I applied for a job as a Fed-Ex driver, and they only had a few tests and group interviews. I passed the tests and the road course, and got hired by a contractor there to drive for him. There were several hundred applicants, and I only know of maybe a dozen of us who actually got hired for season. (Fed-Ex ground has an odd way of working; contractors bid on the routes, and then either drive them themselves, or hire other people to drive for them. The first contractor I worked for had only one route and drove it himself, and just needed help for the Christmas season; I took over half of his route and he drove the other half. After Christmas, he knew I was a good worker, so he talked another contractor, who had 6 other drivers working for him, to give me a chance, and he gave me parts of routes, including some from still other contractors, so I would have a job and be employed.) By January, I was one of only four or five seasonal temps that was still working for them.

Early in December, knowing that the Fed-Ex gig was just seasonal, with no promise of work after year's end, i was still applying at any job I could find. One job I applied for was as "operations supervisor" for a retail chain I had worked at 14 years ago; The qualifications it asked for were what I had done for them in the past, and I'd worked there for 3 years or so. I didn't hear anything back from them in December, so I just kept going on, until the middle of January, when I finally got a call back. The position I had applied for had been cancelled at that store, but there was another, as Furniture Supervisor, which was equal in pay and responsiblities (it's part of the management staff, and a key carrier, but only hourly) and asked if I would be interested. The one catch was that it was also a selling position, meaning i would be expected to not only talk to customers, but persuade them to buy things. This is not my best area, as most of you would imagine; I am far better in the receiving area or the cash office, doing daily and weekly paperwork. But I said yes, because I needed permanent work that would enable me to finish my degree, and also because I was being paid very poorly by my Fed-Ex contractor, and had no benefits.

I got the job, but probably would not have been able to pass the interview, except for one reason: the manager hiring me was the same one I had worked for 14 years ago, and he remembered me after all these years and wanted me back on his team! (He even told me he wouldn't have called me in if he wasn't prepared to offer me the job on the spot.)

I do believe that hiring someone or not based on an interview is truly idiotic.

I also have a very hard time with interviews. I have social anxiety like many with ASD, and none of the strategies that have been suggested for me to control my nervousness have worked for me. They also ask questions that I don't really know how to answer much of the time. For example, I applied for a low-level job a while ago at the local planning and zoning office, with no supervisory responsibility. One of the questions I was asked in the interview was rather I had any experience leading or managing projects. I was surprised at this, since nothing in the job description mentioned anything like this. I told the truth- that I don't have this experience and don't feel that a leadership role would suit me well. I was not hired. I did not think this was fair because I did not apply for a management position and would not want one. Why were they asking me this?
Another question that I have trouble with is "what are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?" I do fine with the strengths part, but if I am honest and say that social skills are my greatest weakness, I do not get the job, regardless of what it is.
People have told me to just lie/tell them what they want to hear, but I have seen this backfire. I worked with a guy once who told the employer he knew how to do things he did not. As soon as they found out he couldn't do them he was let go. It also goes against my nature to lie or say I am good at things/like things that I actually hate or am bad at. It's definitely a problem.

I am bad at interviews, jobs, sales, driving and communication

It seems like sitting around talking, is not a good method to find out which candidate to hire

Working interview

Especially for jobs that are not based in talking