Temple Is Wrong About Selling Your Work

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Yes, Rocket123, exactly. The portfolio includes samples that can be directly connected to an established institution. The web application that I did a demo on wasn't connected with a university or a workplace or anything like that. It was all self-taught because it was something that interested me and I just liked doing it. And yes, a demo that's half of what I did that was connected to an employer or school DOES carry more weight.

It's not fair but nobody ever said life was supposed to be fair. But that's still kind of my point. You don't throw yourself into your interests in order to get a job. You throw yourself into your interests as a way to cope with the fact that you'll never get a job. I don't want to dwell on the fact that "nobody wants me". I'm busy. I have bugs in my configuration path setup to deal with.

Of course. Because, as a developer, you are always building a product for someone else. Which requires non-development skills (i.e. you need to be able to communicate with users, understand what they are asking for in terms of requirements and be able to satisfy those).

Also, if you are trying to join a software development team, you really don't want to demo a web application. Rather, you want to understand what type of role they are looking for (e.g. do they need someone proficient in java script) and then you need to demonstrate how you used java script to do cool/innovative things in that web application.

By the way, this is really what Temple is talking about. You do need to listen to the "customer". You do need to understand what they need. You do need to demonstrate (through your work) how you have delivered similar value in the past. This way, you can sell your work.

Listen to Rocket and Fnord. They know what they're talking about. And just to draw a line under this I want to add that you should not assume that all potential employers are neurotypical, because they most certainly are not. They may never tell you that they are also on the autism spectrum and you may not pick up on it, but there are lots of aspies in positions of power. So don't be so sure that the deck is stacked against you. This recruiter could be showing your resume to an aspie boss who would not care about any personality issues and would ask to hear more about your skills. Boom, there's your opportunity.

Maybe I missed this, but I didn't see where anyone had explored your issue of not having any job references. I thought maybe I could help here. Could you tell us specifically why you don't have references? Did you mess something up or have arguments with people? Or were people simply not friendly to you? Were there people who did not work directly with you, but knew OF you? For example, if you were a programmer, maybe a software tester that might have gotten to know that things you worked on tended to be correct? Something like that? If all else fails, is there a person in HR who was nice to you? If you can give me more information I might be able to give you some advice about this.

Unknownfactor,

Look at it this way: If you are the only one who is right, and Temple, Rocket, Soc, and myself are all wrong, then why is it that we have jobs and you don't?

Yes, that's a harsh question, and I apologize; but it gets right to the heart of the matter. That is, if your method works so well, then you should already be employed.

Of course, this assumes that you are unemployed, and that all four of us have means of earning our incomes. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Give it some thought, please.

Fnord

This seems a bit like bullying to me. Fnord, stick to arguments not personal attacks.

Just to be clear, while I am OK at selling my work, I am TERRIBLE at selling myself. I have gone through several bouts of unemployment (because I was unable to convince anyone to hire me).

Why do I mention this. I suppose because it's also about perseverance. You cannot give up. You just need to keep trying. This from someone who has sent out 1000s of resumes in his lifetime.

I've applied for a few jobs that require a skills test and how high you rank depends on whether or not they will interview you so I agree.

Thanks for your vote of confidence, Fnord, but I'm technically retired. I took a medical retirement in 2010. I'm an "unfunded researcher" and my sources of income are a combination of private disability insurance and SSD. I do plan to work again when I finish my PhD.

OP- I understand that you're in a tough spot. We're all just trying to help.

I don't even understand the difference between (or, meaning of) selling yourself and selling your work. All the career advice I've seen (for NTs) could be described as selling yourself as someone who can do the work, but I can't imagine how it'd work to try to cut yourself out of the sales pitch.

I dunno. I walked away from this thread thinking I was in agreement with Rocket and Fnord. Can't say I have any quarrel with SocOfAutism either. All parties brought interesting and valid perspectives to the table. I agree with most of it to one point or another.

I'll say it plainly. Temple Grandin is not wrong. I was wrong because I misunderstood what she was saying. I was corrected on that issue. My worldview is improved as a result of the discussion we had, therefore.

The end.

My understanding is that:
- "Selling yourself" is about establishing a relationship with the other person
- That it's about establishing some sort of rapport and/or connection
- That it's about getting the person to like you as an individual
- That people hire the type of people they want to work with

So, I am not good at that.

What I can do, however, is demonstrate the work that I have done and the process I have followed to produce that work.

As a result, while they may consider me a bit "robotic", they leave the discussion knowing that I am competent in what I do.

As I previously mentioned, this (leaving a positive impression that I have competence) is not always sufficient to be offered the job. However, fortunately, I work in an industry (creating software systems) where competence is highly prioritized in the hiring process.

I've been one of a team of interviewers on several interviews now, and I've got to say that it's really vital to sell both yourself and your work. However, I found that for my fellow interviewers and the manager who made the hiring decisions, social presentation (selling yourself) seemed to be a more important factor than technical ability or portfolio (selling your work). You need to work on both, I suppose, because almost all jobs, even STEM jobs, have a certain amount of dealing with clients. I liken managing clients to psychology: many come to us in a panic, their emotions all a whirl, and need to be given the impression that we care about their problems, can calm them down enough to discuss the issue rationally, and that we have everything under control. Many clients are in a mess of their own creation, but I can't play the blame game and make them feel bad about it.

Personally, as the autistic interviewer, I'd rather teach customer service to competent, talented workers than skills to a social butterfly. It's just less work, and social butterflies tend to want to skirt the hard job of taking on new responsibilities and skills. I get the feeling I'm not always in the majority in this, at least on my team.

Case in point: we needed to hire one or two graphic designers. Print design skills were a must. Web design and programming were a plus. We had three candidates.

Mr. Darcy had worked with us as a temp for more than a year. He had outstanding print and web design skills, and great web programming to boot. Mr. Darcy was a nice guy (despite that I borrowed his pseudonym from Pride & Prejudice) but he was very quiet, shy, and didn't talk much to anybody in the office, including the boss. He had a great sense of humor once you got to know him, and I'd observed him interacting well with clients.

Mr. Bingley had several years of experience. His design work was okay, but I suspected he was overstating his web experience and coding abilities. He was friendly and very personable in the interview.

Ms. Bennet was fresh out of university with some small internship jobs. Her design work wasn't great and she had little experience. She was nice and sweet in the interview.

I recommended we hire Mr. Darcy, and maybe Mr. Bingley if we had the budget. They hired Mr. Bingley and Ms. Bennett instead, but not Mr. Darcy, because "Mr. Darcy never says hello to the boss when he comes in, and he was too withdrawn when being interviewed by the boss's boss." My reaction was, HUH??? It was frustrating, because I felt like social presentation had a lot more weight than it should have, and I was expected to train the new hires in skills with time I don't have.

It's possible to learn to connect with employers and sell yourself (they hired me, after all), and skills still count, but the important impression to get across is that you can do the job and that you care about what your employer cares about.

I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic or not- but that description just blew my mind a little bit
I thought that was crap my NT family member (the one that is confused that I don't understand this "already") tries to tell me. I thought they were making it up..... Well I guess I understand that now though. Darn, there's that invisible subtext yet again
Hmmm, I just try and smile and be polite ....

^OP^ Seconded.