Question for Greentea and others-Employment

Post Reply New Topic

1. What are the things employers want in the workplace exactly?

2. Is it possible for aspies to learn the requirements you will answer in question 1. If so, how? If not, if any of us have kids we should get our kids on the dole then is what it seems? I hate for anyone to be on the dole but maybe if more and more of us were on the dole maybe our respective societies will eventually listen especially if we bankrupt the whole system entirely and we all enter a great depression.

Personally, I don't think they cannot be told or reasoned with because everything is too good right now for the majority. They see nothing wrong.

3. Please tell me at the seminar that you went what they said?

Last edited by cubedemon6073 on 03 Jul 2009, 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi cube,

What the Organization Counselor meant was that nowadays most of the emphasis is on whether the candidate is good at fitting in.

I absolutely agree with your views and I'm sure that's what will happen. And since you're so young, you'll still be in the work market to enjoy the big change.

But hey, wouldn't you like to have more opinions than mine on this thread?

(((((cubedemon))))))

Yes, I actually would love for others to comment.

Hi, hon. Listen, as a child I made a career of figuring out how to "fit in". Later, amazingly, I gravitated toward customer service, of all things, simply because my "special interest" (heh heh!) meant I "knew" all the rules, or most of them, at least for short spurts of interaction, so it gave me self-confidence. It was as if I had succeeded in a difficult test every time I hung up the phone and knew the customer thought I was a normal person.

Of course, one can only sustain that for so long and after a while it burned me out horribly. Today I am a freelance writer. I work from home. But I did work outside the home for 20 years (not always in customer service, obviously) and the jobs I liked best were:

1. Document preparation for a loan company. The parameters are SO specific. No room for questioning; no room for making a strange mistake. I loved this job. It had a clear beginning, middle and end. I was also left alone. It didn't require so much social interaction.

2. A series of temp jobs. These were usually clerical. Again, there would be a specific project; I'd finish it, hand it in...Another project; finish it, hand it in. As a temp, less is expected of one in the way of improvising or veering off the obvious, outlined course.

3. Writing for a magazine. Very exact as far as grammar and the like. BUT I was required to go into the city and "schmooze" about once a month, which was absolute torture.

I would say, when looking for a job, that the things that worked best for me in an interview were:

1. Figuring out ahead of time how to sit and where to put my hands. Sounds weird, but first impressions do count.

2. Focusing with the employer on these things: "I am detail-oriented. I take the quality of my work seriously. I'm always looking for ways to improve. I'm independent and a self-starter."

3. Relaxing. So, maybe you won't get this one job. So what? There will be another. Yes, in this economy it's harder to say that. But it's the truth.

I'm sorry if this isn't very specific advice, but I'm smooshing together 20 years of work into one quick post, so...If you have specific questions, let me know. Maybe I can help!

For me, fitting in required training to work in a field that fit my personality. I finally settled on a career that made use of my technical abilities, ability to focus on a single task & attention to detail - drafting/mechanical design.

I'm never going to succeed in management - or any other field that requires lots o social skills or networking in order to advance. Currently, I work with a number of other people with whom I share lots of personality characteristics (I'd classify most of them as NT, but some veer into AS territory.) We succeed by being experts in a very technical occupation.

I don't expect to ever get rich - but I make enough to live comfortably. (I think my moderate salary level actually allows me to keep my job - I'm affordable.)

Anyway, I put myself on this career path at the age of 36 (my original degree is in music education.) Simply decided one day to get a student loan & take night classes to acquire the necessary skills to change my life. Technical school rocks!

I have a specific question for you... How did you get into writing for that magazine? What do they look for regarding qualifications? How is freelance working out for you? What do you mainly focus on in freelance (fiction, non fiction...poetry, short stories, biography, etc.)?

Hi...I was notified of the magazine position sort of by chance (by someone I worked with at a company that was about to close)...I'm sorry, that doesn't help. But only partially because I had been leaning toward jobs all along that had something with writing in them anyway...or else, offering to write various things when the subject came up in general. I did that for many years.

I mean for example, my one company was planning on creating a newsletter at some time "in the future" and I went to my boss with a sample page done off some primitive word processing program (this was about 15 years ago) and he was staggered that I could do it, because it had sort of been an "eventually" thing. But he was thrilled and after that I wrote the newsletter. (Please note that at the same time, I missed a lot of these opportunities simply out of the discomfort of having to approach my boss, etc. I'm much better as an independent worker...I ALWAYS am...)

So...when the magazine job came up, I had at least these types of things under my belt. You can perhaps accomplish the same thing by blogging...this can be on any subject; it doesn't have to be all the highly personalized, "So today I took little Toddie for his first pair of sneakers and he kissed my cheek...and this is how I felt about it" stuff you see all over the internet left, right and center. It can be an instructional blog on certain subject matter that you like. THEN you can take that "to the table" when you're interviewing, and you can put it on a resume.

Freelancing: I started by looking online. There are a few sites that are legitimate. PM me if you want the name of the one I usually use nowadays. I don't know if that's allowed in the forum here. Anyway, it took me about three years of constantly looking up and applying for freelance projects before I finally (just a few months ago, actually) got a more or less "regular" freelance gig. In other words, it's a month-to-month contract. I really like it. ETA: Part of what I like so much about it is that I don't have to be on the phone much...most of it is via email...I hate, hate, hate, hate being on the phone, hearing my own voice on the phone, etc.

My freelancing is all non-fiction, even though I love to read fiction, but it has to be very "realistic" (i.e. historical fiction, NO romances, ugh). I wish so much that I could write fiction, but it is harder for me; it doesn't come naturally to me.

Did you know that's considered an AS symptom?

Hi, Greentea...I didn't...well, I mean until very recently. I always just thought I was an idiot. But putting it together with everything else...yes, that really does make sense.