Autism and Employment

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I have autism. However, I am typically able to hide this pretty well and I do not appear all that outwardly autistic in terms of social skills. I do sometimes have occasional slips, but they are often pretty minor. As a child, my autism was much more apparent. I would often do unusual things and was often described as "beating to a different drum" and things of the sort. Obviously, there are still some social impairments. Of course, the memory and sensory processing differences of autism are still there. Actually, for me they are often quite pronounced. Sometimes, I don't remember from one minute to the next. I'll often seem like I'm listening, but I'm not hearing anything a person says. I have worked recently, pushing carts at a supermarket. I have a college degree in sociology. So, what types of employment would be good for a person like myself? Also, do employers find ways to obtain medical records to look for things like this, or would you generally be able to withhold the information from an employer?

We can't tell you what sort of job would be good for you. Autism does not present itself uniformly. Think about your skills and preferences and try and find something that fits you.

Not sure what the situation in the US but I would imagine that employers should have no access to your health records, that sounds incredibly dangerous and worrying if they can do that.

I recently applied to a job and was also worried about whether the employer could obtain my medical records. I called my state's Labor Department to ask if it was legal to do that and they told me no. If you live in the US, your medical records should be protected under HIPAA. If an employer did ever obtain your medical records (I'm not sure how they would do that), they could be sued and shut down.

You can expect someone to spend a half hour to an hour researching your online footprint, such as Facebook, googling your email address etc. An example of how this works: Once I researched a potential hire, and also took a look at friends that she was obviously hanging out with in person. Although HER Facebook had only appropriate pictures, all of her friends had alcohol and pot leafs all over their pictures. She didn't get an interview.

I would also strain out people who disclosed inappropriate information. Such as people who told me about their religious beliefs or medical information in cover letters, or about their kids. Why are you telling me that, you know? If you can't be professional on these one or two pages I'm not going to expect you to be professional working for me.

People with Bachelors in Sociology can pretty easily find work in HR, social work, corrections, or police. I'm in Sociology and these are the kinds of things my colleagues do.

I've yet to do a job, but i generally hid it well during college, only the tutors knew about it but they had little experience so they didn't bother to ask me anything so they just treated me like all the others, needless to say I was one of the highest achievers in the class along with 3 others, the rest didnt seem to be bothered tbh.

I can only speculate what it will be like in a job, dealing with customers if its retail or dealing with meetings in an office environment, I can only hide it to a point where they might ask personal questions like what do you do outside work, do you go out with friends? this is a question that may confirm my ASD but having a big unemployment gap could also be an answer to that question, or I keep to family closer than friends or I don't like to go out or i'm not an outgoing person. I'm tryin to find the courage to do any job whatever role it might be, I may just have to accept that I won't get any other job other than a customer facing role. I think a big determining factor in interviews is that I find smiling all the way through is just really hard to maintain that expression, and the enthusiasm for the job, it's hard to be enthusiastic about a job you don't want to do but need to do it for the money.