Aspies For Freedom

I just got back from a seminar of behavioural interviews that was hosted by my disability office.  So far they are offered some useless seminars and this by far was the most waste of time I ever had from them.

The seminar discussed mostly what I knew about interviews.  The emphasis on behavioural interviews was the premise that past behaviour is the best indicator of future behaviour.   It does not work for me unless I can get really good at making up stories of scenerios that give the answers that the interviewer is looking for.  

Some examples questions might be:  "Tell about some time when you had a deadline that you could not meet."  "How would you deal with an angry customer."

I would just assume that my supervisor would tell me how to deal with these situations or train me.  Apparently not.  Having screwed up at some many past jobs, I don't have too much good experience to draw on to give the correct answers, that is, the answers that they want --- not what really happened.  

About half the people at the seminar were physically disabled and the rest had invisible disabilities.  I don't think that this presenter was prepared for dealing with anyone with invisible disabilities besides hearing impairment.  (well, they look for the hearing aids anyway).  

I asked a question about how could a person with autism communicate to the interviewer that they could do the job --- my question was completely ignored.

At work I've gradually concluded that at least 50% of the questions/emails that get ignored is because the reciever doesn't know an answer and/or doesnt want to take responsibility

More than likely - they don't want to admit they don't know the answer.

Well how I could I be really critical when this person was asked to speak as a guest and not really paid to do it.  Some people did ask her some very difficult questions and she did not know the answer.  She even admitted that she had trained some HR people who had some very bad prejudices against people with disabilities.  

She did mentioned about employers wanting to hire people who "fit into a company and their culture".  When someone does not "fit in" because they have autism, the company should be doing something about it -- not trying to get rid or not hire that person.