When I first moved out on my own after high school, I was only 17 years old. I was undiagnosed autistic and ADHD, and I had virtually no skills, personal, professional, or otherwise. But, I wrote well, spoke well, and interviewed well, and–well, I was able to get jobs, but keeping them was a whole other story.
I was often fired for violating unspoken social and professional rules, being unable to learn the way I was taught, or simply because my presence in a room rubbed people the wrong way.
That last part may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s true. Studies have shown that autistic people make non-autistic people uncomfortable within the first few seconds of meeting them due to something called ‘thin-slice judgments’.
A Quick and Important Note Before We Begin
There is no career readiness program or training that will make an autistic person not act autistic, and, of course, that should never be the goal. Even when autistic people receive the explicit training we need to succeed in the workplace, we’ll still struggle if we are not met halfway with accessibility around our neurotype.
This is why it’s important to remember that while this training certainly can help build skills and awareness of employers’ expectations, it should not ever be used with the hope that the autistic person will suddenly ‘fit in’ socially. That valuable work must come from the non-autistic side of the table through knowledge, empathy, and accessibility.
Why Career Readiness Training Is Helpful
When I was still floundering around in the workforce as a young, undiagnosed neurodivergent person, I naively believed that when I got a job, I would be trained in everything–and I mean everything including, technical skills, soft skills, professional social conduct expectations, time-management, career-management, etc.
Of course, that didn’t happen, and my employers, having seen how well I wrote, spoke, and interviewed, quickly realized they had no idea what they’d gotten into in hiring me. I didn’t have a clue, and I didn’t even know I didn’t have a clue!
Career readiness training would have been a lifesaver for me!
What Exactly Is “Career Readiness”?
Career readiness or employment readiness is defined as a person being able to find, secure, and keep employment related to their knowledge and skill set, as well as having the flexibility to be upskilled for promotions within their field.
What Employers Are Looking For
When searching for the right candidate for a job, employers customarily look for the following:
Career-Management Skills
These skills include understanding the job market and which job is best suited to the skill set of the individual, as well as the ability to apply to jobs, draft cover letters, create a competitive resume, network, and engage in professional development.
Technical Skills
These skills are the practical skills one needs to successfully perform their on-the-job duties. For example, if you’re in the healthcare field, you’d need to be proficient in patient management software, medical coding and terminology, medical equipment usage, and telehealth technology.
Soft Skills
Also referred to as ‘transferable skills’, employers look for individuals who show competency in communication, teamwork, problem-solving, time management, and adaptability.*
*Soft skills training for autistic people will only work effectively if it includes accessibility in both training and implementation. The demand for soft skills such as these is often the primary barrier to autistic people obtaining and maintaining employment–not a lack of knowledge or technical skills.
Explicit Training Prepares and Empowers Explicit Learners
The non-autistic learning style is predominantly implicit and top-down. This means they tend to learn from interacting with their environment and other people in it, and when they learn something new, they see the big picture before drilling down into the details.
The autistic learning style, however, is often the direct opposite; explicit and bottom-up. Many of us learn best by being explicitly taught what is expected of us in a literal, step-by-step fashion. Furthermore, since we tend to see the details before the big picture, the more details and logical explanations we receive upfront, the more successful our learning experience will be.
Career readiness training provides this explicit, step-by-step training with opportunities to practice, ask questions, and make mistakes in a safe environment before putting them to the test on the job.
The Takeaway
Career readiness training can offer critical job skills for everyone, but it can be especially beneficial to autistic people who learn best when explicitly taught not only how to do their job but also about hidden social and professional expectations that can make or break their chances at a successful career.
However, non-autistic employers and co-workers must do their part to understand the way autistic people learn and communicate and provide an accessible and safe working environment for them.
It’s a team effort, and when everyone works together, the possibilities are endless!
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