AUTISM & EMPLOYMENT A Struggle for Independence By Matt Knight
My name is Matthew Knight. As of the publication of this article, I am a 28-year-old man with “high-functioning” autism. I am currently working at Amazon as an IT support associate. While I consider myself be lucky to have full-time employment with one of the world’s largest employers now, trust me when I tell you that this wasn’t always the case. As one person with autism among millions of others worldwide, I’m certainly not the only autistic person that has struggled with education, employment, socializing, etc. I think that I can safely say that my experience with finding suitable full-time employment is both familiar and unique. Over the course of five years, it was constantly beaten into me that the interviewing system itself is deeply flawed, with an inherent bias to extroverted and charismatic individuals over those that don’t have such traits. As a result, I became more critical toward the world and less confident in myself and my ability to be a competent working professional equal to and/or above neurotypicals. I also started to just feel even more misunderstood than I ever had before, like I’m some weird alien who immigrated from Mars who will never be understood. accepted. I still feel like this, even today, but I certainly feel more at home working with competent professionals now at a respectable company than searching for jobs and being unemployed. Originally, I earned my bachelor’s degree in political science with minors in history and information systems from the University of Indianapolis in 2015. I had a plan to enter politics and hopefully serve as a manager in state government, but, needless to say, I was very naïve about the field and what opportunities were available. Shortly
30 Special Needs Living • April 2021
after completing an internship with a small political think tank called Sagamore Institute following graduation from college, I decided to transition to IT because of its growth potential and my previous (albeit limited) experience with coding in both high school and college. Initially, I wanted to become a programmer, but after some lackluster boot camp experiences, I decided to transition again to IT hardware/software support. I have found more success in this field, even earning an A+ certification in 2017 which helped improve my prospects somewhat. Some of the more notable short-term contracts that I have worked on over the course of the past five years while searching for full-time employment were with large employers like Anthem, Caesars Entertainment, Ardagh Group, Eskenazi Health, and Eli Lilly. I even started my own YouTube channel called Knight Bros Commentary (KBC) with my older brother Brad back in September of 2018. On it, we discuss various topics such as the military, politics, autism, sports, movies/TV, etc. Here is the link to our website if you want to find out more – https://knightbroscommentary.weebly.com/ Unfortunately, even with the second transition and numerous short-term contracts, I was still having trouble finding suitable full-time employment. In order to remedy this, I started doing the following: · Working with various government agencies and private enterprises specializing in job search and career coaching services. · Getting more technical training, such as coding certificates and CompTIA certifications. · Taking various career tests, such as the Predictive Index, Gallup Clifton Strengths, and the Extended DISC. · Completed an interview with RTV6 to help raise awareness about employment issues for autistic adults back in March of 2019. · Looking at transitioning to other industries, such as business intelligence, data entry, grant writing, the military, and law enforcement just to name a few. Sadly, the numbers speak for themselves with regard to my job search over the past five years. As of June 2020, I had applied to 3,060 jobs and here are the results: · 2,283 (75%) where nothing ever happened · 574 (19%) just viewed my application
Brad and Matt Knight – Run a Podcast and YouTube channel
· 187 (6%) had offered me an interview · 27 (.88%) had offered me the job (but most of them seemed to be terrible fits for me for reasons I will explain below) · The three binders in the picture hold all of the notes I prepared for every single job that I have interviewed for at least once (on-site, skype/video, phone, etc.). If am being honest with myself when it comes to my professional career, there are traits that I have developed over the years that have probably hurt me in the long run when it comes to my employment issues. Probably the biggest one that I can think of is getting mentally and somewhat physically exhausted after socializing with people for over an hour due to overanalyzing conversations. For me at the very least, this means taking in what people “say” and figuring out what they truly “mean” in a reasonably short time frame while also dealing with various types of distractions in the background such as loud noises, strong smells, bright lights, etc. As a result, I think that I simply don’t have enough charisma to effectively work within the system and I didn’t know how to improve said charisma, as I failed to really make much improvement in all of my mock interview sessions. During my fiveyear job search, I found that, due to nervousness, I would just end up just rambling when attempting to answer questions. It does take me a little bit longer to gather my thoughts, plan and organize myself in a way that “appears normal” despite what others may see.
