Let me tell you a story of a bright young man. This is how he was described by his teachers, later his professors, and, in so many words, by lots of his friends, to say nothing of his family. He made good grades in school. He graduated with an honors diploma in high school; did the same thing in college (a liberal arts degree). After all, he was told “just go to college” by his teachers, get that education, and everything will be fine, so they said.
Then he went straight to grad school. This was done out of parental guidance, for one (how to separate yourself from the average joes who also got a liberal arts degree, they told him). It was also part of the constant mantra he and his peers heard since the 4th grade: “the longer you stay in school, the better your job will be”. Plus, it’s business school. It’s practical, therefore marketable, right?
Except then he graduated with his MBA, and fell flat on his face. While in grad school, he was working part-time for a company in the Louisville, Ky., area, with a national, even international presence, in the service sector. Eventually it dawned on him to apply to become a manager trainee (the job term they use for entry-level hires). After all, he had three years of experience with the company. He interviewed earnestly and honestly. And, he was rejected. The company recruiter told him he lacked the requisite experience.
Turns out they weren’t looking for someone with a master’s degree. They needed folks with sales and customer service experience. This guy wasn’t getting that experience by going to school and cleaning out cars in the meantime.
Now it’s time to unveil the curtain for a revelation: that person was yours truly.
The company in question was a car rental company, and I quickly got a baptism by fire in learning that skills and experience these days, not necessarily education, are the key things. A college degree will get you noticed. Marketable skills, along with some experience, will get you hired. That’s the hard lesson I learned, and it would have been nice to learn that earlier on, preferably right before I started college.
That is why I am here. That is why I started this blog, so that so many young people, especially those on the autism spectrum, can avoid my pitfalls, my tribulations, and some of my unnecessary struggles so that you can become more productive earlier on and get a quicker start on leading successful lives.
After I was spurned by the rental car company for a chance to work my way up, I applied to other jobs in a variety of sectors without hearing a thing. I eventually learned that there were one of two reasons: either too inexperienced, or I was over-qualified (again, the master’s degree).
Eventually I changed jobs to another area within the service sector. This time I was a “customer service rep” (basically, a cashier) at a local chain of gas stations/convenience stores. I was desperate for a different job by then, and this one actually paid more than the last one. But it was still frustrating, just a different sort. I knew that I was intelligent and capable, able to perform any number of white-collar jobs, but my own lack of experience, coupled with my own limitations as someone on the autism spectrum, put me at a systemic disadvantage for realizing my own productive potential at this time.
Fast forward a year, and I find myself in a similarly desperate situation as before. This time, though, I was lucky enough to find a place where I could do some teaching (something to apply all this knowledge I had accumulated over two decades) and found a sympathetic dean at a local career college who saw potential in yours truly to contribute well. I did not disappoint her.
The course I had the opportunity to teach was Geography, something I knew very well from years of study. I used the available teaching material to the utmost, added in extra insights where it seemed appropriate, and my students learned a lot in the process.
Although I was only an adjunct instructor (paid by the course), I relished this new opportunity. As I performed well in this new role, I earned more opportunities to teach more courses. Within a couple of months, I was teaching enough classes to where I was able to scale back my time at the convenience store/gas station to just a few hours a day, at the most.
The school operated on terms of 11 weeks at the time, and soon I was teaching six courses per term. Eventually, I was finally living in my own apartment (in Clarksville, Ind.), and able to engage in key adult responsibilities of paying rent, bills, etc.
But as rewarding as the job was, it had its limitations. I was just an adjunct instructor, and if all the students dropped the course (which happened a couple of times), I would not get paid for that course any longer. It was a precarious situation, really. After over a year of this, I came to the realization that this situation was untenable long-term, and I had to find some sort of full-time job (with salary, benefits, etc.) that paid, if not better, then more consistently. But what?
In a long evening of pondering one night, a thought penetrated my head to simply Google “jobs for Aspergers”. I quickly came across this website that had a whole list for jobs well-suited for those of us on the autism spectrum. One of the jobs on the list quickly stood out to me: CAD (that is, Computer-Aided Drafting). Within a couple of weeks I was applying to a community college just up the road from me, only an 11-minute drive away. Naturally I got accepted. Yes, I took out more student loans – a risk to be sure, especially since I had little way of paying off the ones I currently had – but what choice did I have? I knew this would limit my options for teaching courses at my private, career college, and I would still need to pay rent.
I began taking classes as soon as I could, starting with the summer term with two (including an intro to AutoCAD). Those two grew to four starting in the fall. Four more began in the following spring term, with my first solid-modeling class (Pro-E, no less). Two more summer courses then came, then another fall term (this time I was learning SolidWorks), and also in this, my second fall term, I landed an internship with a local conveyor systems manufacturer.
Now I was able to gain some actual, on-the-job experience. I knew enough about AutoCAD to make a contribution by this time, but an initial challenge came with their solid modeling program, Autodesk Inventor, something on which I had no schooling, let alone experience. But you know what? I was able to learn it on the job! Indeed, I picked it up well enough in just a couple of months that I realized I did not need to take a scheduled class on it for the upcoming spring term. Better yet, during the early spring, the company sent me and all of my associates over to an education center to take an intense, four-day class on Inventor, where I was able to pick up all sorts of techniques. No course tuition required on my end: this was all on the company dime, and we were still paid our hours!
Sadly, my internship soon ended abruptly. I had made inquiries about getting on full-time there, but work was steady there to the point where they did not need any additional full-time help.
Things were a struggle for a few months as I lost an income stream (meagre as it was), and I was trying to find a job in my approximate industry. But the persistence paid off, and soon I was called in for an interview for a “bill of materials coordinator” at another conveyor systems manufacturer located about 25 minutes away from me in Louisville, Ky. This company had a friendly business relationship with the outfit for whom I had just interned, and the folks there knew a number of the folks with whom I had previously worked. That helped, but what particularly helped was my ability to point to specific skills and specific experiences in being able to do the tasks required in this offered job. They made me an offer just several days after my first interview there.
Thus I had finally landed my first full-time, salaried job at age 31. Better late than never, though. Plus, one thing I have realized over time is that for an autist, nothing, if anything, happens via the conventional route.
The job was good for a starter job. I was able to concentrate on my detail-orientation, not having to deal with customers all day or the like, just sit at my desk and grind away. I was happy with that.
But it was not a panacea. The money was better than anytime before, but I still needed to teach a night class to help make ends meet, and there still wasn’t enough money left at the end of the day to make payments on one of my student loans. But it did put me in the position to earn real-world experience in a hard skills-based line of work. Better yet, I was able to do so with good people around me.
Fast forward almost three years. I had earned some experience in bill-of-materials creation, in production scheduling, and finally, in part and subassembly design. But the pay raises were not what I had hoped, and rent kept going up, and those student loans were hanging over my head.
An incredible stroke of luck came in the form of a new job opportunity that I was fortunate enough to take that paid much more, took me literally from coast-to-coast in my work travels, and allowed for me to enjoy tons of incredible experiences both on the job sites and away from them, too. The job came to sudden end in a year, though, as the company decided to eliminate the position. It happens, but the job was wonderful while it lasted.
So, I went “home” to my parents in southern Indiana (not far from Louisville) to regroup and find a new job somewhere. In that time, I marketed myself as someone with design/engineering experience, someone versed in the main solid-modeling programs, and someone with a little project management experience as a bonus. In just a hair less than two months after I came “home” from my eliminated job on the West Coast (that’s another story for another time), I found an engineering-based job opportunity for a company specializing in garage doors located in the Dallas area, a place where I had longed to relocate. The job was through an outside recruiter, who got in touch with the company’s recruiter, who in turn liked what they saw from my resume. She called me up for an interview. She liked what I told her, apparently. She then had my would-be manager call me up for a phone interview. He apparently liked my experience, too. He then green-lit the company to fly me down for an in-person interview in the Dallas area (I flew directly from Louisville to Dallas).
One test was to be able to demonstrate a technique on AutoCAD (a tangent line on two circles). I passed the test. My would-be co-workers seemed to like me as well. Things looked good, but then again, they often looked good to me on lots of such job interviews, only to learn I was passed over for someone else. So who really knew? That question was answered just a day or two after the interview, because the outside recruiter called me that morning with the good news: they made me and offer, with two options as to when to start.
I found myself moving down to the Dallas area the following month, starting my new job as Product Application Engineer with the industry leader of (overhead) sectional door manufacturing. I have now been with the company for five years, enough time to gain knowledge about the industry, the nature of the product, and thus grow in value to the company and to the industry at large.
Granted, it might not be where I want to remain forever and a day, but it’s great for right now. Moreover, I would not be here now were it not for the marketable skills I learned in community college, and, more importantly, the skills I learned interning and through full-time work.
In future articles, I’ll expound on key details of what pitfalls for non-neurotypicals to avoid, and key details for success. One lesson I learned was that too much time in school is a waste, both of money and of opportunities. The vast majority of us want to work – to be productive – so we can make money and provide for ourselves and our families. My own experience has taught me in no uncertain terms that skills and experience are what we need. Learn the necessary skills in school. Start with an internship; learn all you can. Leverage that however you can into a full-time job by pointing to your experience at work, and the hard skills you have cultivated. Skills, built upon experience built upon experience is the key to increasingly better success in one’s career. This way is the most effective one to enable all of us to learn and grow together.