Autism-Specific Employment Services All Seem Like A Waste of Time

[DragonEmbers]

There are several companies now that claim to specifically serve autistic job seekers. I’ve browsed the websites of several of them and even tried to apply to a couple, but none I’ve found so far are viable options, mainly because they don’t really deal with the neurologically disabling aspects of autism.

One I applied for offers full-time work only. It’s fine for autistic people who have the energy for an eight-hour workday, but a problem for those who are de-energized by commutes and the sensory and social environment of the workplace. Full-time work only doesn’t seem reasonable for a disabled workforce.

Another was a job board on which all the jobs were either senior positions (someone who has amassed that much professional experience is the least likely person to have autism-related employment barriers), or sensory nightmares with large customer service elements (canvassing the public in busy urban areas, for example). It’s great if whoever posted those positions is genuinely interested in hiring autistic people, but so many of the job duties and/or employment requirements are so out of line with autistic traits that it seems as if no thought was put into the posting. And if no thought was put into the posting, is the company actually prepared to hire an autistic employee?

There was one company that offered job placement as well as mandatory coaching for social issues, but it’s not useful for those of us who don’t have social issues.

Most of these services seem to be based on the idea that autistic jobseekers are just another group of jobseekers, hardly different than any other, rather than a group of people with a variety of disabling conditions. That makes them largely useless.

[Robin]

These companies are not actually built for autistic people. They are built to make employers feel progressive.

They treat autism as a personality variant or a mild social deficit, not as a set of neurological constraints. That is why the offerings make no sense in practice.
• Full-time only roles ignore energy limits, commute cost, sensory load, and recovery time.
• Senior roles select for people who already survived the system, not those blocked by it.
• Customer-facing, high-stimulus jobs show zero understanding of autistic sensory profiles.
• Mandatory social coaching assumes deficit by default, even when social issues are not the problem.

Autism is not a hiring pipeline issue. It’s a capacity and environment design issue.

If a service does not explicitly design around:
• energy budgeting
• sensory load
• predictable environments
• autonomy over pacing
• reduced context switching
• asynchronous communication

then it is not an autism employment service. It is a neurotypical service with inclusive branding.

Treating autistic jobseekers as «just another group of jobseekers» is exactly why these platforms fail.

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