Guaranteed Interview Scheme

Post Reply New Topic

UK people - have you ever taken advantage of the Guaranteed Interview Scheme?

It depends. Some companies will deliberately hire disabled people and others won't. You might want to study the corporate culture of the company you are interested in. Do they have a track record of previously hiring the disabled? But if your disabilities will be noticed by bosses and coworkers, I guess there is no point in hiding them. You have nothing to lose by applying as a disabled person, if otherwise you would not apply at all. Also, long gaps in employment is a big sticking point with many employers. I always lied about them and told people that I was self-employed as a piano teacher. This is not true, but since I grew up with my mother being a piano teacher, I could speak intelligently to them about it so they always believed me. I think "piano teacher" is the most perfect lie for any employment gaps because it sounds classy and intelligent yet no one can disprove it. But I digress. I think you may as well go ahead and try this, with as few interviews as you're getting you have nothing left to lose, that is, you cannot get any fewer interviews than you do now so you may as well try something different.

Yes I have ticked this box on three occasions. Although I think with my University qualifications I would probably have been selected for interview regardless. It never seems to actually help though, as employers think of things like communication and teamwork as essential job skills and if you don't have them you don't have them, they do not care about Asperger's (or have no understanding, or knowledge of it). No-one's ever asked for any kind of proof of my disability/diagnosis. But I guess the guide to whether you need to tick this box is whether you do have substantial difficulties, for example if you go to interview after interview and your difficulties lead to continued rejection. From your description I would say to go for it. At least it gets you some interview experience.

The last occasion was not long ago actually. It was for a job within Government/Civil Service. I requested as reasonable adjustment at interview to have the questions in writing prior to the interview, and the interview panel to be made aware (so they could give due consideration/reasonable adjustments in respect of my difficulties). The requests were met, and interview questions provided. However, 2 days later a new set of questions replacing the last were provided, including questions about competencies not covered in the last set – “team working”, and “customer appreciation”. Competencies someone with Asperger's would reasonably be expected to have difficulties with compared with a non-disabled individual, given they inherently involve social interaction. At the time, despite considering the questions difficult to answer, I made my best effort, and did not consider it may be a means to discriminate against my Asperger’s. I thought the provision of the questions showed they were understanding and considerate, as I have heard of many employers refusing to do this claiming it gives an unfair advantage to the candidate the questions are revealed to.

Post interview feedback was, quote:

I've applied for a few jobs where they guarantee an interview to anyone who meets the minimum criteria and presents with a disability. I've always wondered whether they genuinely want to consider hiring disabled people or whether they just want to be able to boast about their equal opportunity employment procedures. My father used to work for local government and he said they loved people with very minor 'disabilities' - things like missing a few fingers or one eye - cause it made their 'equal opportunity employer' percentages for hiring crips look great without them having to make any real effort to accommodate someone with genuine severe disabilities. So I'm not sure really...

I'd imagine that for computer-y type jobs, some employers might be enlightened enough to see the possible advantages of employing people on the autistic spectrum. And for some other jobs, employers might unconsciously discriminate against you due to their own wrong preconceptions of what being on the autistic spectrum actually means.

Last year I applied for two almost identical jobs with two different companies. As a very crude experiment, on one application form I ticked the disabled box, on the other I didn't. I got both jobs. Probably also worth mentioning is that both positions were crap menial labour that they could have trained lobotomised afghan hounds to carry out, so most likely neither employer gave a s**t one way or the other...