Job Interview Victory Story

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Here is my story. One of my big interests is in learning strategies and how that applies to understanding and using web and cloud technologies. It's a lot of fun. It was also awesome to see that there was a startup looking for people that was into cloud-based learning solutions for businesses. So I applied.

The response lead to a phone screen. It was a little embarrassing to get the time wrong and miss the scheduled call. But the CEO in question still wanted to talk to me. That was unnerving and my anxiety did get the better of me. Worked up the nerve to make one call and hung up. Worked up the nerve to make another call, dialed the extension to the CEO extension and hung up again. Then, I sheepishly sent an email to this person admitting to this. So then he called me and so the phone screen actually did happen. He admitted to being concerned about my social acumen ( ya think? ) but scheduled me for an in-person interview anyways.

So the interview happened which was a 2 hour affair with 3 people. One CEO, one head engineer, and one person over the phone. On stimming behavior, the big struggle was to at least keep it subtle. My natural tendency, when anxious, is to put both hands to my neck and/or face. For the CEO part of the interview, it took a good deal of restraint but managed to workaround by only touching my face with one hand instead of both.

The engineer was interesting too. There's a lot I don't know and it takes too much mental energy for me to hide that ignorance and still hold up an intelligent conversation. So it was better that I didn't. At the very least, it made the conversation a bit more fun. There were questions I got wrong but that's almost a good thing in my world. My wrong answers make the world around me bigger and more interesting. Thus, I'm very candid about my mistakes and failures in general no matter who it's with.

The telecom call with the remote guy was nice and it was fun to geek out about dev ops with. At the same time, it was one of those harsh sounding meeting room teleconference devices. Suffice to say, I covered my ears a few times.

So that ended, had my final talk with the CEO person and went home. Yesterday, the rejection letter came into my inbox. Standard vanilla form letter "we-went-with-someone-else-we-keep-your-resume-on-file-6-months" stuff. Dealt with the negative emotional data and then started to write this post.

So after 2+ years and a lot of help, the big victory was having done any in-person interview at all. That's the important thing here..... actually showing up!

Some of the other interesting bits to this story are the potential implications regarding a coming social security appeals hearing. There are some positives to this. For one, getting a recent interview sends a signal that my case isn't one of someone "not trying" who just wants to sponge off the system. For another, it took 2 years to finally get an in-person interview with anyone and that much required a lot of help. It seems to potentially be a good launching off point to explain how my form of autism presents a challenge in getting and keeping work.

Of course, another interesting thing to consider is how I managed to become employed before losing my last job. That's an interesting one. What changed? The best way to explain is a "damage of filters" as a result of psychological trauma. What that means is that my speech works in one of two modes. If I'm saying exactly what I think, words flow pretty effortlessly. If I have to censor myself though, that's when it becomes a huge mental task just to string a sentence together.

Some people consider that kind of "honesty" refreshing. But it's not the sort of thing that generally translates well to job interviews. Se la vi.

Well done.