Career Support Service for students and graduates with Asperger

It is very important that students and graduates with Asperger Syndrome have access to specialist career support to help them achieve their full potential. Asperger is a social disability that affects how people interact with the world and interpret others, impairing their social skills and making it longer for them to process information than others. As a result they may face barriers to employment due to the following reasons:

• They may have trouble networking because they don’t have too many friends

• They may not do well on interviews because they misunderstand questions, cannot make eye contact or take extra time to process information

For each of these difficulties I proposed a solution that the careers centre could implement to help these students and graduates.

To compensate these students for not having a strong network as the average person I propose the following advice:

• The career centre should have specialist 1 to 1 career coaches (since they generally offer a lot of support they might just ask some of the staff already there to get to know what Asperger is and they can then meet the students regularly and provide them thorough support), it is very important that it goes beyond CV and interview help preparation (as this is already provided by the Career Centre) this specialist support should focus on proactively helping students look for jobs by contacting employers directly, similar to a what recruitments agencies do (eg. staff may spend an hour or two every day cold calling employers or attending job fairs or dropping off CVs at companies, the coaches should be required to demonstrate that they are taking a proactive approach eg keeping a log of all cold calls, cold emails, replies to emails, visits to companies, etc), they send updates to students by email regarding any potential jobs and meeting the student face to face every month to review progress.

• It is a must that all graduates and students with asperger can have access to it regardless of year or what job they are looking for and coaches should also be able to help to find second year students internships, work experience, placements, part time jobs and extracurricular volunteering activities, work shadowing and informational interviews in their chosen field to help them meet industry contacts. Also, this support should be available after graduation. The career coach would try to contact companies in the graduate’s hometown and also around Staffordshire if the graduate is willing to relocate. Also, it is absolutely essential that if the coach gets the students an interview that are unsuccessful, the coach always e-mails or rings the company to ask for feedback on the interview and the reason why it was unsuccessful.

Example of the proposed process:

• A second year student signs up to the scheme. He gets a career coach allocated who he meets and they discuss what the he wants to achieve that year. For example, the student might say that he wants to get a placement in a game design company and if he cannot get one by Christmas then he's keen to get a part time job or a volunteering activity that helps him improve his social skills. The careers centre will help the student in writing a placement application form or CV.

• The coach makes an objective list based on the student’s information. He/she will look at placements on university websites, job sites such as targetsjobs, and most importantly help the student tap the hidden job market (many opportunities are not advertised) by contacting employers in partnership with the university and researching as many game companies around the university town as possible, cold calling or cold emailing them asking if there are any opportunities and sending them the students’s CV. If the coach knows any friend or acquaintance who is working at a game company, he/she will ask them as well. The coach will have recommended (though not mandatory as sometimes there may not be as many jobs as during other periods, eg. there are fewer jobs in the weeks before Christmas) weekly targets of how many cold calls/emails/internet job search they need to do for the student.

• The coach will meet the student face to face every month for 1 or 2 hours to review progress made and reflect on what could be improved eg. If the student doesn’t do well on interviews they might get referred to a practice interview in the career centre.

• If the student gets a placement, the session with the career coach ends for that year as the target has been achieved. But the student can still contact the career centre if they have any questions or problems at work and can re-enter the scheme when looking for jobs in the final year or after graduation.

• If the student does not get a placement, the coach will focus on helping the student get general part time/volunteer work experience while at university or over the summer (by contacting companies around the student’s hometown).

• The student can re-enter the scheme in the final year even if they work part time and can continue to be supported after graduation.

• Also, it would be useful if the university provided an incentive to make it more likely that employers hire students and graduates with asperger. This is partly based on Shaw Trust’s youth incentive scheme, who pay employers for hiring disabled people if that person has been employed by the company for 6 months, but it can only be used once. However, the key difference and a considerable improvement would be that students and graduates would be able to use the ‘hiring incentive’ as many times as they would like and they would be able to pay in money any time to the career centre to increase the amount of money available on the hiring incentive. This money would be paid to employers to cover the student or graduate’s training costs for a month or serveral months of probation, to make them more likely that they get hired. It should be available for all jobs the student finds through the career support scheme, from part time term and summer jobs to internships, placement, work experience and graduate or non graduate jobs. The career centre could apply for a grant from the big lottery fund to help get money for this project.

• Also, the specialist careers support service should be available on a long term basis for graduates, rather than only for up to 6 months or a year like the Shaw Trust, and Shaw trust only helps people if they are out of work. The career support scheme should help graduates even if they work part time, or just want a better job.

To compensate for the student getting through interviews and succeeding on the job, the career centre should:

• Invite an autism specialist to provide workshops for employers in partnership with the university and for employers eg. the union who offer term time jobs to students to inform them about what autism is and how they can make reasonable adjustments and how they can ensure that the student/graduate gets through the interview or assessement without a disadvantage. Eg. they might allow the student to think for some time before answering the question and they have to be clear and concise in the questions they ask and try to avoid metaphors or sarcasm.

• Provide recommendations to employers on the workshops about how to support autistic employees eg. they might be sat to the desk next to the person who trains them so they don’t have to get up every time they need need help. And they might need clear explanations of instructions supplemented by written how to guides or videos.

• The university should organise specific job fairs where companies are invited who are happy to hire autistic people or any other people with disabilities.