I Stopped Counting After 100 Job Applications

I do not simply see a job posting, send a résumé, and wait.

When I find a position that interests me, I research it. Usually far more than I technically need to complete an application.

I learn about the organization, its website, its work, its competitors, its community, and the problems I could potentially solve. By the time I apply, I often already know enough about the organization that I believe I could walk into the position the next day and begin contributing, even before learning all of its internal systems and processes.

That is simply how my mind works. If I am interested in something, I want to understand it.

I am already thinking about the work before I have the job.

Take a community and outreach coordinator position as an example. Those opportunities come up relatively often in my job search.

Before I even speak with the employer, I am already thinking about which nonprofit organizations they probably have relationships with, which organizations they should be connected with, where meaningful partnerships could be created, and where strong backlinks and community visibility might come from.

I am looking at what is happening in the surrounding area. Are there disasters or recovery operations underway? Are there underserved communities? Which partnerships could create the greatest impact?

And I am thinking about both sides of community outreach.

Companies usually do not invest money, employee time, vehicles, sponsorships, or other resources without considering what that involvement means for the organization. Good community outreach can help people while also creating trust, visibility, relationships, reputation, referrals, links, and long-term value for the employer.

That does not make the community work less genuine. Done correctly, both sides benefit.

Volunteer experience seems to count differently.

I volunteer with two nonprofit organizations. In one of them, I hold a relatively senior volunteer leadership role that gives me substantial reach and responsibility.

That work has allowed me to coordinate with other nonprofits, government agencies, community organizations, volunteers, disaster survivors, and people from many different backgrounds.

It is real leadership. It is real communication. It is real responsibility.

Yet during a job search, volunteer experience often appears to carry less weight than the same work would if it appeared beneath a conventional full-time job title.

That is something I wish more employers would consider when reviewing candidates.

Yes, I am autistic. And yes, I can walk into a room full of strangers.

People sometimes have a very narrow picture of what an autistic person is supposed to look like socially.

I would probably describe myself as an ambivert, or more specifically, an outgoing introvert.

I can walk into a room where I do not know anyone and start talking with people. I can make connections. I can listen. I can speak with people whose beliefs, backgrounds, experiences, and opinions are very different from mine.

During disaster response and recovery work, I can sit with someone who has just experienced one of the worst moments of their life, listen to what happened, explain what may happen next, and sometimes give them information or perspective that makes the situation a little easier to process.

I can speak with nonprofits, government agencies, volunteers, community leaders, businesses, and survivors.

I can walk into meetings and leave enough of an impression that people remember me later.

None of that fits neatly into the stereotype that an autistic person cannot communicate or connect with other people.

Being good with people and being good at job hunting are not the same thing.

This is one of the contradictions I keep experiencing.

I can perform the actual communication required in many of the jobs for which I apply. I can build relationships. I can lead. I can explain complicated subjects. I can deal with difficult situations.

But the hiring process is a completely different environment.

A résumé has to present experience in exactly the right way. An applicant tracking system has to interpret it correctly. A recruiter has to understand how experience from different industries, volunteering, independent work, technical work, and leadership fits together.

Then an interview may evaluate confidence, conversational rhythm, facial expressions, eye contact, quick answers, and whether the interviewer feels an immediate social connection.

Those things may have very little relationship to whether a candidate can actually perform the job.

Some things take a long time to reach me emotionally.

As an autistic person, I often process emotional experiences differently and sometimes more slowly. Something may happen and I can continue functioning, analyzing, and solving problems long before I fully recognize how deeply it affected me.

My last university position was one of those experiences.

I enjoyed the work. I was helping modernize the university's website, improve accessibility, strengthen privacy, and move toward systems that would have given the institution greater ownership and control.

My position ended after I raised concerns about the use of sensitive information and defended privacy and legal standards that I believed the institution was required to follow.

Losing a position I enjoyed after trying to do what I believed was right already hurt.

Then came the job search.

Week after week, application after application, I keep trying to find the next place where my experience can be useful.

I research every opportunity because I care.

There is another side of this that employers may never see.

When I apply for your organization, I may already have spent hours learning about it.

I am not doing that because somebody asked me to.

I do it because if I am considering becoming part of an organization, I want to understand it.

And every time I do that, a little part of me has already begun investing in the possibility that this could be the place where I work next.

That is part of why rejection can hurt more than the employer may realize.

This is not going to be only a story about rejection.

I am going to document parts of this job search through Autism at Work.

I will talk about what I try, what works, what does not work, what I learn from interviews, how employers communicate with applicants, and eventually, I hope, how I find the right position.

But I do not want these articles to help only me.