5 Best Choices for Autistic Careers

About Spectroomz - We Help Autistic Adults Get Qualified To More Work From Home Jobs.

By: Vanessa Blanchard

We’ve covered the worst jobs for autistic adults, so now let’s talk about the best choices autistic people can make in their job search.  

There are a lot of factors that, when considered, would help autistic people thrive in their careers.  Many of the things we will discuss in this article can be easily incorporated into any workspace that wanted to try.  It’s important to remember that some of the biggest obstacles autistic people face in the workplace come from non-autistic people who don’t want to try.

So, let’s talk about 5 career choices an autistic adult can make when looking for a job.

1. Jobs that require creativity

Autistic people tend to be very creative individuals.  We gravitate towards artsy things like writing, painting, graphic design,theater, music, etc.

We also tend to be very entrepreneurial, though this might partially stem from workplace discrimination against autistic people.  No one will hire us, so we start our own businesses.

But it’s not just literal art that we excel at.  We’re good at all types of creativity because we tend to be naturals at understanding and designing systems.  We recognize patterns and think in ways that allow us to make unique connections.  

This makes us good at problem solving, which is a very creative endeavor.  That’s why you’ll see us gravitating not just towards the arts, but towards things like coding and tech support.  Things that don’t seem traditionally creative, but that require us to recognize patterns and create solutions.

2. Communication that allows for delayed interactions

There’s a myth that autistic people are bad at communicating.  The problem with this myth is that it only incorporates neurotypical styles of communication and doesn’t recognize autistic ones.

When our styles are considered, it becomes clear that autistic adults are no better or worse than a neurotypical at communicating.  We just have our own style.  

For example, pattern recognition is really good for sales, and austistic adults can be great salespeople.  However, many of us would find it overwhelming to navigate a rotation of strangers face-to-face.  So, we might thrive better doing social media marketing rather than in-person retail.

One reason for this is that we tend to have more social and communication success when we have the time to compose our responses.  The delayed communication allowed by emails, comments, texts, etc can help us process the information so that our responses are helpful and accurate.

How this helps us avoid conflict

Another way delayed communication helps autistic folks is with conflict management.  A lot of social trauma for austic people comes from having our tones and faces misread or from misspeaking while trying to keep up with a high pressure conversation. 

Here’s another example: a writer needs feedback from their editor.  If the writer has rejection sensitivity, it might be very difficult for them to get that feedback without a big emotional reaction.  In person, that emotional reaction will register on our faces and in our tones, even if we know that the feedback is valid, fair, and not an attack.  There’s so much room for miscommunication in that scenario.

Assuming the worst of an autistic person during a time like this is a common way that biases against autism manifest themselves in social settings.  We lose jobs like crazy over this.

However, getting that feedback in an email allows us to process our rejection trauma and the emotions attached to it, return to the feedback in a better headspace, and communicate with the editor without the social bias entering the scenario.

Having room to process and prepare a response is pivotal to successful communication for a lot of autistic people, both in the personal lives and in the workplace.

3. Working in teams

Another common myth assumed about autistic adults is that they aren’t social beings.  We prefer to work alone!

That’s not entirely true, though.  Sure, a lot of us do like to work alone, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only way we want to work.  

We need friends, colleagues, and social inclusion just like any other human being.  That’s why the best jobs for autistic people are jobs that have teams that we can work with.  Not just any team, though.  One that allows for trust building, authenticity, and a sense of connection for everyone involved.  

Some autistic people will enjoy interacting with a rotating cast of strangers, but many of us thrive in a group of the same people that we can take our time getting to know and grow comfortable with.  Our brains love routine, after all.

These environments benefit us because they provide us with human connection, community, and belonging.  They can also benefit us because group efforts succeed better than one person left to do everything alone.  Having social support that tries to understand us takes pressure off of our executive functioning and helps prevent the freeze up that happens during in-person interactions.

This dynamic is only going to work if every member of the team is aware of the potential for discriminatory biases to enter the group.  Ways that this group dynamic could work will be explored a little later in this article.

4. A job that allows for autonomy

Let’s look at a list of reasons why an austistic person might want to work alone:

• They concentrate better without distractions

• It’s easier on their rejection sensitivity to work where no one can see them (which is a trauma response)

• Working alone allows them to stim and self regulate in ways that might be distracting in a communal environment, but that significantly improves the autistic adult’s work performance. (ie tapping, pacing, echolalia, etc)

• There are fewer sensory demands.

• Removing the social setting prevents a ton of the workplace discrimination against autistic people because it removes the social biases that fuel it. (ie, we make the “wrong” face or have the “wrong” tone) 

The need to balance autonomy and teamwork

As you can see, social trauma is a major contributing factor to our desire to work alone.  We feel compelled to work alone because isolation prevents further trauma.  Isolation can seem like our only option, and that’s just not healthy.

Humans are social beings and research shows that social connection and support protects people from the long-lasting impacts of trauma.  

That being said, having the space to regulate our nervous systems, control our sensory environments, and manage our focus will allow us to perform our jobs more consistently.  Some of the best jobs for autistic people will allow them to work on their own and then touch base with a consistent, supportive team on a regular basis.

5. Mentors

A mentor can improve how successful an autistic person is in a workplace, especially while starting out.  Mentors help in many ways:

• They help with “experience gaps” by providing one-on-one guidance

• They provide a way for feedback to be delivered safely

• They lessen demands on executive functioning (ex: during transitions, maintaining focus, prioritizing tasks) 

• They ease the sense of alienation by creating a team dynamic

• They reduce the burden of self-advocating by creating a base of social support

Having a set person that an autistic person can collaborate with and learn from will allow them to thrive in their careers.  There’s the routine of the same person, the chance to build and gain trust, and the personalized career/skill development all helping support the autistic person in their work.

Again, social connection is protective.  There’s less room for bullying or discrimination to take root if the autistic person has a clear ally in the workplace.  We won’t experience social trauma as acutely with a colleague in our camp.

Bonus Tip: Other NDs

Being part of a diverse team that includes other autistic folks and other forms of neurodiversity also means that we have allies.  This evens the social dynamic in a workplace and gives us bargaining power.  We will be part of what shapes the workplace culture; we won’t just be asked to fit into something that already exists.

It’s important to talk about the ways in which autstic people can succeed.  Too much emphasis is put on our “deficits '' or “difficulties” when the ideas of what is successful are shaped by neurotypical standards.  The best thing we can do for autistic folks is to reimagine how we work so that autistic ways of thinking, communicating, and existing are incorporated.  We don’t just want jobs, we want fulfilling careers.

About the writer

I’m a writer, artist, and advocate who loves living in Maine among the trees and oceanside villages. I’m also autistic, ADHD, and PTSD. My education, both academic and personal, has centered around mental health and neurodevelopmental disabilities, as well as discrimination and the socioeconomic consequences of living disabled in America. I work to plant seeds and spread ideas through my writing and will be among the autistic adults helping you understand your autistic kids better on Spectroomz’ Ask An Autistic. You can find me on Twitter @ladysnessa.