My Networking Epiphany

I watched a life-changing video that has been stuck in my mind for the last little while. It's by a well known individual in the gaming audio / music composing industry, something I've always wanted to get into. He talked about why it's so hard to break into the arts in general as an industry. While soaking in what he was saying, a giant lightbulb flipped on while I was watching and it completely changed how I looked at job hunting in general. I wish that bulb was on at least fifteen years ago. I finally figured out why I've always had a hard time finding work I've wanted to do that makes at least $60K a year full-time. It has become almost completely clear to me now as to why I barely worked for the past ten years.

Has anyone ever heard of the statement, "it's not what you know, it's who you know"? I finally figured out why that statement is important especially when it comes to any kind of self-improvement in life (but let's focus on how this is important in terms of finding good work). It's also why no matter how hard anybody works, it won't result in anything worth-while unless one knows how to connect with people (a skill autistic people will always struggle to master, and a skill at my old age I no longer have energy to cultivate). And if there's anyone in high school reading this (or parents of a teen reading this), the next paragraph is the most important idea to remember:

A lot of people think that all it takes to simply get a job is apply to as many places online as possible and eventually someone will call us or send an email to arrange for a time to do some interviews. In fact, older folks think all one has to do is physically walk in the door to a bunch of places, ask for the manager, give a firm handshake, answer a few questions, and the job is yours. That is all absolute baloney.

The truth I had to finally accept is that there is a heavily targetted preference employers have when hiring people (unless we're talking about places with high turnover like call centres or hospitals). And that preference is hiring based on familiar and trusted references rather than unknown applicants. So it doesn't matter if you worked for an old lady mowing lawns and she paid you (while being a reference for you). If the company you're applying for doesn't know this old lady, there's going to be no interview. It doesn't matter if you apply for a social media job and your reference is a custodian at the mall where you worked previously. If the hiring person in HR doesn't know that custodian at the mall, you're not going in for an interview with that dream company you've always wanted to work for. I know this is obvious for a good number of non-autistic people reading this and I understand that there are many exceptions to all of this (and I also understand that in smaller cities and towns things work differently in comparison to bigger North American cities). But for me, I am super thankful I finally figured this out...because it let me know how impossible it is to get "the perfect job" that works for me, why it will take me at least another five to seven years to secure a job that isn't a dead-end position unless I work for someone I'm related to, and most likely why I'll never be retire or be rich (the second part is kind of okay for me; having too much money is overwhelming).

The reason this is important to discuss is because only being hired by someone you "know" presents significant structural obstacles for job seekers without established professional networks. And for people like me on the spectrum, these challenges are acutely magnified when we're stuck relying on general online job boards like Glassdoor and Indeed.

The Hiring System's Reliance on Known Contacts

In many industries including most retail and restaurant positions these days, the public posting of job advertisements often occurs too late. Companies have typically been looking to hire someone for weeks, months, or years prior. By the time a job is posted online, the company requires someone who can "immediately jump in and work without needing extensive training."

This urgency and need for reliability strongly incentivize companies to hire entirely off of references (many of them internally). Often, an email circulates within the company asking current team members if they know anyone who could fill the position, and the person referred gets hired, sometimes hours after the job posting is posted or even widely seen. So in many cases, the job posting itself is just a front to make it look like the company is hiring when they alread got their perfect candidate! It's a sick and unfair system, but that's how it works.

For a job seeker without existing connections, autistic or not, relying on references that an employer does not personally know or trust is often much less valuable than having references that the interviewing employer knows and trusts.

Challenges for the General Job Seeker on Public Boards

For the majority of job seekers relying on platforms like Indeed or Glassdoor, the public application process is already severely flawed due to high competition and filtering mechanisms:

• Overwhelming Applicant Volume: When big companies post a job online, they are flooded with thousands upon thousands of applicants. Many of these applicants are considered disposable.
• Discouraging Online Posting: The sheer absurdity of the time required to sort through this huge number of applications disincentivizes companies from ever posting these jobs publicly online in the first place.
• The Experience Trap: Publicly posted jobs, particularly entry-level roles, often include impossible requirements such as extensive years of experience and master-level proficiency in specialized tools, creating a self-defeating cycle where you need a job to get the experience that qualifies you for the job.
• The Necessity of Networking: Getting hired outside of having a professional portfolio, experience, or network, is described as hard work that rarely leads to amazing oppurtunities. Networking, conversely, is seen as the primary way to gain the trust that employers use to hire others, sometimes even to find that "perfect employee" without looking at a resume or portfolio.

And yet, conservatives don't understand this at all and think unemployment is a moral or even spiritual failing which to me is even more disgusting and distasteful. The core issue for applicants relying only on public job boards is that most desirable jobs are filled through private networks based on trust and personal referral, leaving the unknown alone (possibly even new in town) applicant attempting a rare and difficult success.

I talked to my wife about how she had gotten jobs in the banking industry in the past. She told me that with every job she ever had, she was referred by either university classmates or family members who knew people working in the industry. This only made the epiphany hit harder while also giving me a few more insights into why things are difficult for me since I have a hard time making friends and forming connections even with close family.

Magnified Difficulty for Autistic Applicants

The social and communicative difficulties often experienced by autistic individuals make the networking challenge feel like such a burden, making reliance on impersonal job ads significantly tougher:

• Barriers to Building a Network: Establishing and growing a professional network (which is crucial for acquiring the trust that leads to referrals) is largely dependent on "meeting people and talking to them and getting to know them as friends". The "core of this is to essentially show up to what are known as networking events" consistently so people "start to know like and trust you". Autistic individuals frequently struggle with the subtle, unwritten social rules governing these interactions, making networking inherently challenging .
• The Introversion Trap: Many creative fields essential to the modern job market, such as the gaming and tech industry, tend to attract introverted people who "tend to prefer hiding in our caves and just work all day every day". For autistic people already struggling with social interaction, this inherent isolation makes the proactive, face-to-face effort needed to build an insider network-where "people need to know we exist otherwise they don't know that they can even hire us in the first place" especially difficult.
• Absence of the "Referral-Worthy" Relationship: Strong professional relationships and references are often forged through working together on projects, such as through freelancing or attending collaborative volunteering events, where individuals gain experience and continually grow their network. Because autistic individuals may struggle with the collaborative and social aspects of these foundational career steps, they are less likely to secure the internal advocates who can provide the necessary trusted references when hidden jobs open up. Consequently, they are left relying on the overwhelming and often ineffective public application portals.

But hey, I just need to just stop playing the victim, keep clicking apply on every "now hiring" ad I see, and eventually I'll get a job. I just have to keep putting out more applications, keep taking personal responsibility in a rugged individualized society, keep yanking up those ol' bootstraps, and I'll reach that rainbow with a six to seven figure position at some point! And then afterwards, I can invest in more assets like gold and not be so concerned about liabilities! It's that easy, isn't it? * eye roll emoji goes here *

Seriously, I've come to a place in my life where in order to change things, I have to take more risks connecting with people offline. So my New Year resolution-ish for me is one that is critical to impliment: I have to "make friends" among the artistic in my community. Hopefully if I at least do this, someone will recommend what they see as a good job that would accomodate my disability, my interests, and my media skillset. But I'm not just posting this to let my family know why I've been stuck in this feedback loop of unemployment hell. I hope this essay will benefit others with autistic struggles. In reality, this is a societal systemic issue where the non-autistic (non-autistic) job seeker faces a logistical hurdle in standing out against massive applicant pools, while the autistic job seeker like me faces a compounding suffering that is rooted in the fundamental disconnect between the hiring system's reliance on socially acquired trust and the core challenges of a different neurotype. It's just one of the main reasons why 70% - 80% of all autistic people financially struggle and will always need support in this area of life.