Jobs for introverts?

We ( the introverted ones ) work with animals, back of house jobs, work from home
jobs, being self employed jobs and also IT jobs :) I’m not a people oriented person as well and avoid people as much as I can. However I put my happy mask and go through each day even though it’s exhausting. He will find his place with his people or will create one, I promise you :)

Being a train driver is a reasonably solitary job, he might find his vocation there.

Sorry OP I dont have an answer but this sort of bollox infuriates me, as if every person has to be the same and (no offence to the job your son was doing) but who cares or needs a 'outgoing' manufacturing worker

All this 'be your true self' - its nonsense isnt it, only be your true self if its outgoing and proactive. And in anycase, I dont want someones 'personality' at work, I just want them to come in and do their bloody job!

I can recommend my job. I’m a train signaller and work in a single manned box. Apart from the odd engineer or technician visit, i can be left to my own devices all day. Lots of scope for movement within network rail too

I’d definitely encourage him to see as a learning experience. Hopefully next workplace will be more supportive. My friend works in a male dominated industry and they seem to take the apprentices under their wing. Did he have any previous work history?
It’s fine to not have anything in common but rubbing a long with people at work is important. @C152 had some good suggestions for basics that may not occur to a yp.

I suspect the issue is around proactively. I see it sometimes in very junior roles or people with very little job experience.

An example in my office based job, I ask them to print the papers for the client meeting. Junior says they can’t, I ask why. They say the printer is out of paper. Printer has a box of realms of paper sitting next to it. I ask if they had considered putting paper in printer, they look at me blankly.

Because nobody had expressly said “when the printer is out of paper, put more in so you can print”, the thought hadn’t crossed their mind.

That’s just a personality clash basically. The boss didn’t like him. Depressing, but probation periods allow this kind of nonsense. My DH is very introverted and autistic the sort of person who gets on with his role to a high level and doesn’t want to be particularly matey with anyone at work (won’t get involved in a tea round for example because he doesn’t want the stress of working out when to offer/who needs to be offered one, and hates any ‘organised fun’ at work events, that sort of thing). However he is in a role that really suits him and has been promoted multiple times because he he’s good at what he does. It’s probably not a specific job worth recommending to your DS as it’s a role requiring a post graduate degree , but the point is there are jobs out there.

I am wondering OP, and I only ask as I have a DD16 who is ASD and very shy….is he ready for the workplace? Might it be better for him to stay in education a little longer? Some of these apprenticeships are awful.

I am in Tech, an introvert, BTW.

I am very introverted and I'm a secondary school teacher. I would say I am also very pro-active.

It's so annoying when people describe socially anxious, shy, unconfident people as introverted, that's not what it means at all.

They sound like absolute arseholes, I hope the next employee is a Jack the lad who robs them blind and punches the boss (then steals his wife).

I'm in the civil service, shy with strangers but learnt over the years to get more confident. It does sound like they're letting him go for no real good reason considering its a job in a factory.

I'm shy and reserved as are a lot of my colleagues - I'm a data analyst. Not sure if he would have the right background but there's probably training/apprenticeship roles he could apply to. Software development could also be a good option although I believe there are less entry level roles nowadays.

Also OP, proactive and outgoing are different things, I couldnt care less if a candidate is "outgoing".

I do need them to be proactive but i think you can be proactive regardless of your social personality, or lack of.

How very odd OP!!!

Honestly id put this down to the company rather than your son.

Ive hired people that have taken a good few months to come out their shell and turn out to be absolutely fantastic employees.

The only think i can think of is he couldnt answer his managers/deemed to be ignorning them?

I would tell your son to take this feedback with a pinch of salt and see how he gets on in his next role.

I have a back office job where i I provide technical support and rarely have to interact with others. When I do have to talk to others it involves explaining technical concepts rather than doing small talk and networking, which I find much easier.

However, at the start it wasn’t like that. There are very few entry level positions that allow you to work independently. I would advise your son to put on the mask and fake it for a few years. It will suck, but it will allow how to manoeuvre himself into a role that suits him later.

Disclaimer, my area is finance, not engineering. But I imagine it is similar. Unfortunately the senior staff want to employ junior staff who are friendly and engaged and fun to be around, so you have to pretend to be like that. And then once you become senior yourself, you can do what you want.

Devil is in the detail. I’m guessing it’s very extreme end of shy if they have cut their losses at 5 weeks. If there was a group intake and he’s stood out negatively compared to other new hires.
On a positive he’s clearly got skills as he was selected at interview.
I wonder if it’s just a bad fit of a workplace eg if everyone is louder and banter. Most workplaces make allowances for new people finding feet.
Could there have been any safety type issues. Like if he needed to log on manual handling training and he’s been reminded and not done it as not sure and didn’t ask.

Yes, I have an autistic school-leaver godson who spent his gap year working and also filling in what he thought were skills gaps before he started a demanding university course. One of these was talking to strangers, so he threw himself in at the deep end and took an improv drama class!

That’s harsh. I was quiet and shy at his age but colleagues were nice to me and really brought me out of my shell.

If he understood the instructions and didn’t need clarification, there would be no questions. It’s punishing someone for being quick on the uptake.
There really isn’t a reason to socialize at work. That is optional.

Nothing you mention is about the quality of his work. I don’t understand why he was let go.

I don’t have suggestions for work adjacent to the kind he has been doing. There are jobs out there though for all kinds of people. I’m an autistic introvert and very happy, but went down a very different path.

My painfully shy cousin makes and sells doorknobs for a living.
Some shy people get on well in accounting/payroll/finance. But the one accountant in my family is a massive extrovert.

So I think it's more about being confident and capable than needing to be dancing around and making everyone laugh.

I'm an introvert and I prefer spending my weekends pottering at home. I don't enjoy social gathering. I work in software development and I would say it's very good for introverts. However, it's a very hard field to enter now because LLM does a better job at being junior devs than humans.

I would imagine engineering technician and mechanical engineering apprenticeships are good for introverts. The people he need to deal with should be the same familar faces in his team.

As other says, proactive and outgoing is not introvert or extrovert qualities. I'm very good at standing my ground and being a strong advocate for my technical area. I'm also very good at articulating technical issues. My only comments from managers over the years was that I can come across as too passionate and enthusiastic about the techinical issues. (Think mad scientist). If your son can be that, he can do it.

Do you know anyone in these areas who are introverts? Maybe get them to talk to your son? From my own introvert's perspective, what he need to develop is confidence

You can fire someone if you think their skills aren’t adequate for the role.

Most jobs require some social skills, even if not public facing. And all jobs require a degree of curiosity about what is involved and some proactivity.

If someone displays neither of those attributes its not unreasonable for the employer to conclude that they are not the best candidate.

This isn’t the boy’s fault; he’s fresh out of school and has a world of things to learn. But its also an opportunity to learn these skills.

I would not steer him in the direction of thinking that he should limit himself to looking for jobs where minimal critical thinking or ambition are required. Not least because there are fewer and fewer jobs like that around, they pay less, are less satisfying and there are fewer opportunities to advance.

Its a real learning experience for him, albeit frustrating now. But telling him he is an introvert and therefore it can’t be helped is not going to support him in learning.

When you have a job you need to a make an effort to acquire the skills you don’t have. I would focus on that. Maybe he could do a drama class or something similar to build confidence and people skills.

It must have been pretty extreme for him to lose his job over it.