Unemployable cousin

[laoisef101]

My cousin is 25 and has Aspergers. Although he's intelligent, he has had a poor work history and dropped out of college but did get a PLC where he got 6 distinctions. He wants to work for the moment but feels he's doomed as he keeps getting either rejections or no replies.

All these jobs are minimum wage (retail, warehouse, hospitality) and it's actually difficult for him to even get an interview. He feels he's doomed as he's only worked in the summer for the last two years.

Can he volunteer? Would help get experience/ improve his employment possibilities.

I think that’s just the reality of the job market in Ireland. There’s a lot of jobs but they all want someone who has experience and don’t want to bother training. That’s speaking from personal experience and also when DH lost his job 2 years back it took him almost 9 months to find another! And he’s in his 30s with 2 senior roles under his belt! He kept getting told he either had too much experience or too little. It’s really disheartening and brutal out there!

My brother has autism. He was in a similar position at 23. He ended up going to uni to do engineering - he had to do a foundation course first. It was the making of him. He's now 31 with a good and friends.

We were genuinely worried he would never hold a job down, he was a bit lost from about 15. Sorry not much advice, just wanted to give you some hope.

Have a good look at this CV and applications, is he concentrating on negatives instead of positives?

Is there an Employability organisation in his town ?

Perhaps an organisation like AHEAD could help. I know my employer participates in a 9 month traineeship scheme with them where we take on trainees with a disability in a wide variety of disciplines (both physical and mental - the coordinator understands their disability* but we wouldn’t be told so tbh you wouldn’t necessarily know what it is unless they decide to disclose it themselves). I’ve often seen the trainees blossom with the confidence it gives them and they find employment after it ends. I see on their website that it refers to graduates but Im pretty sure we’ve had trainees with PLC qualifications.
We also have a partnership with AsIAm, the autism charity. They do a lot of work advocating for neurodiversity in the workplace. They might have similar employer traineeship programme.
If you can get any sort of corporate/office experience on your CV (like a traineeship) it can make a massive difference to your CV and likelihood of getting shortlisted, plus you can build up your references.

Tbh neurodiversity in the workplace is the “new”/trendy diversity (to be cynical about it) in the DEI space, so he shouldn’t be shy about disclosing it (to those big blue chip companies that want to be woke) - that way they will understand if/why he doesn’t make eye contact at interview etc rather than just being labelled as weird or ackward.

*and to be clear I don’t see Asperger’s as a disability but from an employment law perspective it is covered as a disability. And someone with a neurodiversity should have “reasonable accommodations” in the workplace.