Customer service position interview
[Ali, HR Representative] Brianna, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
[B] I am a student at St. Catherine University majoring in History. I am interested in different eras of history, periods of history. I enjoy working with people, I am a dedicated worker, and I’m conscientious, courteous and kind.
[A] Excellent! Great! What do you expect from your supervisor in a position?
[B] Well… I learn best when I’m given clear, precise instructions. I am a very visual learner so I would like to be shown how… I would like my supervisor when they’re training me to show me how to do something. I highlight my employer to understand that sometimes working in a team can be a little bit challenging for me since I tend to… I overextend myself. So, I think that would help for someone to tell me, again, clearly what they expect from me. But then also I give guidelines for setting boundaries for myself.
[Brianna speaking] For me, personally, it would have been helpful for me to have the questions ahead of time. Sometimes I do struggle with… I struggle with on-the-spot questions because I’m a type of person that I like to know what to expect before. I like to have some idea of what to expect before it happens and so on-the-spot questions can sometimes throw me off.
[Displayed on screen] Some individuals will benefit from examples of questions prior to the interview.
[A] So do you kind of see yourself as taking a leadership role in groups?
[B] I don’t think I’m quite ready for a leadership role yet. I think I would like to start off as.. start with sort of a more experienced employee or role of a mentor but I believe that with time and experience I can grow into that role.
[A] OK, great.
[Brianna speaking] One thing I think people should know is that autism isn’t necessarily a handicap. It depends on how… it really depends on how you deal with it. You know you can make it a handicap but I think you can also use it as an opportunity for growth because even people with autism have something to offer the world and I think it’s something that employers need to take advantage of.
[A] And what would you say are your opportunities for improvement?
[B] I do struggle a little bit with organisation and time management but I am currently working with someone at St. Catherine University’s O’Neill Centre to help me refine those skills. I am also… it is that my dedication to my work can also become a handicap because it could lead me to take on too much. But I think being at college I’m learning that, you know, not everything has to be perfect.
[Ali speaking] When she expressed her weakness or areas of opportunity, I appreciated that she just told me ‘You know, these are some things that I tend to struggle with’, but what I liked is that she said ‘Here are the things that I’m doing to correct that or improve that’. So, to me it doesn’t matter if you just bluntly say here is where kind of my faults are or my areas of opportunity if you can show me that you’re working on improving that. I think that’s golden.
[A] Can you describe a difficult situation and how you handled it?
[B] I think a difficult situation for me is knowing from where to start, work responsibilities and knowing how far to go, so I think… what… a lot of time… I think it was a time particular where… [stops]
[Ali speaking] Some of the things I did in the interview to make it go more smoothly… if she were to take a long pause or to be really thinking about her answer it kind of give her that space to think an develop her response, but if it felt like it was going a little too long just probing a little bit more and asking her ‘Can I rephrase that? Is there a better way for me to ask that?’ and she said yes so then I was able to ask that in a different way.
[A] Do you want me to rephrase it maybe?
[B] Yeah…
[A] Sure! OK, can you describe a time during any job in which you were faced with stresses which tested your coping skills? what did you do?
[Displayed on screen] Inconsistent eye contact does not mean inattentiveness; it is a processing strategy.
[B] I tend to like clear precise instructions so when I was working on a group project at St. Hayes I was paired with two other girls and I wasn’t feeling like I was getting a lot of… feeling like I was getting a lot of clarification from them, so I ended up doing… I e-mailed both of them saying ‘I am a little confused on what are you… little confused on what we’re supposed to be doing’, and so I said ‘Can we arrange to meet after class face to face so we can clarify what each of our roles in this project is so I can do my part without taking on someone else’s role by mistake?’
[A] And did that help the situation?
[B] Yes, I believe it did.
[A] OK, great.
[Brianna speaking] For some people with autism it can be very difficult to… vague directions can be very difficult to understand because every person has their own interpretation of what those questions have mean, and I think that by providing a clear context for the questions the interviewer is asking I think it would make people with autism not only more comfortable but more confident in their ability to answer those kind of questions. For example, one of the questions I was asked was ‘describe a time when you have solved a difficult problem’: that was more difficult for me to answer because problems can mean different things to different people so I was trying to… I had to figure out ‘What is the problem I faced in the past that can be relatable to the job position that I’m interviewing for but also that is comfortable enough to share without being too private or too inappropriate?’
[A] What interests you about the tasks of the position?
[B] I enjoy working with other people so I think I’m very interested in responding to customer inquiries and dealing with external customers because I think that one of my strengths is being able to become an expert on a topic and then explaining it to people, so I think that that is something that has interested me because it’s not only my strength but it’s something I like doing.
[A] OK, great.
