Enhancing Interview Preparation for Autistic Job Seekers through Human-AI Collaboration

Autistic adults commonly face challenges with social interaction, making job interviews a particularly difficult part of the job search process. This work seeks to understand how AI can provide collaborative support to address the unique needs of autistic job seekers. First, we conducted a formative study with five autistic job seekers and five vocational coaches to gain an in-depth understanding of specific challenges during interview preparation for autistic job seekers, and also discuss their perspectives on the design and use of an intelligent interview coach. In this formative study, we identified the unique challenges faced by autistic job seekers (masking and disclosure) and learned the importance of concise feedback delivery and procedural scaffolding when preparing autistic job seekers for interviews. In our second study, we developed a design probe for an intelligent interview coaching system tailored to autistic job seekers and conducted this follow-up study with three autistic job seekers and three vocational coaches to explore the design concepts identified in the formative study. In this study, we learned that adding anxiety and confidence assessments, personalization components, and visual structure should be design considerations when developing an intelligent interview coaching system for autistic job seekers. From the results of this study, we also discuss considerations for human-AI collaboration within intelligent interview coaching systems. We highlight the potential and limitations of intelligent interview coaching systems in supporting autistic job seekers and vocational coaches and offer design considerations for developing future collaborative AI assistants for interview preparation.