The Career Advice Problem No One Talks About
How changing entry into the job market could increase retention and job satisfaction
As someone who is neurodivergent, I have often found interviews incredibly difficult. For years, I went from one unsuccessful interview to another, struggling to convince employers that I would be a good hire.
At the same time, I have met people who have successfully convinced employers they had skills they didn’t actually possess.
One woman I met had included French on her CV, despite having only studied it at GCSE level. Her employer didn’t question her ability and simply assumed she could speak it fluently. I met her in an intermediate French class. She had enrolled because her employer asked her to speak with a Francophone client, and she found herself frantically typing into Google Translate while speaking to them. She told me she realised it was probably time to make her claim that she spoke French true.
Another example was even more striking. I once received a call from a former colleague who said, “Rachel, what am I going to do? This job expects me to programme, and I can’t do it.” When I asked whether she would consider learning for the £60,000 salary, she said no. To this day, I don’t know whether she resigned or was dismissed.
These experiences made me question how well interviews actually predict job performance. Interviews often seem to reward confidence, presentation style, and perceived capability rather than consistently measuring real skills or long-term job suitability.
Alongside the limitations of interviews in placing people in suitable jobs, employers often look for skills that can easily be exaggerated or misrepresented, as the examples above illustrate. They also rely on proxies for these skills, such as prior job experience. This can leave candidates trapped in a familiar catch-22: how do you gain experience if employers require experience to hire you?
There is also a further issue. Former employers are often limited in what they can say in references, which means that simply having worked in a role is not necessarily evidence of good performance or suitability. More importantly, having experience in a job does not guarantee that a role is a good fit for someone’s working style or personality.
Very few employers or recruitment agencies consider whether individuals are suited to an environment in terms of pacing for example, stimulation thresholds (whether someone prefers quiet, task-focused environments or more socially and cognitively busy ones) and workload rhythms (whether someone works best managing multiple tasks at once or focusing deeply on one task at a time).
I would argue that before someone enters a role, there should be greater consideration of fit in terms of stimulation preferences and workload patterns. In some cases, individuals may be better suited to changing career direction entirely if the pacing and demands of their current environment are consistently mismatched with how they work best.
This is particularly important for neurodivergent individuals. Differences in areas such as working memory, processing speed, or attention regulation can mean that environments with the wrong level of stimulation or poorly matched workload rhythms create significantly greater strain. What might be mildly stressful for one employee can become overwhelming or unsustainable for another, even when both are equally capable and motivated.
I also think that employment agencies working with neurodivergent candidates need to reconsider how they operate. Many of these services are measured primarily on how quickly they place candidates into jobs, rather than whether individuals remain in those roles long term. This can unintentionally push neurodivergent people into cycles of short-term employment where they repeatedly enter roles that are poorly matched to how they work best.
This pattern can damage confidence and, in some cases, contribute to burnout or meltdowns. Occupational psychology research increasingly suggests that job retention is strongly linked to person–environment fit — including factors such as stimulation level, workload pacing, and working style — rather than relying solely on intellectual ability or previous experience.
If job success is more strongly influenced by person–environment fit than by previous experience alone, recruitment processes may need to place greater emphasis on potential rather than past roles. One possible approach would be supervised, paid trial shifts or trial employment periods that allow both employer and employee to assess whether a role is a good match.
Other possible approaches that would be good options for recruitment and retention:
Employers could consider flexible role design, sometimes called job carving, where responsibilities are adapted to better match an individual’s strengths and working style.
Organisations allowing employees to move between roles when pacing or environmental fit becomes problematic.
Employment services could measure long-term retention and wellbeing rather than focusing solely on initial job placement.
This could particularly benefit neurodivergent candidates, but it could also support individuals returning to work after career breaks, such as those who have been raising children or caring for relatives. Approaches that prioritise fit may not only help more people enter employment but also increase long-term retention and job satisfaction, which ultimately benefits both employers and employees.
Disclaimer: This article was written with the assistance of AI editing tools. All ideas, opinions, and experiences are my own.
If you found this article interesting, I host a podcast which includes many social justice topics such as neurodiversity, work, and career development. You can listen here: [https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/2393977/dashboard]
If you would like to support my work, you can do so here:
[https://ko-fi.com/rachelm_thescienceintersection]