During the webinar, “Unlock Your Potential: Career Strategies for ADHDers” Sher-Li Torrey, career coach and founder of Mums@Work, gave her insights on job hunting tips for individuals with ADHD. These essential tips will help you bounce back onto the job market equipped with the confidence and skills necessary to thrive in whatever career path you choose, writes Unlocking ADHD writer, Ashley Chay.
Before the Job Hunt: Getting to know yourself
Self-reflection is an essential component to understanding what job positions suit you and how to sell yourself well in a job interview. Metacognition – referring to the awareness of one’s own thought processes and emotions from an objective perspective – can be a struggle for individuals with ADHD due to impairments in executive functioning. As such, it can take more time for individuals with ADHD to realise their skills and interests.
Personality tests are wonderful tools to understand yourself from an impartial viewpoint. Here are some to start off:
- For a career-oriented personality test, we recommend the CliftonStrengths personality tests.
- The Big 5 personality test provides a more general overview into your identity that extends beyond vocational characteristics.
- Sher-Li’s personal favourite is the Myer-Briggs personality test, which you can take for free online. The Myer-Briggs is especially useful as the tool provides concrete career recommendations – additionally, check out our article on Great Jobs for ADHDers.
Interview Tips – Be Concise
For ADHDers, a common experience is feeling like you have a Ferrari brain on bicycle brakes – a barrage of ideas swarms your head continuously and rapidly, yet executing or expressing those ideas is a struggle. As such, conversations often end up going off on a tangent, and conciseness could be a struggle. With employers citing conciseness as one of the most desirable traits for an interviewee, it’s important to overcome this hurdle.
Sher-Li recommends following the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action and Result) to keep yourself concise and focused. Let’s say you’re asked the following question: “Tell me about a weakness of yours.” To follow the STAR format, you would first state the Situation and Task – “Often, I struggle with time management – and this was the case when I was given a large project on market research that I worked on for 2 months.” Then, follow-up with the Action you took to resolve it: “However, I dealt with this daunting task by breaking it up into smaller sections and giving myself mini-deadlines along the way.” Finally, state the Result of your action: “This allowed me to handle the market research project much more smoothly, overcoming my weakness in time management.” The STAR format is a great way to ensure you’re never running the risk of going off-topic, and could help you secure a spot at your dream position.
ADHD Strengths to Highlight in an Interview
During an interview, a common question asked to candidates is to elaborate on their strengths. Although there may be challenges ADHDers face in the workplace, there are many ADHD-specific competencies you can highlight in the interview!
Interpersonal Intuition
ADHDers often find themselves acutely sensitive to the non-verbal cues and body language of others, giving them the extraordinary ability to read the unspoken emotions of others. In her book, “The Gift of ADHD: How to Transform Your Child’s Problems into Strengths”, Lara highlights how while the ADHDer’s high interpersonal intuition may be overwhelming at times, it is also a gift to be nurtured. The sensitivity to the true emotions of others comes in handy when engaging in job or investment negotiations, and makes ADHDers excellent at human resources and negotiating business deals.
Unconventional Ways of Looking at a Problem
Individuals with ADHD are excellent visionary thinkers and problem solvers – while ADHDers may often face challenges focusing on intricacies and detailed information, their unique ways of looking at a problem is a huge strength that should be cultivated. This can be highly beneficial in fields such as cyber security, which boast a higher proportion of neurodivergent individuals working in the industry than others, due to the need for creative problem-solving and divergent thinking.
If you’re interested in finding out more things to love about your diagnosis, check out our other article on 7 Things to love about ADHD – UnlockingADHD.
Resume Tips
Avoid Excessive “Creative” Details
Give a scroll on Canvas or just search “resume templates” and you’ll find a bunch of fancy options. Be careful, though, as these may actually be one of the most unprofessional resumes to base yours off of.
One pet peeve that Sher-Li mentioned in the conference was how she’s seen people rate their skill sets out of 5 stars. As Sher-Li humorously remarked, “Of course I’ve never seen someone rate themselves lower than 5 stars on a skill!” If you want to demonstrate your skills, we recommend listing them as substantiated claims – as suggested in the next section.
What if I Don’t Have a Lot to Put On My Resume Yet?
If you’re a student, you may be wondering how to beef up your resume without any prior experience. Fret not, as there are many other ways to demonstrate your capabilities!
For instance, demonstrate the skills that you have through the CCAs or volunteer work you’re in. Other things you could put are awards or achievements you’ve earned during your studies – this could be scholarships or school-based awards that your institution offers.
The most important thing is to ensure you have evidence for and substantiate your claims. Don’t just put the phrase “leadership skills” and expect the hiring manager to take your word for it – give evidence for where you’ve demonstrated and exercised those skills (i.e. school counsellor), and you’ll be walking right through the doors of success.
Conclusion
The current social climate makes navigating the job landscape as difficult as ever. Nevertheless, we’re confident that you’ll be able to succeed in any endeavour equipped with the essential tips listed above. And hey – if you end up landing your dream job (we’re sure you will!) check out our other article on Thriving At Working with ADHD.
Sher Li’s slides from the webinar can be accessed here.
A recording of the webinar, “Unlock Your Potential! Career Strategies for ADHDers” can be viewed below.
