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A candidate walks into the interview. Ten years of relevant experience, exceptional analytical ability, real and tangible creativity.
Yet they leave without a callback.
The format worked against them. Their skills were never the issue.
I’ve been working as an interview coach since the launch of DNA Professional Evolution in January 2025, but my understanding of the interview process is built on far more than that. Twenty-five years in customer service, two management positions in different sectors, a decade in management. I’ve conducted many interviews from the recruiter’s side before supporting candidates on the other side of the table.
This dual perspective – evaluator and coach– is at the heart of my practice. In full transparency, my knowledge of neurodiversity doesn’t come only from books or training – it was built in real life, day by day. And I believe it’s that lived experience that changes the way you listen.
What I observe in practice
The standard interview is a precise format: a real-time encounter under evaluative pressure, where the candidate is expected to structure a coherent response in seconds, read the non-verbal cues of their interviewer and present themselves with confidence without appearing arrogant.
These rules are written nowhere.
They are assumed to be known because they feel natural to a certain type of candidate. That candidate is called neurotypical. Not better, not more competent. Simply wired in a way that aligns with what the format expects: verbal fluency, sequential thinking under pressure, comfort with social improvisation. When those conditions are met, the format disappears. When they are not, it becomes the main obstacle.
Neurodiversity is the recognition that human brains don’t all work the same way and that certain profiles are disadvantaged by a format that was never designed for them.
Here is what I observe, session after session.
Some candidates arrive with branching, associative thinking and genuine creativity. In an interview, that richness becomes a problem: responses overflow, examples pile on, the thread gets lost. For a candidate with ADHD, organizing their thinking in real time is already a full cognitive task in itself, before they’ve even answered the first question.
Others interpret questions with literal precision, while the interviewer is looking for an implicit demonstration of a specific competency. An autistic candidate simultaneously managing the load of non-verbal communication, decoding subtext and formulating an adequate response faces a demand that the standard interview simply does not recognize. Their analytical intelligence, often remarkable, doesn’t register through the same signals as the intelligence conventionally expected in this format.
There are also those who over-nuance or who hesitate to simplify because simplification feels inaccurate who don’t know how to present a skill they consider ordinary, unaware that what seems ordinary to them often isn’t. Gifted individuals systematically underestimate what impresses others and that involuntary modesty can read as hesitation.
Others still arrive with anticipatory anxiety that has nothing to do with their command of the role. It’s the format itself that generates the stress: timed tests, written components in practical exercises, unpredictable structures. For many individuals with Dys profiles (dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysphasia and others), what the interview demands often bears no relation to what the role will require day-to-day.
Neurodiversity is the recognition that human brains don’t all work the same way and that certain profiles are disadvantaged by a format that was never designed for them.
These profiles are not boxes to check. The same diagnosis can manifest in radically different ways from one person to the next and co-occurring conditions are common, for example, ADHD and anxiety, ASD and giftedness, various syndromes in combination. In my practice, some people arrive with a diagnosis, others with a self-diagnosis, others without any label at all. What the person chooses to share or not does not change how we work together. What guides the work is what they are actually experiencing.
What these candidates carry into the room often goes well beyond ordinary interview nerves. Several have told me they don’t know how to be themselves in this format, that they fear naming their profile will expose them to pity or ostracism, or that they worry about being sidelined from strategic roles. These fears are not irrational. They reflect real experiences, lived before ever sitting across from me.
Adjustments that make a difference
What I’ve learned is that targeted adjustments are often enough to make a candidate’s real potential readable.
Decoding questions before preparing answers: Many neurodivergent candidates answer the literal question, when the interviewer is actually looking for a demonstration of a specific competency. “Tell me about a challenge you’ve overcome” is a disguised assessment of resilience or conflict management, depending on the role. Working on “what’s behind the question” radically changes the relevance of answers. For some candidates, a simple table, question – target competency – personal example, is enough to transform their preparation.
Adapting response structure to the candidate’s way of thinking: The STAR model assumes sequential thinking, which doesn’t work for everyone. A candidate with ADHD may need different anchor points; an autistic candidate, an even more structured framework; a gifted person, practice at trimming rather than adding. The structure is built with the candidate.
Working on regulation before working on content: Performance anxiety precedes every question. Together, we name what happens internally when pressure hits and build discreet routines to draw on before and during the interview. Breathing, grounding, a starter phrase: micro-tools that are invisible but change everything about internal state when walking into the room.
Making explicit what is usually tacit: How long can you take before answering? How do you signal that you’re thinking without it being read as hesitation? Can you ask for clarification? These questions deserve concrete answers, practiced in simulation.
Legitimizing the pause: “I’ll take a moment to organize my response” is a perfectly acceptable thing to say in an interview. Naming it and practicing it out loud changes the relationship to silence; it stops feeling like failure and becomes a tool.
Preparing for less familiar formats: Personality tests, group scenarios, asynchronous video interviews, panels: each format generates specific reactions in a neurodivergent candidate. This requires knowing the format in advance, which is why employer transparency matters. When that information is available, targeted preparation allows the candidate to get comfortable with the format in a safe setting rather than encountering it under pressure.
Where career counselling and interview coaching meet
It happens that a client has done all the foundational work: they know what they want, they know their strengths, they’re ready to move forward. And yet, the interviews go nowhere.
What I observe in those situations is a gap between two types of competencies. Career counselling clarifies direction. Interview coaching prepares performance in a precise format: communication under pressure, reading implicit codes, real-time adaptation. For neurodivergent profiles, this gap is often particularly pronounced, because the standard interview format demands exactly what requires the most effort from them.
A few signals that tell me someone could benefit from this kind of support: they describe their experiences with precision in a comfortable setting, but lose the thread the moment they feel evaluated; they come back from interview after interview without understanding what went wrong, despite genuine preparation; they express anticipatory anxiety with no connection to their actual mastery of the role.
These two types of preparation do not substitute for each other. They address distinct needs, often in sequence.
What the interview actually measures
The interview assesses a candidate’s ability to perform in a specific format, under pressure, according to rules that are largely implicit.
For neurodivergent candidates, who process information, communicate, manage pressure differently from what the format expects, this reality deserves to be named and prepared for explicitly.
I myself, during my years in management, performed better in interviews where I was told the format in advance, ideally several days ahead. That experience directly shaped how I welcomed candidates when it was my turn. What I suggest to employers, I first applied to myself.
What I’m after, in every coaching relationship, is for a candidate’s intelligence to finally be readable in the format they’re being asked to demonstrate it in.
Perhaps, reading this, a face came to mind. A client you were supporting, bright and prepared, who came back from interview after interview without understanding what was blocking them. Maybe you didn’t quite have the words for it either. These candidates are in every one of your offices. They’re doing the work. They deserve to be given the right tools, at the right moment. And that part, collectively, we can do better.
