Employer Branding Muddles Neurodivergent Job Search

A nagging, life-long query resurfaced as I started exploring profession choices once more: The place do I match? And the way and the place am I meant to discover a function that results in a life I may be pleased with?

I not too long ago researched employer branding to higher perceive employer and company views. Nevertheless, it additionally gave me helpful insights into why the hunt for the proper job appears so elusive for folks with ADHD.

Employer branding is basically an organization’s relationship profile: It makes the corporate as interesting as doable for the expertise it needs to draw and rent. It really works like a magnet in conventional haystack recruiting, successfully pulling the needle to the recruiter, saving them time and sources looking via the remainder of the hay to seek out it. This streamlines their hiring course of as sturdy candidates who’re additionally a superb cultural match are already and engaged with the model. It’s the enterprise model of a low-cut prime and nice hair, selling an interesting picture of the corporate and its tradition, or “character,” and what your work life might be like if you happen to be a part of them.

Chasing One other Dream Job with ADHD

Employer branding is each catnip and kryptonite for folks with ADHD.

We are able to’t assist however chase the dream job and profession. We’re keen to purchase into the corporate’s model picture and idealize belonging there; to be joyful in our work, with a superb wage and advantages bundle to do one thing we love in a spot the place we really feel needed, revered, understood, and financially and socially safe. It doesn’t matter if we’ve by no means heard of the corporate or if the trade’s tanking; we view our jobs as a brand new journey full of potential, and we’re excited to make a distinction. As soon as we’re in, we’re all in — till it begins to go fallacious.

One minute, we’re tremendous joyful to lastly discover a ‘work residence,’ and the following, we’re left feeling like one thing’s a bit off. Folks with ADHD are real, loyal, hard-working, open, adaptable, (far too) trustworthy, and sometimes socially dependent but oblivious creatives who assume in a different way from our non-ADHD friends. We’re real gold mud however with a slight catch. We make errors that look careless however aren’t, do issues a peculiar method, and miss particulars (just like the boring bits of the job description!). Typically we miss deadlines and particulars others deem apparent and talk in a humorous method, particularly after we really feel overwhelmed and don’t notice it.

[Free Download: 8 Dream Jobs For Adults with ADHD]

We make these little ADHD errors early on, after which we overthink each single one in all them as a result of we actually care about doing good work and take nice pleasure in it. The disgrace is a giant blow, and we care a lot that generally it may possibly drive us mad. We lose sleep, and our ADHD signs spike, particularly over unavoidable essential suggestions, which we don’t all the time know how one can react to or course of within the second. So, we do our greatest to adapt, or we overcompensate.

In the end, we get damage — lots — throughout our careers, particularly when our ADHD errors add up. We’ve got a better fee of getting fired than folks with out ADHD. Typically, we’re simply the fallacious match for a job, however our brains, that are primed on sturdy feelings like ache, rejection, and pleasure, blame ourselves for the mismatch. This forces us into a continuing inside suggestions loop fraught with damaging considering.

Debunking Employer Branding

Like most photos of fairly folks on social media and relationship profiles, employer branding doesn’t inform the entire reality. It’s the picture that the company genuinely aspires to and desires us to see in an try and construct a relationship that creates loyalty and pleasure even earlier than the primary interview.

The reality is that enormous organizations are run by a combination of individuals with completely different attitudes, agendas, backgrounds, and pictures of what makes a decent skilled or a inventive. Making an attempt to satisfy that ambiguity could make us really feel like we’re a bogart from Harry Potter, whirling and morphing each time we obtain suggestions till we lastly flip right into a balloon, whiz across the room, and retreat to the protection of our darkish little cabinet. It’s exhausting, as is the unrealistic strain we placed on ourselves to be ‘excellent’.

[Free Download: How to Figure Out Your Career Calling]

So, after we encounter this seductive employer branding, with its stunning blonde hair and beautiful smile, we should perceive that it’s as real as every other social media submit or relationship profile. Nevertheless it’s additionally written by a superb particular person genuinely attempting to offer us what they assume we wish too.

After all, after the toil of job searching, it’s pure to really feel enamored by a brand new place. However simply as we have to handle our expectations in any new relationship, we have to take a step again through the first few months, keep impartial, bear in mind ourselves, acclimate to the job, and perceive that the folks we work with and for are solely human. They, too, have flaws.

However don’t surrender hope.

There’s an actual particular person behind each job commercial who might be confused about what they need, identical to you. In the end, they solely need what’s greatest for his or her crew, to rent somebody they will depend on and work with, who makes a greater future for them and the corporate. Somebody they are often pleased with. We’ve got to belief that they see us for who we’re, and till then, we now have no alternative however to stand up and take a look at once more till we discover that excellent match.

Good luck.

Navigating Employer Branding: Subsequent Steps

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