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  • Report to the office once in a while and stay connected with people there

  • You need clients. Try your best to be connected

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    3h

    According to NYC labor law, an employer cannot ask for personal information not pertaining to the position for which you are applying. Questions... regarding protected characteristics—such as age, marital status, religion, disability, or family planning—are generally illegal as they can facilitate discrimination during the hiring. Become familiar with the this so in the future, you may know how to self-advocate and defend your rights. more

  • There's no formal job that requires such information. You can choose not to respond to that line of questioning for a job interview in the future. ... This gives you an indicator of what kind of employer you will be working with. It is not professional!  more

11 Options For The Best AI Tool For Executive Resume: ATS-Ready Builders Compared


Blink and your executive résumé is already on the next screen. Recruiters give most files about eight seconds of attention, and 90 percent of hiring managers welcome AI-assisted polish. In a market where applicant-tracking systems reject documents before humans see them, the right AI can surface crisp metrics and targeted keywords that keep you in play.

This guide compares 11 AI résumé platforms,... each tailored to a specific executive need -- clearing ATS filters, drafting fast, sharpening brand visuals, running a stealth search, or auditing a final pass. Read on and turn those eight seconds into an interview invite.

How we tested, and why this guide is sorted by need not ego

You deserve a review process as rigorous as the board packet you present each quarter. We built a six-factor scorecard, ran real executive executive résumés through every platform, and pushed each download through modern applicant-tracking software.

First, we mapped the landscape. Our team scraped Google, Reddit, G2, and SHRM white papers, then shortlisted tools with active releases from 2024 to 2026 and verifiable AI features. Any builder that forced a public link or limited résumés to one page was cut.

Next came hands-on sprints. We fed each tool a seasoned CFO résumé, toggled every AI switch, and watched for three non-negotiables: leadership tone, hard metrics, and clean parsing. If a platform failed an ATS gateway on the first export, it lost major points -- over 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies rely on those filters (jobscan.co).

Finally, we scored six weighted criteria. ATS alignment and leadership content topped the list, followed by value. Paying twenty dollars for a month of unlimited tailored résumés beats waiting a week for a four-figure writer.

The results were clear: each standout platform solves a specific pain point. Ranking them in one linear list made no sense, so we grouped winners by what they do best -- beating bots, drafting fast, branding, tracking, or auditing.

Think of the next sections as a decision tree. Choose the challenge that keeps you up at night, and you will find the right AI co-pilot waiting.

Segment A | Beat the bots: tools that slip past the algorithm gatekeepers

Hiring software never blinks. It parses headers, counts keywords, and tosses anything it cannot decode. That single step blocks many applicants, and more than 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies rely on these systems to screen résumés (jobscan.co).

Our first stop is a trio of AI helpers built to satisfy those filters. Each treats your executive résumé like structured data, auditing every heading, date, and verb until the file reaches a recruiter intact.

Rezi: our top pick for ATS precision

Rezi approaches résumé writing like an engineer debugging code, which is why more than four million job seekers trust it (rezi.ai).

Open the dashboard and you will see the Rezi Score, a color-coded gauge that grades your draft from 1 to 100 across twenty-three checkpoints: keyword density, bullet length, date formatting, and whether you buried metrics at the end of a sentence (rezi.ai). Edit a line, change "managed budget" to "oversaw a $42 million P&L," and the score updates in real time, nudging you toward a safe number above 90.

Paste a job description into the Keyword Scanner and Rezi highlights missing phrases in yellow. Add them only when accurate and watch the gauge climb. The workflow feels like a quiet video game for compliance.

Under the hood sit minimalist templates free of tables, text boxes, and exotic fonts. Power users in regulated sectors such as defense, healthcare, and finance report that Rezi exports parse without errors. One CFO saved forty minutes on every application by trusting the score instead of tweaking layout details.

Pricing is friendly: one fully functional executive résumé is free, and unlimited drafts, scans, and cover letters cost about $29 a month or a one-time lifetime fee.

If your goal is to clear the robot wall every time, Rezi is a reliable way through.

Jobscan: the keyword sleuth that reverse engineers every posting

If Rezi is an engineer, Jobscan is a private investigator. Provide a job description and your résumé, and it returns a side-by-side report showing every keyword, skill, or credential that matters. A green check means you are covered, while a red X tells the ATS -- and later the recruiter -- that a gap exists.

The process is simple: paste, click Scan, and watch your Match Rate appear. Beneath the percentage sits a checklist of hard skills, soft skills, and industry terms. Add real examples of "cloud architecture" or "P&L ownership," rescan, and the number rises. At eighty percent, Jobscan flashes a banner; in our tests that level consistently pushed real ATS parsers to rank the file as a high-fit candidate. Another useful feature is pattern recognition across multiple postings. Save five target roles and the tool aggregates overlaps, noting that "digital transformation" appears in four descriptions while "Six Sigma" shows up once. Edit once and satisfy many.

You get five free scans each month. Unlimited scans and LinkedIn audits cost about $49, worthwhile if you often apply through Fortune 500 portals.

When you need to mirror a posting's language without sounding robotic, Jobscan reveals every missing clue.

Executive Resume Worded: the fast audit that sharpens impact before you hit send

You have tuned the keywords and cleared parsing. Now you need an editor that asks, "Does this read like an executive who delivers?" Resume Worded answers in under two minutes.

Upload your PDF and the platform assigns grades for impact, brevity, style, and ATS compatibility. It flags a 42-word bullet and suggests trimming to twenty. It notices "responsible for" and recommends "drove," "headed," or "spearheaded." Small tweaks create a large perception shift.

Examples power the feedback. Click any weak bullet and Executive Resume Worded shows high-scoring alternatives from real VP and C-level résumés. You copy the structure -- action verb, metric, outcome -- not the content. One COO turned "improved margins" into "lifted EBITDA margin four points within eighteen months," a line that later anchored interviews.

Billing stays simple: the basic score is free, and a full pass with unlimited edits costs about $49 a month. Log in, collect targeted edits, and apply with confidence.

With Resume Worded on your side, your résumé stops echoing a job description and starts sounding like a track record.

Segment B | Zero-to-draft fast: tools that write the first 80 percent for you

Blank pages unsettle even seasoned leaders. When you need a solid draft before the next flight boards, AI generators can help. They pull from large language models, your role, and the job post to create a credible two-page résumé you can refine on the way to the airport.

Kickresume: from job title to polished draft in under ten minutes

Kickresume feels like a friendly chatbot inside a design studio. Type "VP of Marketing," choose a template, and the platform's GPT-4 engine produces a complete executive résumé -- profile summary, metric-driven bullets, and skills grid -- all in about eight minutes.

Each section contains a mini editor. Click a bullet, add notes about revenue growth or team size, and the text refines itself while preserving your voice.

Design is the second advantage. More than 40 executive templates keep typography tight and colors restrained, and every layout has been tested for ATS parsing. Switch templates mid-build and content flows without manual fixes.

Pricing stays reasonable: one résumé is free, and unlimited generations, cover letters, and cloud storage cost about $24 for a month. If starting from scratch feels painful, Kickresume gives you a head start while you add the numbers only you can supply.

AIApply: multilingual, multi-submit power when you are casting a wide net

Sometimes the target is not one role but three regions. AIApply covers that need. Enter a title, paste a job ad, and its GPT-4 core delivers a two-page résumé plus cover letter in seconds, then offers translations in more than 50 languages.

We tested a "Chief Operations Officer" prompt in English, German, and Spanish. Formatting held, leadership verbs adapted to each language, and metrics remained intact. For executives handling EMEA and LATAM searches, one-click localization beats hiring multiple writers.

AIApply also automates outreach. Turn on Auto-Apply and the system scans major boards, adjusts keywords for each post, and submits on your behalf. We recommend manual review until you trust the workflow; executive moves still need care.

The plan costs about $50 a month for unlimited drafts and submissions, with a free trial for one résumé. If you rely on high-volume, cross-border outreach, few tools cover as many needs this quickly.

Segment C | Visual executive branding: tools that wrap metrics in memorable design

A two-page résumé packed with results is great. A two-page résumé that looks ready for the boardroom is even better. The platforms in this segment add strong but ATS-safe design, giving recruiters a sense of polish before they read a single verb.

Enhancv: story-forward layouts that balance flair with parsing discipline

The Enhancv AI resume builder first runs your draft through an AI match-score check, then invites you to adjust keywords before you pick a layout.

Open the refreshed dashboard and you will see templates that resemble concise annual-report pages: subtle color bands, infographics, and sidebars for board roles or key wins. Every visual touch sits on clean HTML, so text stays readable when an ATS strips styling.

The secret is the AI Mentor. Draft a plain bullet such as "reduced costs across departments," click Improve, and the mentor asks for numbers, rewrites in active voice, and suggests context, turning it into "cut operating spend $4.3 million by realigning vendor contracts." Each suggestion appears inside the editor; you accept or tweak, keeping control of tone.

Leaders juggling multiple markets will appreciate one-click translations into 30 languages. The German version of our test CFO résumé kept dates, metrics, and line breaks intact.

Enhancv offers a free trial with a watermark. Full export rights cost about $25 for a month.

If your leadership story needs visual punch without risking ATS rejection, Enhancv delivers.

Canva: total creative control when you want a résumé that matches your brand palette

Canva is a full design studio that includes thousands of résumé templates. Need your CV to echo the navy-gold palette from your investor deck? Two clicks update every heading, accent bar, and icon.

Inside the editor lives Magic Write, Canva's GPT-powered assistant. Highlight a summary paragraph, ask for a sharper rewrite that spotlights strategic turnarounds, and new copy appears in place while keeping your fonts and spacing.

To avoid parsing issues, filter templates by the "ATS-friendly" tag and choose single-column layouts with standard fonts. We exported a visually rich CFO résumé to PDF, ran it through Rezi's scanner, and scored above 90, proving you can gain style without harming search performance.

The free tier has many templates, but color and brand-kit controls unlock with the $13 Pro plan. Executives often keep Canva for decks and social assets long after the job hunt ends.

Choose Canva when you already know your story and want every document to look unmistakably "you."

Novorésumé: polished, recruiter-tested layouts when you want guidance baked in

Not every leader enjoys tweaking kerning. Novorésumé solves that with 16 templates vetted by recruiters and ATS tools. Pick a look -- classic, modern, or executive -- and the builder locks line spacing, section order, and font hierarchy so the file stays clean even after edits.

As you type, a live content optimizer scores each bullet. Omit a metric and a side note reminds you that numbers improve callback rates. Slip into passive voice and it recommends a stronger verb. The coaching feels like tips from a seasoned writer without the hourly fee.

Novorésumé shines when you need both a one-page board bio and a two-page operational résumé. Duplicate the file, hide or reveal sections with a click, and export each version without reformatting.

The free plan supports one page; multi-page support and full optimization tools cost about $16 a month. For executives who prefer structure over endless tinkering, Novorésumé provides a refined look and instant writing guidance that keeps every version boardroom ready.

Segment D | Search command and control: platforms that keep every application organized

Teal: private CRM for juggling multiple executive pipelines

Many C-suite searches run on parallel tracks: several recruiters, direct applications, and quiet referrals. Spreadsheets collapse at that volume. Teal replaces them with a Kanban board that stores every role, résumé version, and follow-up date in one place.

Add the Chrome extension, click a LinkedIn posting, and Teal imports the description, logo, and recruiter contact into a new card. From there you can drop notes, set reminders, and launch a résumé audit against the job text. Keywords such as "P&L management" that appear in the ad but not in your file glow red until you add them.

Leadership Mode scans for power verbs, checks that your summary shows scope and scale, and recommends swapping "managed" for "oversaw a $180 million budget." Each tweak updates an on-screen score so you know when the file is ready.

The free tier offers unlimited résumés and five keyword suggestions. Teal+ unlocks full AI credits, premium templates, and email nudges for about $29 a month.

If you track more than three active opportunities, Teal keeps the workflow organised and visible.

Resume.io: rapid template switching for executives applying at scale

When the plan is volume -- fifteen tailored applications in a week -- speed matters. Resume.io delivers that pace. The form-based editor lets you move through Contact, Experience, Skills, and Education in one flow; a live preview shows how the file will appear in the chosen template.

Need to shift tone? Switch from a single-column layout to a two-column design and content reorders itself instantly, no manual fixes required. Many executives keep a master résumé in Resume.io, duplicate it, then adjust the headline and top bullets before exporting a PDF.

The built-in AI assistant flags passive voice, suggests tighter phrasing, and can transcribe voice notes if you dictate ideas between meetings. An optional Recruiter Match toggle shares your résumé with companies browsing Resume.io's talent pool; you can disable it for a confidential search.

Building and previewing are free. Downloads start with a low-cost week pass or a $24 monthly plan. For leaders who value quick iteration over deep design control, Resume.io keeps applications moving and ATS-safe.

Segment E | Independent sanity check: AI auditors to use after formatting is done

VMock: blunt scoring that benchmarks you against peer résumés

Even a polished draft benefits from a fresh eye. VMock provides that perspective at scale, comparing your résumé to a database of more than 500,000 professional documents and rating it on impact, presentation, and ATS strength.

Upload a PDF and within sixty seconds you receive three headline scores plus a heat-map overlay. Red boxes show a 38-word bullet, a missing dollar figure, or a date that could trigger bias. Green highlights celebrate strong metrics and crisp verbs.

Executives like the Peer percentile insight. Scoring an 82 in Impact means your quantified results outrank four out of five senior-leader résumés in VMock's sample. It pushes you to add one more solid number.

Because VMock is not a builder, you revise in Word or your preferred tool, then re-upload until the dashboard turns green. Many MBA programs provide free access; individual plans start around $20 for ten review credits, enough to refine each major variant.

Use VMock as the final gatekeeper. When its algorithm stops flagging issues, both bots and humans will focus on your story instead of your formatting.

Snapshot scorecard: 11 tools at a glance

Conclusion

Keep this grid close. When a role appears at 4 pm and the deadline is midnight, you will know exactly which AI ally to use.

Frequently asked questions

Do recruiters care if I use AI?

No. A 2025 survey shows that 90 percent of hiring managers welcome AI-assisted résumés as long as the facts are accurate. Edit every line so you can defend it in conversation and you will be fine.

Will an AI-generated résumé pass ATS filters?

Yes, if you export from an ATS-friendly template and keep graphics minimal. Tools such as Rezi, Jobscan, and Novorésumé include parsing checks; run them before you click apply.

How can I keep my search confidential?

Stay on platforms that protect files behind a login. Turn off any "public URL" or "talent pool" features. If you must share a link, replace employer names with placeholders until you secure an interview.

Do I still need a professional executive résumé writer?

AI handles structure, keywords, and first drafts quickly and at low cost. A writer can still refine narrative tone. Many executives draft with AI, then hire a writer for a single high-stakes polish round.

What is the biggest mistake executives make with AI builders?

Relying on default copy. Generators can sound generic or inflate achievements you cannot prove. Treat AI as a starting point, then layer in your own numbers, voice, and context.
 
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  • Please don't quit just yet, its too early to make such a decision considering it has only been two months. Exercise patience and complete the project... as you look for other better opportunities elsewhere if your effort is not being recognized. more

  • Quitting now is not the solution, continue working diligently and let your work speak out for itself. if you leave now in the middle of the project... someone else is coming in to take the glory for your hard efforts. meanwhile start looking for another job because from your boss response there is no hope of any future increment. more

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  • She just needs mentorship. have one on one talk with her to understand her challenges and build her capacity on the specific areas. Firing her without... giving her a chance is inhuman, she is fighting so many silent battles. more

    1
  • Tell her her work is affecting the total output of your team, citing examples of when you had to stand in for her. She might not realise she's making... a mistake under pressure. Discussing it would help her in one way or the other
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StyleBuddy Launches India's First Employee Confidence Assessment Service for Corporates | Weekly Voice


StyleBuddy, India's leading personal styling and shopping assistance company

India's leading personal styling company introduces a free, data-driven evaluation of employee appearance, grooming, body language, and executive presence.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, April 14, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- StyleBuddy, India's #1 personal styling and transformation company, today announced the launch... of its Employee Confidence Assessment Service -- a comprehensive, free corporate audit designed to benchmark and elevate the professional presence of employees across India's leading organizations. The service brings StyleBuddy's deep expertise in personal styling, grooming, and personality development into the workplace, addressing a critical -- and widely overlooked -- gap in corporate talent strategy.

The Hidden Cost of Ignoring Professional Presence

While companies invest heavily in technical training, leadership development, and communication workshops, the most immediate signal of professionalism -- how an employee looks and carries themselves -- is routinely left to chance. Research consistently shows that first impressions are formed in under seven seconds, and in that brief window, appearance speaks louder than any pitch deck or résumé.

The consequences are real: eroded client trust, diminished leadership credibility, weakened brand equity, and a workforce that underperforms because it lacks the self-assurance that comes from presenting well. StyleBuddy's Employee Confidence Assessment Service is built to solve exactly this problem. In an era where first impressions are formed in under seven seconds, StyleBuddy's new service addresses the "hidden problem" in many companies: while businesses invest heavily in technical upskilling, they often overlook the visual and behavioral presence that drives client trust and leadership credibility.

What the Assessment Covers

Conducted by StyleBuddy's team of NIFT-certified image consultants, the assessment evaluates employees across five critical dimensions:

* Professional Appearance -- Clothing fit, color coordination, dress code adherence, and outfit appropriateness for client-facing and workplace settings.

* Personal Grooming -- Skincare, haircare, hygiene standards, and fragrance profiling assessed against professional benchmarks.

* Body Language -- Posture, hand gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, and non-verbal communication that builds trust and authority.

* Executive Presence -- Gravitas, composure under pressure, and the ability to command attention -- the intangible qualities that define leaders.

* Personal Style Awareness -- Alignment between an employee's self-image, personal brand, and their professional role.

The service is ideal for corporate leadership teams, sales and business development units, and luxury or hospitality brands where client-facing interactions are critical. Upon completion of the audit, companies receive a custom action plan with practical steps to bridge grooming gaps and amplify professional excellence. Each participating Organization receives a confidential, data-driven corporate report featuring a strengths analysis, specific improvement areas, industry benchmarks, and a tailored action plan -- delivered directly to leadership.

"Every company claims that people are their greatest asset -- but very few invest in the most visible dimension of that asset. When an employee walks into a client meeting, their appearance, grooming, and confidence make a statement before they speak a single word. The Employee Confidence Assessment Service gives Organizations an honest, professional benchmark of where their teams stand today, and a clear roadmap to elevate their impact tomorrow.", said Sanjay Pandit, Founder, of StyleBuddy.

Who It Is Designed For

The Employee Confidence Assessment Service is ideally suited for corporate leadership teams, client-facing employees, sales and business development teams, consulting and financial services firms, luxury and premium brands, and hospitality companies -- any organization where employees are the face of the brand.

Siddharth Pandit, co-founder at StyleBuddy, added "What sets this service apart is that it is not subjective feedback -- it is a structured, data-driven evaluation by trained image professionals, benchmarked against industry standards. We have seen, time and again, that when employees feel confident in how they present themselves, their performance, client relationships, and overall brand representation improve measurably. We are bringing that transformation to corporate India at scale."

Availability

The Employee Confidence Assessment Service is available at no cost to qualifying organizations across all 25+ cities where StyleBuddy operates. Organizations can request their free corporate audit at https://stylebuddy.in/corporate-style-audit or by calling +91 98988 28200.

About StyleBuddy

StyleBuddy is India's leading personal styling and transformation platform, trusted by over 10,000 clients with a 4.9-star Google rating. With a network of 1000+ NIFT-certified image consultants operating across 25+ cities, StyleBuddy combines human expertise with AI-powered style analysis to deliver measurable transformation in style, grooming, confidence, communication, and etiquette. The company offers a full spectrum of services from personal styling and wardrobe makeovers to executive image consulting and wedding styling.

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability

for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this

article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
 
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The Skill Nobody Is Teaching Software Engineers (And Why It Will Define the Next Decade)


The Skill Nobody Is Teaching Software Engineers (And Why It Will Define the Next Decade)

A year of building with AI tools taught me something Jensen Huang already knows -- and that most developers are still sleeping on.

There is a version of this story where I tell you that I started using AI coding tools and everything immediately became faster and better. That version is clean, motivating, and... completely dishonest.

The real version starts with four months of frustration, inconsistent outputs, half-finished features, and the quiet suspicion that maybe the hype was exactly that -- hype. I was using the tools everyone was talking about. I was not getting the results everyone was talking about. And I couldn't figure out why.

What I eventually discovered changed not just how fast I build, but how I think about software engineering itself. I want to share that honestly -- because the gap between "using AI" and "using AI well" is enormous, and almost nobody is talking about what actually fills it.

The wrong mental model

When most developers pick up an AI coding tool for the first time, they approach it the way they'd approach a search engine. You have a problem. You type a description of the problem. You get an answer. You move on.

This works fine for isolated, well-defined questions. It fails completely the moment complexity enters the picture.

I was building production applications -- a full-stack SaaS, an iOS app, a RAG-based knowledge platform for an enterprise engineering team -- and I kept running into the same wall. The AI would help me build a piece of something, and then, when the pieces needed to connect, everything would unravel. The model had no idea what it had built ten messages ago. It didn't know about the architectural decision I'd made two features back. It was answering each question in a vacuum, and I was treating each question like a fresh search query.

The problem wasn't the tools. The problem was that I was using a collaboration instrument like a calculator.

The reframe that changed everything

Around five months in, I stopped. I went back to something I knew well from software engineering itself: the value of a good specification.

When you onboard a strong junior engineer, you don't hand them a vague feature request and expect a production-ready result. You brief them. You explain what you're building, how it fits into the larger system, what constraints exist, what failure modes matter. The quality of your briefing determines the quality of their output more than their raw ability.

I started treating AI the same way.

Before writing a single line of code on any non-trivial feature, I began writing what I call a mini-spec -- three paragraphs covering what I'm building, what it connects to, and what it must not do. That spec goes into every AI session before I ask a single implementation question. I maintain a running context file for each project: architecture decisions, data models, naming conventions, the constraints that aren't obvious from the code itself.

This single change -- moving from "AI as search engine" to "AI as briefed collaborator" -- was responsible for more improvement in my output quality than any prompt technique I've ever learned.

Jensen Huang, whose company sits at the center of the entire AI revolution, put it plainly in a conversation earlier this year: "Prompting AI is very similar to asking good questions. It requires expertise and artistry."

What he didn't say -- and what I had to learn the hard way -- is that the expertise and artistry only come from failing repeatedly. There is no shortcut. You have to burn through enough bad outputs to develop an intuition for what the model needs from you. You have to experience the exact moment where missing context causes a cascade of wrong decisions to understand why context is everything.

What I actually learned

Context engineering is the real skill, not prompt engineering.

The phrase "prompt engineering" has become so widespread that it has almost lost meaning. What most people call prompt engineering is really just asking questions in slightly different ways. The deeper skill -- context engineering -- is about deciding what information the model needs to be useful, structuring that information clearly, and maintaining it across a session. It is less about how you phrase the question and more about what you've already told the model before you ask it.

Spec-first development is no longer optional.

Before AI tools, writing a mini-spec before implementing a feature was good discipline. With AI tools, it is the difference between a productive session and a wasted hour. The model's output quality is almost entirely determined by how clearly you've defined what you want. Vague input, vague output. Precise input, precise output. This has always been true of software. AI just makes the relationship more immediate and more visible.

The 10x speed is real, but it's compound, not instant.

The improvement isn't a single tool making you suddenly faster. It's a set of compounding habits -- spec first, context always, iterate quickly, review carefully -- that eliminate the rework and ambiguity that consume most of an engineer's time. When you stop spending time correcting for unclear requirements and rebuilding features because the AI misunderstood the context, the hours add up fast.

AI is a learning engine, not just a build engine.

This is the part that surprises people most when I talk about it. Every day I use AI to understand something I didn't understand the day before. Not by asking it to write code, but by asking it to teach me -- why a particular architectural pattern exists, how a framework I've never used works under the hood, what the tradeoffs are between two approaches I'm considering. The barrier to acquiring new technical knowledge has collapsed. I don't wait until I have time to read a book or take a course. I learn while I'm building.

The proof is in what shipped

In twelve months, working at a pace that would have been impossible without AI-native workflows embedded into every layer, I shipped to production: a RAG-based internal knowledge platform at Charter Communications that reduced new-hire onboarding time by 80%, built on Amazon Strands and ChromaDB. A LinkedIn content automation pipeline built with n8n that runs without manual intervention. Desiroomy, a production SaaS at desiroomy.app. Find My Operator, a two-sided marketplace. Allies, an iOS app built with SwiftUI and Supabase. And an open source project I want to talk about in more depth -- because it illustrates something important about how to use AI well.

Building AI systems that don't lie

The Python Resume Generator started from a frustration I kept hearing from engineers who had tried AI-powered resume tools: the outputs were polished, professionally phrased, and factually wrong. The AI would add technologies the person hadn't used, improve job titles that didn't exist, invent responsibilities that sounded plausible because they were adjacent to real ones. The résumés read beautifully until someone started asking questions in an interview.

The problem isn't that AI is bad at writing. It's that AI, left unconstrained, will prioritize coherence and fluency over accuracy. It fills gaps with plausible-sounding content because that's what language models do by default. If you want a system that doesn't do this, you have to architect the constraint into the system itself -- you can't rely on the prompt alone.

This insight -- that reliability in AI systems comes from architecture, not from hoping the model behaves -- is the central design principle behind the project, and I think it generalizes far beyond résumés.

How the system is designed

The architecture has a name I use internally: the source-of-truth pipeline. The user's YAML profile -- containing their real experience, their actual skills, their genuine achievements -- is the single authoritative input. Everything downstream derives from it. The LLM is permitted to transform language. It is not permitted to introduce new facts.

The pipeline flows in one direction. YAML profile and optional job description go in. LangChain orchestrates a series of LLM calls, using OpenAI or Ollama depending on whether the user wants cloud-based or fully local processing. The model rewrites bullets for clarity and impact, tailors the language toward the job description, and optimizes phrasing for ATS compatibility. Then -- before a single word reaches the rendering layer -- the output passes through a validation layer.

The validation layer is where the anti-hallucination guarantee lives. A rule-based system cross-references every claim in the generated output against the source YAML. If the model has introduced a technology that doesn't appear in the profile, it's caught. If it has invented a metric that wasn't in the original data, it's caught. Outputs that fail validation are either rejected and regenerated, or flagged for the user to review. Nothing that can't be traced back to the source document makes it into the final résumé.

The rendering layer takes the validated, structured output and populates a LaTeX template built on the Awesome-CV framework. LaTeX compilation produces a clean, consistently formatted PDF. DOCX output is available for situations where recruiters need an editable format.

On top of the pipeline sits a LangChain-powered chat agent that lets users interact with their résumé conversationally. You can tell it to remove a project, shift emphasis toward a particular skill, or regenerate the summary for a different role. Every change is applied to the YAML first, then run through the full pipeline again -- which means every conversational edit is still subject to the same validation constraints as the original generation.

The design principles, stated plainly

Five principles governed every decision in the system's design, and I think they apply broadly to anyone building AI-integrated software.

The first is source-of-truth first. All content must originate from structured input data. The system should never be smarter than the data it was given -- it should only be clearer.

The second is controlled AI usage. AI is useful for transformation. It is dangerous when used for generation of new facts. The job of good AI system design is to put the model in situations where it can do the former and cannot do the latter.

The third is deterministic output. Structured inputs and templates should produce consistent results. If the same YAML profile generates wildly different résumés on different runs, something is wrong with the system design.

The fourth is modularity. Every component in the pipeline -- the input parser, the LLM layer, the validator, the renderer -- should be independently replaceable. This isn't just good engineering hygiene. It's what makes the system improvable over time without requiring a full rewrite every time one piece gets better.

The fifth is reproducibility. The same inputs should always produce predictable outputs. This matters enormously in a production system, and it matters for trust. Users need to know what they're getting.

Why this matters beyond résumés

I've spent more time than I expected thinking about the gap between using AI and using AI well. The résumé generator is a small project -- but it forced me to articulate something I'd been feeling intuitively for months.

Most discussions about AI in software engineering focus on speed. How much faster can you write code? How many features can you ship per sprint? These are real gains and they matter. But they're the surface layer of what's actually changing.

The deeper change is about where reliability comes from in AI-integrated systems. In traditional software, reliability comes from deterministic code. You write the function, you know what it does, you test it, you ship it. In AI-integrated systems, the model's behavior is probabilistic. You cannot test every possible output. You cannot guarantee that a given input will always produce exactly the same result.

This means the engineering challenge shifts. Instead of writing deterministic code and trusting it, you have to design systems where the AI's probabilistic behavior is constrained within boundaries narrow enough that the outputs are reliably useful. The validation layer in the résumé generator is a simple version of this. The RAG architecture in the knowledge platform I built at Charter is a more complex version of the same idea.

The engineers who internalize this -- who stop thinking about AI as a feature and start thinking about it as a layer with specific affordances and specific failure modes -- will build systems that work. The ones who don't will build systems that mostly work, which in production is another way of saying they don't.

What's coming

The Python Resume Generator is actively developed and open to contributors. The roadmap includes a real-time preview UI, vector-based retrieval to surface the most contextually relevant experience for a given job description, LinkedIn and job board integration, multi-language support, and eventually fine-tuned models trained specifically on high-quality resume content.

If any of those problems interest you, the project is on GitHub at github.com/mponagandla/Python-Resume-Generator. Issues, pull requests, and conversations are all welcome.

The skill that will separate engineers in the next decade

I want to end where I started -- with the honest version of this story.

The year was not a steady arc from struggling to confident. It was a series of failures, each of which taught me something specific. The month I couldn't get the AI to maintain context across a complex feature taught me about context engineering. The sprint where I kept getting outputs that missed the architecture entirely taught me to write specs first. The project where the AI kept introducing plausible-sounding but wrong information taught me that reliability requires system design, not just prompt design.

The skill I've built is not "using AI." It's knowing when to let AI run and when to constrain it, knowing what information it needs before it can be useful, and knowing how to design systems where its probabilistic nature doesn't become your reliability problem.

I think this is one of the most important skills a software engineer can develop right now. Not because it's trendy. Because the engineers who don't develop it will be collaborating with AI and getting mediocre results, while the engineers who do will be building at a fundamentally different level of speed and quality.

The gap between those two groups is already visible. In another twelve months, it will be hard to miss.

Manoj Reddy Ponagandla is an AI-Native Software Engineer at Charter Communications, based in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri. He builds production AI systems, ships open source tools, and writes about the practical realities of AI-native development.

Python Resume Generator: github.com/mponagandla/Python-Resume-Generator LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/manojponagandla Website: manojponagandla.com
 
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Deputy minister who broke conflict-of-interest rules faces questions from MPs


Christiane Fox tells committee she will 'continue to demonstrate commitment to public service'

Auditor general Karen Hogan, right, speaks with National Defence Deputy Minister Christiane Fox before appearing as witnesses at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in Ottawa, on Monday. A senior public servant who breached conflict-of-interest rules by influencing the hiring of a man she knew... from university faced questions from MPs Monday, including about using a public office holder's role to further the interests of private individuals.

Last week, Ethics Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein found that the public servant, Christiane Fox, helped the man, who was working as a gym manager, land a project management job at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in 2023. Ms. Fox was IRCC's deputy minister when she intervened to help Björn Charles, an acquaintance from student sports and third or fourth cousin of her husband, get a job in her department's Access to Information and Privacy division. She later introduced him to colleagues at the Privy Council Office, where he also landed a job.

Mr. von Finckenstein's investigation into the IRCC hiring concluded Ms. Fox had "used her position as Deputy Minister to give Mr. Charles preferential treatment, by ensuring he met with departmental officials quickly, seeking updates about his hiring, giving him internal information and pushing for a higher job classification." "As the Commissioner's Office has noted in previous examination reports, giving someone preferential treatment is, in itself, improper," he added.

Deputy minister Christiane Fox breached conflict of interest rules by intervening in hiring decision, says ethics watchdog. Appearing Monday before the public accounts committee, Ms. Fox was asked by opposition MPs about the watchdog's findings. Conservative James Bezan asked whether she could assure Parliament and Canadians "that you won't be using your office as a public office holder to further your interests of private individuals?" She replied she would "continue to demonstrate commitment to public service," adding that she will take her "responsibilities seriously as I always have." Conservative Ned Kuruc commented that she did not appear to "acknowledge any wrongdoing or errors" which he said was very concerning.

Ms. Fox told the committee that she had been trying to improve an underperforming Access to Information unit in IRCC when she referred Mr. Charles. She said she had been asked to forward résumés. She added "the actions in this particular context I have to reflect on," saying she was taking the matter "extremely seriously."

The ethics watchdog's report said the acting director-general in IRCC's Access to Information division had told the head of human resources that, as Mr. Charles had no French proficiency or experience in government, he could only be offered an entry-level position. "Evidence showed they felt pressured to hire him at a level for which he was not qualified," the ethics watchdog found.

Ms. Fox had told the ethics commissioner that she wanted to ensure Mr. Charles was not automatically appointed to an entry-level position, "as is the case with many racialized individuals entering the federal public service whose experience and skills are not recognized due to racism." Ms. Fox on Friday issued a statement saying she was aiming to promote diversity and bring in outside perspectives when she helped Mr. Charles. She was acquainted with him from her time at Carleton University, and her husband had coached him in basketball at Carleton.

In her IRCC role, Ms. Fox was appointed deputy clerk of the Privy Council and associate secretary to the cabinet, one of the most senior civil service roles in Canada. She was appointed deputy minister of National Defence at the end of January. While deputy minister at IRCC in 2023, Ms. Fox was part of a deputy ministers' task force on the federal public service and ethics. In a report published in January, 2024, it recommended that "deputy ministers ensure that obligations under the Values and Ethics Code, and departmental codes of conduct, are clear and are upheld with consequences for violations regardless of level or position." It said that there is a "perceived lack of accountability or a 'double standard' between senior leadership and employees when it comes to compliance and enforcement of the Code." Some public servants said there appear to be few, if any, consequences for senior leaders who act in contravention of values and ethics.

After she intervened, Mr. Charles was first hired for a casual position at IRCC, and then for a one-year contract. He was told in the summer of 2024 that his job at the senior level would not be renewed. The ethics watchdog's report said he contacted Ms. Fox, who had by then moved to become deputy clerk of the Privy Council, to inquire about job opportunities at the Privy Council Office . Ms. Fox told Mr. Charles to send his résumé to her assistant. Ms. Fox informed the assistant deputy minister responsible for human resources at the PCO that Mr. Charles would be sharing his CV. Ms. Fox's assistant scheduled a meeting between Mr. Charles and the ADM at the Privy Council Office in June, 2024. According to Ms. Fox, the ADM told her that they were always looking to hire, whether in the Access to Information division or elsewhere, and he told her to send him Mr. Charles's résumé and that they would be happy to meet him.

Prior to his meeting with the ADM, Mr. Charles met Ms. Fox at her office. She walked him to the ADM's office and introduced him and a senior director with the Access to Information division, who was also present. In early September, 2024, he received a verbal offer of a job as an access to information analyst in the Privy Council Office with top-secret clearance. The report does not say whether he remains in that job.

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Read more "

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  • Ask them for gas money. A $1 per day sounds reasonable.

  • The 'wonan' on this thread either suggests lying or charging. The 'men' suggest saying no and deal with it. I suggest saying NO, it's simple. You no... longer want to. Easy. Feel good about taking up for yourself.  more

Ten simple rules for organising an effective student-led writing retreat


Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

At every stage in a researcher's career, scholarly output advances scientific knowledge and supports career development. Early career researchers, in particular, significantly boost their career prospects by increasing their scholarly outputs [1,2]. Writing serves as an integral skill for academic work [3,4],... especially when competing for grants and jobs. Academics juggle administrative tasks alongside teaching, collection and analysis of data, and production of publications and presentations. Consequently, many report a lack of time to think critically as a major challenge in academia [5], which often leads researchers to deprioritise writing tasks [3,5], or, more recently, turn to generative artificial intelligence tools to tackle academic workloads [6]. Therefore, to fully engage in the act of writing, many need to fully disengage from other tasks by carving out dedicated focus time [7,8].

Writing retreats provide structured periods where researchers dedicate time to focused writing [7,9]. These retreats offer practical opportunities to disconnect from daily work routines [8,10], which help researchers gain writing momentum and increase scholarly output [9,11,12]. In addition, writing retreats foster a sense of community, promote well-being, and build self-confidence for academic writers [10-13]. Postgraduate students, in particular, highlight the value of these retreats in strengthening bonds among peers, obtaining and providing constructive feedback, and dedicating time and space to focus on writing [10,11,14,15].

A writing retreat was first proposed in 2023 by a PhD student in the Department of Marine Science at the University of Otago (Aotearoa/New Zealand) with the intention to not only facilitate community building within our PhD cohort [16,17], but also to structure a productive week as we worked toward our dissertation goals [9,11]. In New Zealand, PhDs follow research-only programs; as such, we do not participate in coursework that might promote group cohesion, as each student leads their own research. In addition, our diverse disciplines, field sites, and lab locations present challenges in maintaining social cohesion within our programme. As a cohort of PhD students, we organized a 5-day writing retreat in consultation with the Higher Education Development Centre at our university to be held at a remote field station. The retreat was a success both in terms of writing produced and connections built between peers sharing a similar journey. The retreat's success motivated us to organise a second retreat the following year; the second retreat's success inspired a third.

All retreat planning and implementation was conducted by PhD students. Planning, logistics, schedule creation, and end of retreat-reporting were led by one to three participating students each year, with input from all attendees. We present Ten Simple Rules for organising effective student-led writing retreats to share our experience in this process and to acknowledge the support of our academic department. Although the authors were all PhD students at the time they organised and participated in the retreats, these rules can be applied broadly to any research-oriented or academically-minded group. We outline steps to support the planning and execution of pre- (Rules 1-4), during (Rules 5-9), and post- (Rule 10) writing retreat actions, but we do not cover writing techniques per se. Many helpful resources on academic writing exist (e.g., [18-21]), including articles in this series [22-25].
 
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Fuel Your Career Journey with the Power of Mentorship


By Ken Daniels· Leader, Solutions Engineer · United States

with Helen Gall

3 Minute Read · 5 Minute Listen

Mentorship is often on our to-do lists and performance reviews, yet many of us struggle to find the time or the right opportunity. While mentorship is one of those words that gets used often in leadership books and career development plans, it is not really a corporate concept at all. At... its core, mentorship is simply people helping other people grow.

Whether you are just starting out or well along your path, finding a mentor or becoming one can be one of the most rewarding investments you make.

Sometimes, a brief conversation can influence your career for years.

Early in my career, while presenting a demo to a customer, my manager gave me candid feedback that shaped how I show up as a teammate and leader. Although he complimented my delivery and knowledge, he pointed out that I hadn't "read the room" well. I'd focused only on the people I knew or who were already engaged, but I didn't engage the skeptics or the ultimate decision-maker.

My manager noticed the decision-maker's apparent lack of interest because I was going too deep without checking in. Had I simply asked if the presentation was making sense to everyone and addressed questions as needed, it would have made for a better meeting and likely shortened the sales cycle. At the time, that feedback was a little uncomfortable to hear, but I think about it every time I present. That's the power of mentorship.

Mentorship provides perspective, encouragement, and honest feedback to help navigate challenges and seize opportunities. A mentor complements the role of your manager.

And you may have been a mentor without actually realizing it. If you've ever given advice to a colleague, friend, or family member, you've been a mentor. Likewise, you've likely been mentored without formal titles or meetings. Essentially, mentorship is experience shared with the goal of helping someone move forward.

Great mentors listen more than they talk, share their experiences and mistakes, challenge your thinking, and care about you as a person, not just about your career.

And yes, you can have more than one mentor. In fact, having several mentors can be beneficial because different mentors can offer different types of support, such as technical guidance, career advice, sponsorship, or peer coaching. But it's best to maintain a manageable number of mentors aligned with your goals, ensuring each relationship is meaningful and productive.

Come prepared with questions, be open and honest, and be willing to act on advice. The best conversations usually involve a little vulnerability.

If you don't currently have a mentor or sponsor, seek one intentionally. Sometimes a simple conversation after a project can start a mentorship. When you can, pay it forward by mentoring others.

While the terms are often used interchangeably, it's important to understand the difference between a mentor and a sponsor. A mentor is someone who helps you think through challenges, develop skills, and grow.

A sponsor is someone who advocates for you when you're not in the room, recommending you for opportunities, key projects, and promotions. Many careers stall not because someone lacks talent, but because they lack advocacy in the rooms where decisions are made.

Cisco offers structured programs designed to foster mentorship and leadership growth. Explore these programs through Cisco's internal portals and under Employee Resources to start building meaningful mentoring relationships today.

Looking back, the moments that truly shaped my career were not about titles or milestones but about the people who took the time to invest in me.

I would love to hear your mentorship story. Share in the comments who has made a difference in your journey.
 
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How Amarachi Iheanacho is rewriting what documentation is for


In an industry that has built a hundred and fifty million tools for coding, almost none exist for the longevity of the documentation itself. Amarachi Iheanacho is closing that gap.

There's a peculiar kind of rebellion in choosing to care about documentation. In software, attention gravitates toward the launch, the demo, the design sprint, the loud, the new, the visible. Documentation is none of... those things. It's maintenance work, slow and unglamorous, the kind that falls to whoever has patience to spare.

Amarachi Iheanacho built her career there anyway.

She didn't start with a manifesto. With a degree in Electrical Engineering from FUTO, she thought like a builder: how do you prove what you know without spinning up a new product every week? Writing became her cleanest proof of work, a way to turn understanding into something generative.

So while her peers chased frameworks, she chased sentences. She found an old piece of advice online, write, no matter your field, and took it literally. She gathered ten strangers on Twitter into a small accountability group with three rules: produce something technical each week, review each other's work, and don't stop. That routine became a professional engine.

Writing her way in

Hackmamba, a developer content agency, wasn't part of any grand plan. Iheanacho nearly scrolled past the job posting until friends made her look again. When she did, she didn't just submit a résumé; she lobbied. She told the hiring team she'd be the most committed writer they'd ever seen. Six years later, she's proved it true.

Hackmamba's model was different: it embedded writers inside the documentation and content systems of clients like Cloudinary, Flutterwave, and Appwrite, rather than writing from the outside. For Iheanacho, that meant adapting to new tech stacks at speed, balancing precision with pedagogy, and learning to treat documentation not as a supporting act but as a primary advantage, a way to think about infrastructure, language, and learning as one continuum.

"The largest part of my growth has been community," she says. "The people that were growing with me. I got a large chunk of that from Hackmamba."

The documentation of documentation

The deeper Iheanacho went, the stranger her realisation became: the industry most obsessed with precision had almost no structured knowledge of how documentation itself survives. When she went looking for frameworks or theory, some shared practice beyond "write good docs", she found almost nothing.

"In a tech ecosystem that has built a hundred and fifty million tools for writing code," she says," there's an empty space where the manual for the manual should be."

Iheanacho has a theory about why: "Most technical content is written to serve a goal, to get a job or sell a product. Writing about documentation itself doesn't fit that incentive structure, so people don't do it."

Rather than wait, she started building what was missing. Through her community work with

Write the Docs Nigeria and her own essays, she's assembling a body of knowledge around the practice, not just as a communication skill, but as technical infrastructure. Something that can hold up under the same scrutiny as the code it describes.

When the readers are no longer humans

The next disruption in her field hasn't come from developers. It comes from machines.

Last month, Iheanacho noticed something in her analytics: more than three hundred AI agents

had crawled the documentation she manages. They weren't human readers trying to onboard.

They were language models harvesting her sentences for context, feeding future prompts to

systems like ChatGPT and Claude.

Most documentation assumes a reader who moves linearly, absorbing context along the way. AI

doesn't read like that. It cannibalises micro-sections, detaching meaning from flow. A sentence

that begins "as mentioned earlier" becomes meaningless when the earlier part is gone.

"AI doesn't read your documentation from top to bottom," she explains. "It reads in small chunks

that need to make sense independently. So every section has to hold its own meaning. Every

code block has to run cleanly the first time."

This shift, she argues, may be documentation's biggest redesign since the web. Writers must

now design for modular comprehension -- documentation that's retrievable, not narrative. The

goal isn't to make someone think "this was easy." It's to make them never have to think about it

at all. The commercial consequences are direct: if AI systems learn from your documentation, your

product's usability depends on how clearly you write. Iheanacho has already seen AI assistants

field developer questions in Mandarin and Japanese, correctly, based on her English docs.

The structure held. What she's really building isn't documentation. It's distribution.

Building for the long term

The past two years have tested the old definitions of Developer Relations. Teams at Stripe, Twilio, and other major firms have been cut. Roles once justified by community goodwill now must show direct business impact. Iheanacho is adapting by making her output legible to executives, not just engineers. She designs documentation that explains itself in the language of retention, support costs, and user adoption, the metrics that move funding cycles.

At the same time, she's building elsewhere: contributing to Prometheus and OpenTelemetry, reviewing pull requests, leaving a visible technical footprint that belongs to her alone. It's how she maintains authority in a field that constantly asks her to prove it again. Between testing new servers and auditing how AI digests her work, she's mapping the afterlife of documentation.

Why the future of software depends on those who make it understandable

Every era of software has its forgotten layer. Before, it was designed. Before that, infrastructure.

Today, it's the documentation, the connective tissue that keeps the rest intelligible.

Amarachi Iheanacho's work is a reminder that what feels peripheral is often load-bearing. She represents a new kind of technical authority: one where understanding and explaining are the same act.

In a future run partly by machines that read instead of see, her quiet craft may turn out to be the

most durable innovation left.

Last updated: April 13, 2026
 
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  • If you married him because of his work then you can go ahead and divorce him. what if the tables were turned around, what if it was your brother, or... maybe son in the same situation would you advise their spouse to divorce them. this is a decision you decide on your own, reflect deeply and know that for every decision there are consequences. more

    1
  • You have my empathy. Sometimes life can be very difficult!! You may need to relocate to a different place, since where you are living seems to have... a drought. T more

From handwritten CVs to AI avatars: the changing face of job interviews


Have you had a job interview with an AI avatar or robot? Tell us your story at money@telegraph.co.uk

Robin Machell wrote out an arm-achingly impressive 60 application letters on a typewriter before he got his first professional job interview.

The 70-year-old architect from Leeds, who qualified in 1981 after studying for seven years, tells me that this was standard. Some people, he says, would... write out 100 cover letters and CVs by hand before they landed their first interview, a shock, one imagines, to the graduates who can fire off applications at the click of a button online nowadays.

A shock, too, would be what one of his interviewers - the senior architect, no less - was doing while he questioned Machell.

"He was smoking," he says. "Which you just took on board as a matter of course."

Job interviews today differ drastically from those in the past.

As well as applying online, candidates can expect to interview online too, with many - at least preliminary - conversations taking place virtually. A hangover from the Covid pandemic.

Artificial Intelligence, too, is now playing a key part. According to data from LinkedIn, 89pc of recruiters say they are planning to use more AI in the hiring process this year. Recruitment platform Test Gorilla has even invented AI avatars to conduct the interviews themselves.

Of course, if candidates do get to interview in person, they will often face stiff competition in the form of high-pressure group interviews with dozens of candidates, personality tests and even working partial shifts, often unpaid.

Indeed, one may argue that today's jobseekers face an even more toxic atmosphere than Machell did in 1981, despite sitting, as he did, in cigarette fumes.

UK unemployment hit its highest rate in nearly five years at the end of 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics, reaching 5.2pc in the three months to December. Perhaps unsurprisingly, young people are the hardest hit - unemployment among those aged between 16 and 24 reached 16.1pc, the highest it's been for more than 10 years.

Liam McDonald, 21, from Liverpool, is one such young jobseeker. McDonald is just coming to the end of his Master's in engineering at Loughborough University and has recently been through the process of interviewing for his first professional job.

Of the 10 interviews he has had, three of them were online, with - essentially - no interviewer.

"They give you a pre-recorded prompt where they explain what the interview process will be like," he explains. "And you just have to record your answers, essentially talking into the camera. It shows you your recording at the end and then you get a choice whether to refilm it or not."
 
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Anxious Parents Are Spending Upwards of $50,000 to Land Their Kid a Job


The old parental anxiety over getting the kids into college has been followed by a new one: getting the kids a job after graduation. Facing a job market that's downright hostile to fresh grads, parents with means are paying thousands of dollars -- and in some cases tens of thousands -- to pair their college-age children with career coaches years before their careers will begin.

Business is brisk... for coaches like Beth Hendler-Grunt, whose New Jersey-based counseling company Next Great Step offers small-group programs and private advising to give students the polish they need to land a job. When she started more than a decade ago, Hendler-Grunt had to sell parents on her value. Now she employs a growing team that fields referrals and works with students as early as freshman year so they can secure those ever-more important internships and build résumés to compete in an increasingly cutthroat environment.

The services offered by private coaches aren't fundamentally different from those provided at college career centers, notes Christine Cruzvergara, an executive at entry-level job site Handshake who leads partnerships with colleges and universities. Cruzvergara, who previously led career services at Wellesley College and George Mason University, says many students are unaware of how much their school's career center can help.

Plenty of clients for Hendler-Grunt and other coaches come via college consultants, whose former customers are now seeking help with cover letters instead of admissions essays. Her six-month programs run from $4,000 to $15,000. "I call it part two," says Hendler-Grunt, who advertises a placement rate of more than 80% for her clients. "You make all of this investment with college advisers and SAT prep to get them in. Our goal is to get them out."

Career coaching for college students can cost a few hundred dollars an hour for interview rehearsals and application strategies, with more comprehensive packages typically ranging from $3,000 to $10,000. But New York City-based Priority Candidates says some parents are paying upwards of $30,000 for intensive support and subject-matter experts to prepare their children for entry-level jobs in finance and similarly ultra-competitive industries; the price tags at other companies go up from there.

"Had it been five years ago, I don't think I would have hired anyone like that," says Lori Storch Smith, a pediatrician in Westport, Connecticut, who hired Next Great Step last year as her daughter was preparing to graduate from the University of Rhode Island with a marketing degree. "She really needed to put her best foot forward in this market -- it's so hard for these kids right now to get jobs."

College students are often more than happy for the help, parents and coaches say. Storch Smith's daughter, Hailey Smith, ultimately landed a job in Boston and was particularly grateful for the support in navigating the alienating nature of one-way video interviews. Weekly group sessions, workbooks and one-on-one coaching helped turn a daunting process into something that felt manageable. Just as valuable, Hailey says, was the consistent encouragement and individualized feedback that helped keep her spirits and confidence up.

Career coaching for students is a newly lucrative niche for an industry best known for helping midcareer workers uncover their true purpose after years of cubicle toil. In 2019 about 5% of career coaches focused primarily on college students or new grads, according to the International Association of Career Coaches. Its latest surveys show more than a quarter now consider that group a core segment. For parents, coaching can seem like a wise investment given the total annual cost of attendance at a private four-year college -- including room and board -- is expected to surpass $65,000, as per College Board estimates. (Plus, some coaches note, it's cheaper than keeping kids on the payroll at home.)

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Doug Wroan, a Los Angeles-based lawyer, recently hired a career coach for his 16-year-old son, a high school sophomore. Before the family starts working with an admissions counselor, Wroan wants the coach to help his son think through what major he'll pursue at college. "We're not unusual," says Wroan, who spent about $1,500 on the coaching. "I think most people do this calculation, because college is so expensive, you want to make sure that you are putting your kids in the right school for the right career path to get an ROI on the tuition you're paying." Still, Wroan acknowledges with some chagrin that it can sound like a lot, charting a professional plan at such an early age. "That's kind of sad, right? You're dealing with a 16-year-old boy, all he wants to do is run around with his friends."

For those set on Wall Street careers for their progeny, it helps to have a finance titan's budget. Companies such as Command Education, Priority Candidates and Weil & Wein say they can help students win investment banking jobs, which can pay more than $180,000 for a first-year analyst. Some of those companies charge anywhere from $30,000 to the high five figures. Services include guidance on getting into selective campus clubs, tutoring for technical interviews and networking support. They also help candidates manage the 40-plus applications they're likely to submit, from meticulously tailored cover letters to the high-stakes gauntlet of back-to-back final-round interviews.

Command Education's founder, Christopher Rim, famous for charging $750,000 to help get kids into Harvard University and Yale University, offers bespoke career coaching programs tailored by industry that range from a few months to a year, with pricing starting at $50,000. Some clients start working with him as early as the summer after high school graduation. That level of strategizing can be too much for kids just learning to do their own laundry, though, and coaches will tell parents when their teens aren't ready yet.

Lisa Tretler, founder of New York-based career coaching firm Gradvantage, has also had to remind parents that their children are the clients, even if mom and dad are paying. "It's a tough little dance," she says, especially when they seek a certain career path for their kids, regardless of what the kids desire for themselves. "I want these young people to be open-minded, and I need the parents to be open-minded as well."
 
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Are London businesses judging first impressions more than ever? Insights from 38 Devonshire Street - London Business News | Londonlovesbusiness.com


In London's high-pressure business culture, presentation still shapes perception long before credentials do. From interviews to client meetings, the way professionals carry themselves can influence trust, confidence and commercial credibility in ways many firms may be weighing more heavily than they admit.

In a city built on competition, speed and visibility, first impressions have never really... gone out of fashion. They still shape hiring decisions, client relationships and the early dynamics of trust. What may be changing, however, is how intensely they are felt.

London professionals now operate in a business environment where every meeting can carry weight. A job interview may be face-to-face one day and on screen the next. A sales pitch may begin in a boardroom, then continue over LinkedIn, email and video calls. In that setting, presentation becomes part of the message.

The uncomfortable truth is that people still make fast judgements. Businesses may prefer to frame decisions around skill, experience and performance, and rightly so. But perception often opens the door before any of that can speak for itself.

In business, credibility is rarely communicated through words alone. It is often signalled in posture, eye contact, ease of communication and overall presence. These are the cues that influence whether someone appears prepared, capable and ready to be trusted.

For employers, this can affect how a candidate is read in the first few minutes of an interview. For clients, it can shape whether a new contact feels credible enough to do business with. For senior leaders, it can reinforce authority in rooms where confidence is being assessed as closely as competence.

None of this means presentation should outweigh substance. It means substance is often filtered through perception, especially in a city where time is short and competition is constant.

There was a moment when hybrid working looked as though it might soften traditional ideas of business presentation. Instead, it seems to have expanded them.

Professionals are now expected to look assured across more formats, not fewer. The office, the networking event, the video call and the conference panel all create slightly different versions of visibility. Add a tougher jobs market and a more crowded commercial landscape, and standing out starts to feel less optional.

That pressure is not always about vanity. In many cases, it is about trying to reduce friction. People want to feel that their appearance supports the impression they are trying to make, rather than distracting from it.

This is where the conversation becomes more revealing. According to 38 Devonshire Street, there is growing awareness among professionals that presentation can influence both confidence and perception in business settings.

The practice notes that this is particularly apparent in client-facing and leadership roles, where trust is often formed quickly, and small details can shape how someone is received. That does not suggest London businesses are making blunt, appearance-led decisions. It suggests that professionals themselves are increasingly aware of how visible confidence affects communication.

That distinction matters. When people feel self-conscious, it often shows up in how they speak, smile, engage and hold attention. In business, those signals can alter the outcome of an interaction more than many would like to admit.

There are some settings where first impressions seem to carry even more weight.

Interviews remain one of the clearest examples, particularly when candidates are being judged not just on experience but on polish, composure and perceived readiness. Sales environments are another, where trust may be built or lost in the opening moments. Leadership roles bring their own visibility, especially when senior professionals are expected to project calm authority in front of teams, investors or clients.

Networking, too, still runs on rapid assessment. In a room full of professionals, people make decisions quickly about who seems approachable, credible and memorable.

Against that backdrop, it is not surprising that understated, confidence-led changes are attracting more attention. 38 Devonshire Street points to growing interest in options such as teeth straightening in London, particularly among professionals who want natural improvements rather than anything dramatic or obvious.

That says something important about the wider shift. The focus is not on reinvention. It is on refinement. For many professionals, the goal is simply to feel more comfortable in visible, high-stakes settings where confidence and clarity matter.

38 Devonshire Street is clear that this is not about transformation for its own sake. It is about subtle changes that align with how people want to present themselves professionally.

That framing feels more relevant to modern business culture than the old language of appearance alone. Confidence affects communication. Communication affects trust. Trust affects opportunity. In that sense, presentation is not separate from performance. It can support it.
 
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Navigating Long-Term Unemployment In A Shifting Job Market


Official unemployment figures remain relatively low, yet a growing number of job seekers have spent six months or more searching without success. For many, getting back into the workforce is proving slower and more confusing than they anticipated. As CNBC recently highlighted, long-term unemployment is now entrenched in parts of today's labor market.

If the broader economy appears healthy, why... are so many talented professionals unable to find work?

For those experiencing it firsthand, long-term unemployment is far more than a data point. It feels like launching résumés into a black hole, or hearing you're "overqualified" one day and "not quite the right match" the next. The career system you once understood has changed its rules.

The surface-level explanation points to cautious employers and lengthy hiring timelines. The deeper explanation is structural: a significant number of professionals are searching for yesterday's job in a market that has already moved on.

Repositioning Your Job Search During Extended Unemployment

If you've been out of work for six months or more and are trying to figure out how to land your next role, the solution likely won't come from submitting more applications. It may come from repositioning yourself for the way today's job market actually functions.

Approaching the job search as a transaction -- locate an opening, submit a polished résumé and wait -- no longer delivers reliable results. Roles are evolving before they're formally defined. Organizations increasingly hire around emerging needs that don't map cleanly onto traditional job titles or previous experience.

Which is why conversations carry more weight than applications.

Not the transactional "I'm looking for a job" phone call. That approach rarely lands well. What you want are curiosity-driven exchanges designed to uncover where work is heading, how challenges are being framed, and what capabilities are growing in demand.

Think of it as a "coffee journey." Begin with people you already know who are doing work that genuinely interests you. Ask them what's changing in their field. What new pressures are surfacing? What tools are transforming the way work gets done? What problems remain unresolved? Then ask who else might be worth talking to.

As you widen your circle from familiar contacts to people you haven't yet met, two important transitions happen. First, you begin articulating what you genuinely know how to do, separate from whatever title you previously held. In these conversations, you naturally draw on past experience to engage with present-day problems. You start recognizing where your expertise applies, even when it once carried a different label. A former marketing manager may discover that her core strength is translating customer insight into strategic direction. An operations leader may realize that what he truly offers is systems-level thinking across complex environments.

Second, you learn to communicate the story of your skills using the language the market speaks today. You uncover adjacent spaces where those capabilities matter. The marketing manager who once defined herself narrowly as a brand lead may find openings in product strategy or customer experience. The operations leader may spot opportunities in transformation programs or cross-functional redesign. You start seeing needs before they're formalized into job postings. What once felt like a fixed career path begins to branch out.

Those coffee conversations lead to a sharper understanding of where your strengths intersect with emerging demand. They move your focus from chasing open positions to identifying real opportunity.

Redefining Your Professional Identity During Extended Unemployment

Even with that newfound clarity, long-term unemployment can shake your sense of professional identity. The longer someone remains out of work, the more tightly they tend to hold onto their last title as evidence of their competence.

But employers aren't hiring your history; they're hiring for what comes next. That demands more than recounting your experience. It requires reframing how you understand and communicate your value.

Repositioning starts with asking a different set of questions. What problems do you consistently solve well? What decisions get better when you're in the room? What patterns do you recognize faster than most?

You're separating your professional identity from job titles and grounding it in transferable value. In a market where roles shift quickly, titles are temporary. Capabilities travel. The ability to synthesize information, navigate ambiguity, design processes, build trust, or interpret data moves across industries. Over time, that clarity becomes your personal brand -- rooted in value and credibility -- and it opens pathways to new possibilities.

Sharpening Your Skills For Today's Job Market

Professional stagnation was once a hidden risk of extended unemployment. Today it can become a genuine opportunity. Work inside organizations keeps evolving. AI tools are being woven into daily workflows. Teams collaborate across geographies and time zones. Data fluency is becoming an expectation rather than a bonus.

If you're currently out of work, you possess something many employed professionals don't: dedicated time to learn with intention.

Employers are far more inclined to hire someone who can raise the team's overall capabilities, not simply fill a vacancy. That means showing familiarity with emerging tools, new operating models, and the evolving language of your field.

In a market that prizes learning velocity, forward momentum signals adaptability. Experiment with AI tools relevant to your domain. Take on short-term or project-based work that broadens your exposure. Volunteer with a nonprofit tackling digital transformation. Publish your thinking about how your field is changing. Teach what you know in unfamiliar contexts.

Even small steps forward demonstrate adaptability. And adaptability is fast becoming the currency of employability.

Generating Income And Maintaining Momentum During Long-Term Unemployment

Financial pressure is real. If you're wondering how to earn money while unemployed, the answer may not be holding out for the next full-time position.

Project-based consulting, fractional roles, teaching, advisory engagements, and contract work can produce income while growing your network, exposing you to fresh challenges, and speeding up your learning. You don't need to decide that you're finished with salaried employment, but neither should you limit yourself to one narrow vision of what your next move is supposed to look like.

Careers are increasingly portfolio-based. Many professionals will blend employment and independent work over a lifetime. Long-term unemployment can become the moment that unlocks that broader model.

The key is treating interim work as strategic rather than stopgap. Instead of asking, "How do I get back to where I was?" start asking, "Where does my capability create leverage in the opportunity that's taking shape?"

Those who approach this period as repositioning rather than merely waiting often discover it becomes a turning point. In a world where careers will span multiple identities, industries, and models of work, the ability to reposition may be the most valuable skill you develop.
 
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Why The Performative Rules Of Job Interviews Are Filtering Out Neurodivergent Talent


Since last July, Edward James Herath, a brand and strategic comms consultant, has taken part in more than 120 job interviews. The feedback is often the same: he's "too direct," "too honest," "abrupt," or "confrontational."

Herath, 39, who is diagnosed with autism and ADHD (AuDHD), believes his literal and questioning demeanor is costing him jobs.

He finds interviews particularly difficult... because of their "indirect, passive-aggressive, and theatrical communication style," he tells HuffPost UK. He believes they measure how he performs under pressure rather than his ability to do the job, and his real self - someone who cares deeply about his relationships and career - doesn't come across.

"There's a strong emphasis on reading between the lines and softening language," he says. For someone who values clarity, that's a difficult tone to strike.

Hearth is by no means alone in this struggle. Research suggests neurodivergence is widely seen as a barrier to employment. A 2024 Zurich survey of 1,000 neurodivergent adults in the UK found more than half believed recruitment processes were designed to filter them out, while over a third said interviews had triggered panic. A 2025 UK survey also found that 40% of young people believe being neurodivergent was a hindrance in the hiring market.

The consequences are significant for employers, says Sharawn Tipton, Chief People Officer at Greenhouse. She says traditional hiring often favours similarity over talent, despite evidence that diverse teams perform better. Neurodivergence, she says, is "no different than height or personality."

"When you think about neurodiversity, it's really around understanding that the mind works differently for everyone," she says. "Different ways of thinking and communicating are things that help companies innovate faster."

Job interviews are a game, but the rules aren't clear for everyone

Christal Castagnozzi, a psychologist with ADHD and autism who specialises in neurodivergence, says traditional interviews prioritise skills like eye contact and quick verbal responses. Executive functions like memory and processing speed are suddenly tested too.

"Neurodivergent folks will struggle in all of these areas, especially when we are put on the spot," she says. "You're literally being judged while standing in front of someone. That's a neurodivergent person's worst nightmare."

For many, interviews become less about competence and more about navigating unwritten social rules, according to Elise Minkin, a neurodivergent career coach. She tells HuffPost UK that interviews can feel like "a game" where not everyone knows how to play.

"There's this kind of secret code that a lot of neurodivergent people feel like they were never told," she says.

Even common questions, such as why someone wants the job, can cause trouble.

"Obviously for a paycheque," she says. That's the true answer - and one which someone with neurodivergence would be inclined to say. "But of course it's not what the interviewer wants to hear," she added.

Office environments are not always comfortable spaces for neurodivergent people. Those with autism may struggle to concentrate under harsh fluorescent lighting. Flickering or humming lighting can also be distracting and even sometimes painful.

The location may also affect performance. Some candidates may communicate better over Zoom, where they can make notes, comfortably take more time to answer questions, or use a sensory fidget tool off-screen, which have been shown to help reduce anxiety and increase concentration for people with ADHD and autism.

Without flexibility, neurodivergent candidates "can't always show up as their best self," Minkin says.

Many neurodivergent candidates face the difficult decision over whether to disclose their condition up front. Tipton recommends those who want to do this to ask to be connected with anyone at the company who can offer support, such as an employee resource group (ERG).

"You can ask the company, what do you do?" she says. "Because interviewing is a two-way street, and you want to make sure you're going to an environment where you're going to thrive and the company is going to be able to support you."

Those who don't may result to masking, which is a term for suppressing natural behaviours to appear more socially typical.

"I'm not at all a fan of masking," Austin says, citing its mental and physical toll. But she acknowledges the decision is personal.

Castagnozzi believes the responsibility should not fall on candidates at all, and adjustments should be built into hiring by default.

"This should just be a best practice," she says. "Even someone that is not neurodivergent, or does not know that they are neurodivergent just yet, may benefit from accommodations, especially during a stressful time."

Conversations are brewing on social media

Under the Equality Act 2010, employers in the UK must make reasonable adjustments for disabled applicants. Similar protections exist in the US and Canada.

But reasonable adjustments are often applied inconsistently or denied altogether. Many neurodivergent people are speaking publicly about their experiences, sharing frustrations and finding solidarity.

Darcie, who has autism and ADHD, shares her experiences with her 14,000 TikTok followers. She says that receiving interview questions 15 minutes in advance is a reasonable adjustment that helps her organise her thoughts.

In a TikTok posted in January, she described a recent interview where an employer initially agreed to provide the questions. But when she arrived, they backtracked, which undermined her confidence.

In the comments, viewers shared their own thoughts, with many agreeing that the way the company behaved was a "red flag." Some urged Darcie to take the employer to court for discrimination, noting that reasonable adjustments are a legal requirement.

"This is really bad," one said. "Definitely report this if you can."

Viewers who also had ADHD and autism said they often made the same requests to potential employers, with mixed results.

"There really should be no excuse for employers not to do this when requested," one viewer wrote. "For most jobs it shouldn't be based on how quickly you can answer on the spot anyway."

Some employers worry adjustments provide an unfair advantage. But Kristin Austin, VP of Culture and Community Health at Rewriting the Code, disagrees, arguing they actually improve fairness.

"If the goal is truly for people to show up at their best, why would you not give them those resources?" she says. "Are you evaluating my ability to think under pressure, or my ability to do the job?"

Software engineer Shea Belsky has experienced hiring from both sides. He says neurodivergent job-seeking experiences vary widely, making it difficult to generalise. Sometimes he has had a good experience, and sometimes he hasn't. But meaningful change, he adds, must come from company culture, and that's something he always strives to be a part of.

"It has to be baked into an organisation's DNA," he says. "We want people to feel like they can come and be their authentic selves."

For Herath, and many others, the hope is to be assessed on their ability rather than arbitrary, performative skills. Until hiring models evolve more broadly, interviews may continue to filter out the very talent that can make a difference.
 
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'A Neurodivergent Person's Worst Nightmare': Why The UK Hiring Market Is Still Broken


For neurodivergent candidates, the "correct" answers to interview questions can feel like a lie.

Since last July, Edward James Herath, a brand and strategic comms consultant, has taken part in more than 120 job interviews. The feedback is often the same: he's "too direct," "too honest," "abrupt," or "confrontational."

Herath, 39, who is diagnosed with autism and ADHD (AuDHD), believes his... literal and questioning demeanor is costing him jobs.

He finds interviews particularly difficult because of their "indirect, passive-aggressive, and theatrical communication style," he tells HuffPost UK. He believes they measure how he performs under pressure rather than his ability to do the job, and his real self - someone who cares deeply about his relationships and career - doesn't come across.

"There's a strong emphasis on reading between the lines and softening language," he says. For someone who values clarity, that's a difficult tone to strike.

Hearth is by no means alone in this struggle. Research suggests neurodivergence is widely seen as a barrier to employment. A 2024 Zurich survey of 1,000 neurodivergent adults in the UK found more than half believed recruitment processes were designed to filter them out, while over a third said interviews had triggered panic. A 2025 UK survey also found that 40% of young people believe being neurodivergent was a hindrance in the hiring market.

The consequences are significant for employers, says Sharawn Tipton, Chief People Officer at Greenhouse. She says traditional hiring often favours similarity over talent, despite evidence that diverse teams perform better. Neurodivergence, she says, is "no different than height or personality."

"When you think about neurodiversity, it's really around understanding that the mind works differently for everyone," she says. "Different ways of thinking and communicating are things that help companies innovate faster."

Christal Castagnozzi, a psychologist with ADHD and autism who specialises in neurodivergence, says traditional interviews prioritise skills like eye contact and quick verbal responses. Executive functions like memory and processing speed are suddenly tested too.

"Neurodivergent folks will struggle in all of these areas, especially when we are put on the spot," she says. "You're literally being judged while standing in front of someone. That's a neurodivergent person's worst nightmare."

For many, interviews become less about competence and more about navigating unwritten social rules, according to Elise Minkin, a neurodivergent career coach. She tells HuffPost UK that interviews can feel like "a game" where not everyone knows how to play.

"There's this kind of secret code that a lot of neurodivergent people feel like they were never told," she says.

Even common questions, such as why someone wants the job, can cause trouble.

"Obviously for a paycheque," she says. That's the true answer - and one which someone with neurodivergence would be inclined to say. "But of course it's not what the interviewer wants to hear," she added.

Office environments are not always comfortable spaces for neurodivergent people. Those with autism may struggle to concentrate under harsh fluorescent lighting. Flickering or humming lighting can also be distracting and even sometimes painful.

The location may also affect performance. Some candidates may communicate better over Zoom, where they can make notes, comfortably take more time to answer questions, or use a sensory fidget tool off-screen, which have been shown to help reduce anxiety and increase concentration for people with ADHD and autism.

Without flexibility, neurodivergent candidates "can't always show up as their best self," Minkin says.

Many neurodivergent candidates face the difficult decision over whether to disclose their condition up front. Tipton recommends those who want to do this to ask to be connected with anyone at the company who can offer support, such as an employee resource group (ERG).

"You can ask the company, what do you do?" she says. "Because interviewing is a two-way street, and you want to make sure you're going to an environment where you're going to thrive and the company is going to be able to support you."

Those who don't may result to masking, which is a term for suppressing natural behaviours to appear more socially typical.

"I'm not at all a fan of masking," Austin says, citing its mental and physical toll. But she acknowledges the decision is personal.

Castagnozzi believes the responsibility should not fall on candidates at all, and adjustments should be built into hiring by default.

"This should just be a best practice," she says. "Even someone that is not neurodivergent, or does not know that they are neurodivergent just yet, may benefit from accommodations, especially during a stressful time."

Under the Equality Act 2010, employers in the UK must make reasonable adjustments for disabled applicants. Similar protections exist in the US and Canada.

But reasonable adjustments are often applied inconsistently or denied altogether. Many neurodivergent people are speaking publicly about their experiences, sharing frustrations and finding solidarity.

Darcie, who has autism and ADHD, shares her experiences with her 14,000 TikTok followers. She says that receiving interview questions 15 minutes in advance is a reasonable adjustment that helps her organise her thoughts.

In a TikTok posted in January, she described a recent interview where an employer initially agreed to provide the questions. But when she arrived, they backtracked, which undermined her confidence.

In the comments, viewers shared their own thoughts, with many agreeing that the way the company behaved was a "red flag." Some urged Darcie to take the employer to court for discrimination, noting that reasonable adjustments are a legal requirement.

"This is really bad," one said. "Definitely report this if you can."

Viewers who also had ADHD and autism said they often made the same requests to potential employers, with mixed results.

"There really should be no excuse for employers not to do this when requested," one viewer wrote. "For most jobs it shouldn't be based on how quickly you can answer on the spot anyway."

Some employers worry adjustments provide an unfair advantage. But Kristin Austin, VP of Culture and Community Health at Rewriting the Code, disagrees, arguing they actually improve fairness.

"If the goal is truly for people to show up at their best, why would you not give them those resources?" she says. "Are you evaluating my ability to think under pressure, or my ability to do the job?"

Software engineer Shea Belsky has experienced hiring from both sides. He says neurodivergent job-seeking experiences vary widely, making it difficult to generalise. Sometimes he has had a good experience, and sometimes he hasn't. But meaningful change, he adds, must come from company culture, and that's something he always strives to be a part of.

"It has to be baked into an organisation's DNA," he says. "We want people to feel like they can come and be their authentic selves."
 
more