How neurodiverse job-seekers can ace interviews - with Ramon Santillan of PersuasiveInterview.com

#198: Ramon Santillan is a renowned interviewing expert who focuses on helping neurodiverse people ace their job interviews.  He explains the challenges neurodiverse people have in interviews, how we’re expected to act in interviews, and the different body language cues you should read and use.

What you’ll learn

• [01:30] How Ramon became an interview coach.
• [05:25] Why Ramon specialises in coaching people who are neurodiverse.
• [08:50] What neurodiversity means.
• [11:23] Challenges neurodiverse people have in interviews.
• [13:48] Common difficulties neurodiverse people face when selling themselves.
• [15:24] How neurodiverse people can understand how to act in an interview.
• [19:00] Exhibiting and reading body language.
• [21:46] Common interview questions that neurodiverse people struggle with.
• [25:06] How to make interviews conversational.
• [25:46] How to manage anxiety and overstimulation during an interview.
• [30:44] Whether or not to disclose your neurodiversity in a job application. 
• [35:35] What to do if you’re interviewing a neurodiverse person.
• [43:26] What interviewers look for in an interview.

Resources mentioned in this episode
Please note that some of these are affiliate links and we may get a commission in the event that you make a purchase.  This helps us to cover our expenses and is at no additional cost to you.

• Crazy Good Interviewing, John Molidor
• Who: The A Method for Hiring, Geoff Smart and Randy Street

For the show notes for this episode, including a full transcript and links to all the resources mentioned, visit:

https://changeworklife.com/how-neurodiverse-job-seekers-can-ace-interviews/

Re-assessing your career?  Know you need a change but don't really know where to start?  Check out these two exercises to start the journey of working out what career is right for you!

Transcript

0:00

How can you play the game if you don't know what the rules are? If you're neurodiverse, then things which may appear obvious to many people might not appear so obvious to you. So, how do you handle that in the context of job interviews? That's what we're going to talk about in this week's episode. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello, and welcome to Change Work Life, the podcast where we're all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. I'm a career coach, and in each episode, my guests and I bring you tips, strategies and stories to help you enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life. Job interviews are nerve wracking enough, but what about if you're neurodiverse as well? How do you identify and manage any challenges that your particular neurodiversity might present? Especially if it makes you less attuned to the rules of the game commonly understood by those who might be more neurotypical. To answer these questions and more, I'm delighted to be joined by Ramon Santillan. A former tax consultant, Ramon is now an interview coach who helps his clients be more charismatic, look and feel more confident, and brag about themselves during interviews. Ramon, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Tax consultant interview coach. How did that happen? I've always been really good at interviewing. I'm very much an introvert. But at some point in my career when I was in college, I didn't have the greatest grades, the highest GPA, I was a first generation college student, I didn't have any connections, my parents didn't have any connections. And when I went to the career services office at my school, I asked, 'How do I get a job?' I took the internship class that I'm supposed to take, I'm doing the resume, but when I see my peers' or my classmates' resumes, I wouldn't call them peers because maybe they were more advanced than me, I see that they have experience working for their parents' company, or they got an internship before because their neighbour hired them. I have work experience, but it's not related to accounting. And they say, 'Well, just try really hard.' And I was like, 'Well, that's not really answering my question. I can't just try harder.' So, what I did, I really prepared. So, this is about September 2001, which is, I guess here in the US, we know that September 11 happened. Economy went down, it got really hard to find jobs. And I can't compete against these kids, these other students, so I said, what can I do? I can't get a higher GPA in two weeks, I can't get connections in two weeks, my parents can't make connections. What do I do? And I was like, okay, I have to outsmart them. So, I outsmarted everyone else by just preparing better than everyone else. Not working harder. Not doing the same thing harder than everyone else. Doing something different than everyone else better. So, again, 2001, not a lot of companies had websites, LinkedIn wasn't around. Some people were looking for jobs on a newspaper, and some of them were kind of looking on the websites because that was a new thing. So, I did that, I did research where I could, I looked up books. I didn't look up online. Information wasn't online. I looked up books on the companies I was interested in, newspaper articles. And when I went to the interview, again, I didn't have any connections, my GPA was very, very low, I wasn't even in the right accounting programme, and I still got the job. I beat 350 other people for that one job. When I was walking out of the interview room, the interviewer patted me on the back and said, 'I can't wait to see you in the office.' And that's when I knew I was going to get the job. And again, what was the difference between me and the other candidates? I had all the disadvantages, what people consider disadvantages. I didn't have any connections. I didn't have high grades. I didn't have prior related work experience. But what I did is, I was prepared more and better prepared than everyone else. So, that started the path into accounting, but I knew that was a difference. I didn't have to be an extrovert all the time. I could be an extrovert when I needed it, when I need to talk about myself. Not brag, but just to retell the people why it benefited them to have me in this part of their company. After that, I started helping my friends, the sister in college, and then friends of friends, and then friends of acquaintances, and strangers started calling me. And I was still doing this just for fun, on my free time. And at some point, I didn't have any more time. I said, well, if someone calls me, I'm going to tell them that I'm going to charge them $25 and make them go away. So, I don't I don't have to say no to them. They'll have to say no to themselves. So, it worked for about a month, and then a month later, someone calls me and says, 'I heard you help people prepare for interviews.' And I said, 'Sure, it'll be $25.' The person said, 'Okay.' And I was, oh, okay. Well, I guess I have to help them now, because I said I would do it for $25. So, that's how I started the business, but itself, the process and the learning, that started when I was in college. And neurodiversity, how did you come to specialise in coaching through interviews people who are neurodiverse? Many years later, after I had a proper business, I got a call from a parent. Like many other parents before that, she called me about her student at college looking for an interview, looking for a co-op, what we call them in the United States, for internship. And, I said, sure, I can definitely help him. And she said, 'Well, here's the thing, he is on the autism spectrum.' And she said, 'Do you know about that?' I'm like, I'm not really sure. What is it? Well, he has trouble with communication sometimes. He's very smart, very, very educated, but those interviews really messes him up. He doesn't know how to talk about himself, and he doesn't maintain eye contact, which is one of the things common for people on the autism spectrum. And obviously, that's a key thing to do during the interview. And I said, well, I'll do my best, and we'll see what we can do. Luckily, I say luckily, but it really was a lot of work on both our sides, from my side and my client's side. And 45 days later, he had two job offers. And these weren't just some little computer repair shop place. These were Fortune 500 companies with great benefits, great growth opportunities. And I think the best part for my client was that these were not some higher initiative. These were regular, quote-unquote, regular jobs. He was competing against everyone else. And somehow, he beat them. I mean, somehow, people say, 'Well, it was a miracle.' Maybe it was a miracle, but there's a lot of work put into preparing for the interview, doing research on the people, knowing how to better present himself. Not sell himself, present himself to these people. Because mom called me back at the end when we were done, crying, saying, 'You made a miracle. You allowed me to have dreams I never allowed myself to have. I don't have to worry what's going to happen to him when I'm not here anymore, because he can get a good job, a real job, pays great, a career progression, he can support himself. He might even be able to support a family at some point. And I might even have grandkids. He might decide to have kids, and that means I have to have grandkids. That's a dream I never allowed myself to have, and you've given me that dream.' So, then she explained who she was, and her name's Dr Nevada Reed, and she is an expert, she has a clinic specialised in autism, and she explained to me more in detail what it really was. And at the end, she just said, 'There's a lot of those students like my son, Alden, who are very smart, very educated, very talented. They just can't get through the interview process, which is the essential part of the job search process. They have a GPA, everything, but just when they get to interview, they really can't get past that. You should look into that.' So I did, and I started working with more people who were on the spectrum. From there, we started learning more about it and got into neurodiversity. So, it's not just people on the spectrum. There's all kinds of, I guess, things that people might have that make them neurodiverse. And I work with them, create a programme that's customised for that specific person, so that way when they go interview, they can get that job. Fantastic. That's an amazing story. Okay. So, I know that this is a huge topic, and I'm hoping I'm not going to ask you an impossible question, but can you give us a two-minute introduction to neurodiversity? What it is? What does it mean? Neurodiversity, from what I understand and what I've been told by my clients, is seeing the world from a different perspective than most other people. So, like I mentioned, neurodiversity doesn't mean just people who are on the autism spectrum. It might be people who have attention deficit disorder. It might be people who have sometimes even anxiety, severe anxiety. Those are the kinds of things that I've helped my clients with. A lot of people think that maybe someone who's neurodiverse, you can tell that they're neurodiverse. And I don't know if you heard this, but you can't tell when someone's neurodiverse. A lot of people have had some clients who were older, and when I say older, in their fifties, and they were recently diagnosed being on the autism spectrum or something else. And they say, 'Wow, I just thought I was weird my whole life, but it turns out there's something different about me. And that's why I saw things in a different way, or certain things bothered me, even the shirts I wore bothered me. And now I know why.' And a lot of people might think, oh, that's such a bad thing to know that you are neurodiverse. But to a lot of my clients, knowing that they're neurodiverse is a big relief, because now they know why they think different or they feel different about some things. And they can say, 'Oh, okay. Well, I'm different, but I'm not broken. I just think different, and that's fine. That's allowed.' So, that's what I see from what my clients tell me neurodiversity is. Just seeing the world from a different perspective than most people don't, most neurotypical people don't. One of the things I've learned, I've studied neurodiversity a little bit, is that everyone's experience is different. And I'm conscious that we probably will be talking a little bit in generalisations, and I may well ask questions which someone listening to this thinks are inappropriate, or they don't represent them. And so, I just want to flag that this is a very complex subject, and what we're going to talk about may apply to some people, may resonate with some people, but everyone has their own experience, everyone has their own way this may or may not show up. So, I'm just going to mention that just in case anyone listening to these thinks, 'Well, that doesn't apply to me at all.' So, when it comes specifically to job interviews, what are some of the challenges that you've seen neurodiverse candidates might face? Things that may seem normal. And frankly, they're difficult for a lot of people. Maintaining eye contact during the interview, a lot of people don't do that. Especially now in our world of Zoom meetings or even our cell phones, sometimes we talk to people by looking at our phone. So, one thing I've noticed with my neurotypical clients, neurodiverse clients, excuse me, and neurotypical, is the lack of eye contact. For neurotypical, if you're not looking at someone when you're talking to them, they might take that as a sign of disrespect. They might take that as a sign that you're lying to them, that you're not being honest. Obviously, that's a torpedo during an interview. When someone's asking you, 'Tell me about that one project you did', and you're looking at the ground, they say, 'Well, why are they looking at the ground? Why aren't they looking at me?' So, that's something I notice all the time. I know we're talking about neurodiversity, but there's a lot of things that everyone does during an interview, and they might be harder for certain people. I'm not talking just neurodiverse people, sometimes cultural. I'll tell you a simple example. I'm from the United States, from Texas, so Southern United States. Here, we're raised calling people ma'am and sir or mister Smith, missus Rodriguez, first and last name, anyone who's older than you, just a little bit older. But in some parts of the country, when you refer to people like that, they take it as an offence because they feel, wait a minute, why are you calling me mister? Am I old? They don't take it as signs of respect. They take it as an insult. Do you think I'm old? Like, no, we're the same age. So, a lot of times, the work that I do with my clients is very customised, because we fear, who are you interviewing with? What part of the country? What industry? What company? What department? And we do research on all these things. So, that way, when they go into this interview, they know exactly how to present themselves to that particular person. It's not as hard as it sounds. Because at the end of the day, we're presenting the same person. You want to be seen how you want to be seen. But different people that you're talking to may receive that message differently. So, we want to make sure that the message that you're delivering to that person is the same message you want to deliver. If it's different words, different way of presenting it, different stories, that's fine. We just have to make sure that what you're doing is going to land how you want it to land. And what other challenges have you come up specifically for those neurodiverse clients that you help? A lot of times, again, talking about themselves. A lot of these people who are neurodiverse, they're very talented, they have a lot of great projects, but they feel that if they talk about their projects, it's bragging, and they don't feel comfortable with bragging. And again, I have to show them that. One thing I developed that helps people is telling them, 'You have a decision to make, whether you work here or not. They have a decision to make on who they hire. You don't make their decision, but your job here is to give them all the facts that they need, so that they can make a well-informed decision. So, what are the facts? That you worked here, you did this project, you got this grade. You can lie by omission. You cannot tell them that you did a project or that you worked on a team or you took leadership position, but that's lying. And not including it, it's lying. You don't want to lie. Tell them the truth, nothing but the truth. They'll decide who they decide to work there, but you have to give them the truth. That's your job.' Talking about themselves. Again, things that most people struggle with is what I see my clients struggling with a lot. More or less, but I feel sometimes, teaching people how to do things, anyone can do that, or most people can teach someone how to do something. Most people explain how to do it. What I do differently is I explain the why, and that's really what makes the difference between someone who might be neurotypical, or someone who's neurodiverse. They know that they have to do a certain thing, but no one's ever taken the time to explain to them about why, and that's really what makes the difference. And so, where does that difference come from? What is it that helps neurodiverse people more if they understand the why, which maybe might not be so necessary for neurotypical candidates? For a neurotypical candidate, for example, if I say, 'Smile', they intuitively know that, oh, yeah, if I smile, I come across as friendly. Maybe for a neurodiverse person, that's not as easy. A lot of people who are neurodiverse, they can't detect or interpret facial expressions as well as a neurotypical person. So, to them, it's like, why does it matter if I smile? I mean, I know I'm supposed to smile, but why? And maybe sometimes I don't even say it, because a lot of times when they ask these questions, someone who is neurotypical, I want to say, 'Well, because you have to smile.' And it's like, oh, okay, well, I just won't ask anymore, because every time I ask, to everyone else it seems like it's normal or common or natural, but to me it's not. And when I ask something, it makes me sound dumb. They'll respond like that, like, 'Well, no, no, no, just smile. You're supposed to smile.' And it's like, well, maybe I just won't ask anymore. But when I work with them, I explain why a smile matters. Smile shows friendliness. And also, it's not so much the smile, it's the tone of your voice. When you smile, and you might know this, your vocal cords are extended, which means your voice is higher pitched. So, this is perfect when you're in a phone call, you can hear a person smile. You say, how can you hear them? Like, you can. You've probably experienced that before. You're probably experiencing this right now. These guys are smiling to each other. How do I know? I don't know, I just know. It's because their vocal cords are extended. Why does that matter? Right now, maybe it doesn't really matter that much, but back in the day when we were cavemen, and you were walking in the jungle, and you heard a 'Ee, ee, ee, ee', a high-pitched sound, you thought, 'Oh, that's a little baby monkey. That's nice. It's not going to hurt me, a big caveman. It's not going to hurt me. I'm going to keep on walking.' But when you hear a roar, oh, that is probably a lion, and it's going to kill me. It's bigger than me. It's faster than me. It's got big teeth. I better get scared, run away. So, what happens when you smile? I can say my name, 'Hi, my name is Ramon Santillan.' Or I can say, '[smiling] Hi, my name is Ramon Santillan.' There's a slight difference in the sound of the voice, and you can tell on the first one, same words, I didn't say anything different, same words, same person at the same moment, but one's friendlier than the other. And why? Because when I do this with my smile, when I exaggerate my smile, my vocal cords got extended, my voice has a higher pitch, it sounds friendlier. In other words, it sounds less dangerous. That's really what we think. It's not that it sounds friendlier. It sounds less dangerous. 'Ee, ee, ee, ee' is less dangerous than a roar, and that's really where you should smile. So, that's when I explain to my clients, well, smiling actually changes the tone of your voice, and it's not so much the smile itself. We see the expression, oh, he's smiling, or she's smiling. They're probably friendly, but then the voice comes with it. It's like, oh, yeah, this person is not a threat to me. Which i.e., friendly. So, I like this person. He's not yelling at me. She's not berating me over my answers or my questions, so maybe I should smile too. And so, when I explain that to my clients, again, neurodiverse or neurotypical, a lot of times we don't know why we do things, we just do them, but when I explain things to people, people say, 'Oh, now I know the secret rules to this game that everyone's been playing around me. I just didn't know what the rules were. Now I'm going to beat everyone at this game because I know the rules, and I know them better than everyone else.' And this is another thing which I've learned about neurodiversity, there's these rules of the game which to someone who's neurotypical, they might be obvious. If someone smiles at you, then you smile back at them. But that's not necessarily instinctively the way that someone neurodiverse may interpret the situation. And I guess that that can apply to other things, like body language, and I'm thinking not just in terms of the body language that you exhibit, but also reading the body language of the person sitting opposite you. That's right. A lot of times when I ask my clients what happened during the interview, 'Oh, they were really nice, and they said they'll call me back. 'And it's like, okay, but how were they sitting down? How were they talking to you? So, I know the facts. Facts are, they interviewed me, they asked me some questions, they said they'll get back to me. Those are the facts. We can agree on that. But how did they say that to you? How did they ask you the questions? Did they lean forward and seem more interesting when you said a specific answer? Or were they're looking at their phone the whole time? So, a lot of times, these little titbits of information are very useful to determine how to manage your interview. They might obviously try to do a debrief, but during the interview, you might have to switch gears. And you can do that once you know if the person is paying attention to you or not. Their body language says a lot. The words that they say matter, too. But again, I can say, '[smiling] Hi', or I can say, '[more aggressively] Hi.' Same word, but how is my body language? Was I pointing my finger in your face, in your chest? Or was I leaning back with my hands on the back of my head? So, how do I say those words? So, I always show my clients, these are the things you should be looking at when someone's talking to you. And if you feel, based on what you're seeing, that maybe that story didn't land as well, maybe add some more information, or maybe switch gears and put a different story. Again, no one's going to ever get every single job offer they interview for. But what we want to do is, when you go to an interview, you feel more confident when you're going in than before. And you might know, okay, well, maybe that's not the right company for me, or maybe it is the right company for me. But what I do know for sure is that I went in, and I did the best job possible because I was prepared. At the end of the day, that's what we need to do, prepare for these interviews. When it comes to specific questions, are there typical interview questions which most people can expect to be thrown at them, but which neurodiverse people might have a bit more difficulty with than someone who's neurotypical? In my experience, it's not really so much, everyone gets the same questions. A lot of times, neurodiverse people stick to the facts. So, if the question is, 'Have you worked in a team environment before?', when someone asks you during an interview, what they really want are the details. So, yeah, I worked with a team, and my last job, it was a team of five, and we worked on this project, it was a tight deadline, blah blah blah. If you ask a neurodiverse person the question, 'Have you worked with a team before?', a lot of times, they'll say yes, and that is the answer. And then, the interviewer will have to dig a little bit further. Well, can you tell me more about the time you worked on a team? And sometimes even that that question would be like, yes, I can tell. And can you please tell me? And then, oh, okay. Well, let me tell you about the time. Okay. So a lot of times, again, when I when I work with my clients, it's not just explaining, oh, here's an answer. Actually, I don't even give them the answers. I help them develop their own answers for these questions, but I tell them why they're being asked that question. So, an easy one. For example, why do people start the interview by, 'Tell me about yourself'? And people say, 'Well, I don't know. It's a very open-ended question. Actually, it's not open-ended at all. The company doesn't care about you. And I don't mean you're not valuable. I don't mean you're not important. I'm also not saying that corporations are evil. I'm saying that they care about themselves. So, your answer should present yourself as a solution to their problem. So, talking about how you like video games and all this stuff when it's not a job for video games, doesn't really matter to them. It's useless information. Again, I'm not saying they're evil, and I'm not saying you're not important. I'm just saying they don't care about that information. Let's focus on their problem. So, if they say, 'Tell me about yourself', you tell them about your skills, your school, your graduation dates, your skill sets, some classes you've taken, some projects you've done. That's really what you should focus on. But anyways, back to the original question, why do they ask you that? They ask you that question because they want to ease into the conversation. They're not going to start the interview by saying, 'What's the biggest challenge you've ever had?' That's a harder question. That's a more deeper level question. So, just like when you start dinner with someone, if you go on a date with someone, the first question is not going to be, 'So, is your mom going to live with us, or is she going to live with your sister?' No, you start the conversation like, 'So, tell me about yourself.' Once you get deeper into relationship, deeper into the conversation, you can start asking deeper questions. So, why do people ask you, 'Tell me about yourself'? They want to ease into the conversation. It is a great opportunity to talk about how you, right from the beginning, would be a great addition to the company. On the things that they care about. How do you know what they care about? Look at the job description that tells you the problem that they have. And a great way to end the answer to the question, so tell me about yourself, name, major, school, projects you've worked on, previous work experience, even if it's not related, again, things that matter to them, you can finish that question by asking a question, saying, 'What about my resume attracted you the most?' Because that'll show you what they're really focused on. They'll say, 'Oh, I really like your coding experience or that you know these specific languages.' Once you hear that, you know, oh, that's the problem they have. Let me go heavy on those things. Now, you know your stories are going to go heavy on the time you used HTML, that you use Java, C++, whatever it is that they're looking for. That's a tip which I think a lot of people, not just neurodiverse, would do well to remember, that interviews really should be a conversation. And certainly, my most effective ones have been the ones where I haven't just answered a question and waited for the next one, where I have answered a question, and then I've asked a follow-up question myself, and it's become more of a conversation. So, yeah, that's a valuable tip for everyone, I think. Yeah. Exactly right. I think, let other people have interviews. You should be having conversations. Because people don't hire the most technical person. They don't hire the most qualified person. They hire the person they like the best. Anxiety and overstimulation can be a challenge for some neurotypes. What techniques have you found that people respond well to, to manage that kind of thing in an interview situation, which can already be quite high stress? I'm going to go back to, my fallback is preparation, but the specific kind of preparation. They say practice makes perfect, and that's not true. Perfect practice makes perfect. So, when you go into an interview, like you said, overstimulation, there might be new people, new faces, questions you're not sure about. So, what do we do? We do research on the people you're meeting. So, what did that person do? Where did they work at before? How long have they worked at this job? What's their background? Where is their school or their major? I've realised that if you take those questions out of the equation, if you have answers for those questions, then you don't have to worry about all these questions that run through your head, because you have an answer to them. And when you go to an interview, you actually have questions to ask. Like, hey, I see that you went to my same school. Did you also take professor so and so? Or I see, before this, you were working in a different type of industry, how did you make that transition from there to here? Once you know what you want to ask, there's a lot less things to worry about, because you know what plan you want to go in. And again, that's for everyone, but specifically, or especially for neurodiverse people. If we take all those questions out of the air, if we know how we want to present ourselves, instead of just showing up and, well, let's see what they ask me. If you know your story, it doesn't matter what question they ask you. You know how to answer it, because you're focused on your story, how you can help them based on your experiences. Doing research on the company, on the job, and on the people you're meeting. At the end of the day, it solves that anxiety. Because we, in a way, already know these people, because we've looked at their background. I had one client years ago. We were doing some research on the person he was interviewing with. And we found that company newsletter on Google. And every month, that company highlighted an employee. A short article about what they did outside of work. And this particular person, he liked to do beekeeping on the weekends. So, we looked at the article, and I say, 'This is fair game because we found it on Google, it's on the company newsletter, so obviously, it was public information, you might want to ask about this at some point.' So, John goes to the interview. The person says, 'Tell me about yourself.' John says, 'My name's John, my major, my school, these are the projects, these are the things I do.' And the question to start the conversation was, 'How about you? I see that you do this particular job, but on the weekends, you like to do beekeeping.' And all these things come in. So, we know what question we wanted to ask, we knew what John wanted to present himself as. And we studied body language, how to read and all that stuff. And John told me after the interview that the guy leaned forward, tapped on his desk, and he said, 'You know about beekeeping? You saw the article about beekeeping?' And John's like, 'Yeah. I saw the article that you're beekeeping.' Then, the guy went, 'Let me tell you about beekeeping.' So, for the next 25 minutes, it was nothing but beekeeping. Luckily, John had done some research on beekeeping, so he was asking questions like, is it true that the flower changes the type of flavour that the honey makes? Just questions that came up to his head as the guy was talking about beekeeping 25 minutes. When the time was up for the 30-minute interview, John said, 'Well, you know, we're almost out of time. Do you want to ask me anything about my background?' Because he hasn't asked anything besides 'Tell me about yourself.' The guy had spent the whole 25 minutes talking about beekeeping. And the guy said, 'John, do you think you can do this job?' And John's like, 'Yeah.' That's good enough for me. And John got the job. And again, they don't hire the most technical person. We are more or less the same. Right? Some people are maybe smarter or maybe have higher grades, maybe more experience than other people. But at the end of the day, you're going to spend a lot of time at work, and the people who are already there want to make sure that you're cool. Not that you're the funniest or anything. No. That they're going to like you. Are you going to be cool to hang around with? Because they're going to spend a lot of time with you, too. So, they want to make sure. Do I like this girl? Do I like this guy? Are they cool to be around with? Again, it's not like you have to be the, here in the US, we have the archetype of the football player, quarterback. But no, you don't have to be that guy. You can be yourself. That's why we want to make sure you find the right job for you. That can be at the big companies. It can be the Microsoft, it can be the Facebooks. It can be anywhere else too, but you have to make sure that you go to the place you want to be. And that's why it's important to tell your story. A hot topic is around disclosure, disclosing neurodiversity. And that can be challenging enough when you're in a job. So, in the workplace, and you're aware that you might be neurodiverse, maybe you've got a diagnosis, but there's the question about whether it's something to disclose to the boss, disclose to colleagues, that kind of thing. What about in an interview situation? I mean, is this ever something which could be declared as part of the process? When I work with my clients, we eventually get to that question, because they're filling out a job application, and here in the United States, we have a little box that you have to check, or you can check whether you want to disclose or not, or prefer not to say, which in a way saying I do have a disability of sorts. And I always tell them, this is up to you to decide. Ideally, you should not be discriminated because of that. We have laws against that. But what happens because of the law and what happens in the real world might be different. And I always tell people, it's up to you to disclose. If you feel you need some kind of accommodation, definitely disclose. But the way you disclose matters. So, I always tell them, let's do this when we're talking to someone. Because when you're talking to someone one on one, it's easier to explain, and they can see, they're like, 'Oh, yeah, this person, they might be neurodiverse, but that's completely different than what I thought neurodiversity was. Neurodiversity, I thought was a big, big disability that they couldn't even get around or anything like that. And it can be, but I can see that this person is not that. So, maybe I just had to explain things a little bit different to this person than other people.( And the employer, the hiring manager, that person might say,'Yeah, we can do that. You know what? I really like this person. It's not what I thought neurodiversity was.' And so, again, I tell people, let's talk to that person. And we start off by asking, 'Do you know what, you know, whatever, ADHD is, being on the spectrum?' A lot of times people have some experience. They might know someone, in their family or something. And then I say, okay, well, now let's explain how it in a way benefits you to have that. What makes you different about this? And everyone has a different explanation. Some people can focus really well. Some people cannot focus very well, but it comes with some other strengths. And they explain, well, this is what I do to overcome this or work with this or deal with this. But also, on the flip side, these are some very, very good strengths that I have, that I think make me an ideal candidate for this role. And again, I feel that once you talk to a person face to face about this, they can be more understanding, they can be more open to listening. And they can see, oh, yeah, this isn't that much different than someone else who maybe we need to put a ramp for them, or something that's not even that hard to do. And in a way, there's a lot of programmes, I'll get in a little soapbox for a second, there's a lot of programmes out there that help people get jobs at companies. So, there's hiring initiatives, and they're great, and they're wonderful. In a lot of these programmes, I feel they do a lot of accommodations, and some people need accommodations, I 100% agree with that, but some people don't need as many accommodations. And they've told me before that they've gotten a job, but they said, 'I didn't earn that. It was a pity hire.' I heard that phrase several times for several of my clients who came to me after they've done that with someone. They say, we need someone who's on the spectrum. They saw me and said, 'Pick that guy. Pick that girl.' And they get that job. But then, they never really learned how to get a job, and I guess it was through a hiring initiative. And I said, well, how many hiring initiatives are there? There's one here in the United States, I think it's June, which is autism awareness month. Everyone talks about how they do all these things for neurodiversity, but then the rest of the year, nothing happens. And they say, well, what about the rest of the year? I need a job the whole year, not just for a month. They tell me that they don't like those because it was a pity hire. Again, that phrase stuck with me that they say, 'I was a pity hire. They hired me because they had pity on me, not because I earned the job.' One thing I'm very proud of is that none of my clients have gotten a job through a hire initiative. They compete with everyone else in those jobs, and they get those jobs. Again, these are top, top jobs. A lot of times parents call me telling me that their kids earn more money than they do. So, what I do is, I make sure I empower my clients. I don't want my clients to need me again. I want them to go get a job through just a regular job, and the next job they look for, they can get it on their own. They don't need me. A lot of times, I feel some of these programmes, I'm sure they help some people, but a lot of people I've talked to have come to me and said, 'They didn't help me at all. It actually made me feel worse.' We focused predominantly on the experience from the candidate side. I am curious to know whether you have got any advice for the person on the other side of the table, the interviewer. So, if they become aware or maybe suspect that the person they're talking to has some kind of neurodiversity, what are some of the ways that they can support the candidate whilst still maintaining the fairness and integrity of the interview process? I think, just explain questions. And again, it's hard for anyone to tell if someone's neurodiverse or not. So, you can't say, 'Oh, this person, they're neurodiverse. I can tell already off the bat.' Sometimes people are just shy. So, I would say for interviewers, the best thing you can do is ask the question you want to ask. Don't just say, 'Have you worked in a team before?' Is that the question you want to ask? Or is the question you want to ask,'Tell me a time you worked in a team, and you faced a difficult situation'? That's a different question. Because the first one, we can answer with a yes or no answer. The second one requires a story. So, ask the question you want to ask. It's the same thing I tell my clients. I'd say, don't ask the question, 'Tell me about your diversity.' Every company, no matter who they are, is going to say they're diverse, even if they're not. But is that really a question you want to ask? Some people say, 'Yeah. I want to know about that.' Okay. Good. Let's ask that question, but in a different way, so that way, you get a real answer, not the HR answer. If it's not the question you want to ask, let's ask one that you really care about. You know, if I get this job, what's the career path of this company for someone with this kind of job? That's a specific question that maybe someone wants to know. So, ask that question. So, in both ways, ask the question you want to ask, and don't ask yes or no questions. I think sometimes for neurotypical people, well, it's obvious that I'm trying to figure out the time they struggled with someone in the team. No, it's not. You asked a yes or no question. You get a yes or no answer. And that goes for neurotypical and neurodiverse people. Like I mentioned before, a lot of companies are doing these hiring initiatives and that kind of stuff, and that takes time. My goal, I think it's easier if we just convince companies, and not convince them by making them do it, but convince them by showing them that neurodiverse candidates are as good, maybe sometimes even better, than neurotypical candidates. And how do we do that? By not necessarily giving them the jobs, by showing them how to get these jobs. And these people can do, I frankly feel like they can do sometimes a better job than neurotypical people. And once you have more neurodiverse people in a company, those people will probably know how to ask those questions better, because they know what answer they're going to get if they ask, 'Have you worked in a team before?', as opposed to, 'Tell me a time when you struggled with working on a team.' So, that's my goal. Get as many people who are neurodiverse working companies, so that way everyone else can know that, hey, these people are really good employees. They make us money. They work well. They stay a long time. Maybe we should hire more of them. I'm not forcing anyone to hire. I'm convincing them, I'm persuading them to get hired. One of the things that I've actually found quite heartening as I've learned more and more about neurodiversity is that a great way to present yourself or behave is just to be clear about things. And this can be beneficial whether you're talking to someone with a neurodiversity or not. So, like you said, if you have a question, ask the question that you actually want answered, rather than a question which you kind of assume the other person will understand what the real question is. If you're just clear in your communication and clear about what you're asking of the other person, I don't think it really matters who's across the table from you. Exactly right. As long as you solve their problem, I think it goes with any group, if you can solve the problem that they have, they really don't care who you are, what you look like, or what you do. They say, 'No, we need this person because this person can solve our problem.' And at the end of the day, again, I'm not saying corporations are evil or anything like that, but they have problems to solve, and that's why they're hiring someone. A lot of times people think the problem is hiring. No, the problem is not hiring. The problem is something else. If a company could have figured out how to get a computer to do that job, they would have done it already. But so far, they haven't figured it out, so they need someone. They don't need a body. They need someone to provide the solution. In our day and age, maybe it's a person. So, be that person. Be the solution to their problem. No one cares about you. And again, I'm not saying you're not important. I'm not saying you're not valuable. Companies care about themselves. And I'm not saying companies are evil either. Again, we all have our problems. If we can solve other people's problems, then we solve our problems. If someone wants to dive into the topic that we've been discussing in a bit more detail, what resources do you suggest that they could look into? I mean, there's so many out there. The field changes all the time. Sometimes even terms change. What was an acceptable term at some point is not anymore. It hard to pin down. I always start, you can go into the academic route and try learning it that way. There's all kinds of books. You can just type 'neuro' into the Google browser. You'll find all of them. You can go to doctors, which started my path, getting the medical side of it. But at the end of the day, talking to someone who identifies as neurodiverse and just speaking to them or talking to them, listening to them, you're going to learn a lot of things. And one thing you'll learn is, once you talk to someone who's on the spectrum, what does that mean, you've talked to one person on the spectrum. It's a spectrum for a reason. Everyone's a little bit different, and that's fine. So, just being understanding, and again, this is for everyone, be clear in what you're asking and what you're saying. And that will just help everyone in general, not just people who are neurodiverse. If you ask the question you want to ask, that's something I would start off. A good research for interviewing that I feel everyone should read, which will start you in this path, is this book called Crazy Good Interviewing. It's by John Molidor. It's been around for a while. I actually got it at a Half Price Books here in Austin, Texas, actually. So, a good 25 years ago, I believe. It's a great resource. That's what started my path as an interview coach and really getting to the technical side of interviewing. And even to just say I refer to it when I work with my clients, because it has a lot of viewpoints on how to see the interview from a different perspective. And at the end of the day, people who are neurodiverse are seeing things from a different perspective. It doesn't mean that it's a wrong perspective. It's just a different one that most of us are currently looking at. I'm going to add my own suggestion for a resource, and I'm going to get the name wrong. And I'll put it in the show notes, but it's called something like The A Method For Hiring or The A List Method For Hiring. And it's a book which is aimed at the other side of the table. It's aimed at the companies that want to hire the best candidates, how would you do that, and it suggests various processes for doing it. And why I think that's valuable is that it goes back to what you were saying about understanding what the company is looking for when it's hiring someone. In other words, it's looking to find a solution to its own problem. If you understand what's motivating the person who is looking to make this hire, then you can better answer their questions, better present yourself as the solution to that problem. At the end of the day, what they're looking for is a solution to the problem. So, present yourself as a solution. Tell them the things that they need to hear, that are true, obviously, about you, that will solve that problem for them. And that's going to get you the job. Where should people go to find out more about you? You can go to my website, persuasiveinterview.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn under my name, Ramon Santillan. You can go to linkedin.com/in/interviewcoach, and you'll find all my posts. You can send me a connection request there. I'm always happy to accept people there and talk to them. But yeah, my website, persuasiveinterview.com, has a lot of articles, a lot of success stories on there that you can see and just learn more of the things that I do and how I help people get the job that they want. Links will be in the show notes. Ramon, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your expertise. Thank you, Jeremy. Okay. Hope you enjoyed that interview with Ramon Santillan. It never occurred to me that one of the traits of neurodiversity could be a need to understand why the rules, why the norms are in place. I've never really thought about why it's important to smile at someone. So, it was interesting hearing Ramon describe how he does go into some detail with his clients to help them understand the reason and the rationale behind this. I also thought that whether you identify as being neurodiverse or not, there was an awful lot in this conversation that could help you prepare for interviews. The preparation that Ramon described might sound a bit over the top, but he said to me after the interview that what he does is takes people who have maybe just graduated from college and turns them into C-suite interviewees. So, in other words, they conduct interviews as though they were senior corporate executives. And that gets him and his clients results. One of the key points that bears repeating is that when companies are looking to hire, it's because they are looking to solve a problem. And that's the main thing going on in their minds. Are you the person who can solve the need, solve the problem that they have? Demonstrate that you are that person, and you're well on your way. Show notes for this episode are at changeworklife.com/198, that's changeworklife.com/198. And I'd love to find out from you if this kind of episode is helpful. Do you want to hear more episodes like this? Less like this? If less, well, what else would you like to hear about? Go to changeworklife.com/contact, that's changeworklife.com/contact, and let me know. In two weeks' time, we're going to be exploring confidence. Why is it that so many of us put up with unhappiness? What is it about doubt and lack of self-confidence, fear of the unknown that makes us so resistant even to start exploring change? That's what we're talking about in two weeks' time. So, make sure that you subscribe to the show, if you haven't already, and I can't wait to see you then. Cheers. Bye.