I no longer submit job applications with excitement. There is no sense of possibility as I press the button, no moment where I allow myself to imagine what might happen if somebody reads my CV and sees something worth exploring. After sending somewhere between two hundred and three hundred applications and receiving only two interviews, I have learned to protect myself by expecting nothing. It is easier to believe I will be rejected before anybody has actually rejected me, because allowing hope in has started to feel like giving disappointment somewhere new to land.
That protection does not make the process hurt less, it just means every application begins without the energy it probably deserves. I read the job description, adjust my CV where appropriate and try to explain why my experience fits, but underneath it all is the feeling that I am sending a flattened version of myself into a pile of other flattened versions, hoping the right words are there to get me through whatever combination of recruiters, software and decisions sits between me and an actual conversation. I do not know whether somebody has read it properly, whether I have matched the right keywords or whether I disappeared before a person ever had the opportunity to decide what I might bring.
“I am applying for jobs while already feeling rejected by them.”
There is a particular kind of powerlessness in knowing that the parts of you that matter most professionally are the parts that are hardest to place on a CV. I can list thirteen years of marketing experience, the roles I have held, the projects I have delivered and the ILM management programme I completed, but I cannot place the way my mind works into a short paragraph. I cannot show the excitement in my voice when I talk about branding, the way I connect marketing activity to a wider commercial strategy or the energy I get from planning how a business can tell its story more meaningfully. I can write that I am passionate, creative and strategic, but those are words almost anybody can use, and the truth behind them only becomes visible when I am given the opportunity to speak.
Before an interview, I research everything I can. I look through the company website and social media channels, search for stories about the business and read what employees have said about working there. I look at reviews, study its direction and even check its Companies House records because I want to understand more than the surface version presented in the job advert. I want to know where the business has come from, where it might be going and where somebody with my experience could help. Part of this preparation comes from my autism and my need to reduce uncertainty, but it also comes from genuine care. I do not want to enter an interview and simply explain why I need a job, I want to explain why I am interested in that particular business and what I believe we might be able to build together.
That is why one recent rejection affected me so deeply. It was a role I genuinely wanted within a business whose culture appeared to be everything I had been hoping to find. I progressed through two interviews and began to imagine what the opportunity could mean, not only financially but personally. I pictured the office, the people, the fresh start and the feeling of having somewhere meaningful to direct my mind again. I imagined being part of the business because once something begins to feel possible, my autistic brain does not hold it as a vague option. It begins creating the structure around it, filling in the spaces and turning possibility into a future I can almost step into.
The rejection arrived by email while I was standing in a supermarket. I wanted to cry there and then, because what disappeared in that moment was not only a job. It was income, structure, purpose and the future I had already started to see. I had left the interview believing I had done everything I could, which somehow made the email harder to understand. For a couple of days afterwards, my mood dropped, my appetite changed and my energy disappeared while my mind repeatedly returned to the interview, searching for the moment where something had gone wrong.
Luckily, I had a dance show that weekend and dancing gave me something else to hold onto. It has always helped me step outside the noise in my head and connect with a version of myself that feels more present, but even with that release, the question underneath everything remained the same: what am I going to do?
“The job disappeared in one email, but the future I had imagined disappeared with it.”
The business was incredibly thoughtful in the way it gave me feedback, which I appreciated more than I can properly explain. There was no anger for me to hide behind and no reason to dismiss the decision as coming from somewhere I would no longer want to work. If anything, the care they showed reinforced my respect for them, and I still check their jobs page regularly in the hope that another suitable opportunity appears.
The feedback did, however, reveal something painful. During the interview I had been asked about my go-to-market experience, and my mind immediately connected the question to a major event I had delivered in Barcelona. I knew that project in detail and spoke confidently about it because I was proud of what I had achieved. The project was go-to-market work, but I focused on what I had delivered rather than clearly explaining the strategies behind it. I interpreted the question in a way that made sense to me, selected an example I knew deeply and left feeling that I had answered well, without realising that the people listening had not heard the evidence they were looking for.
I did not know in the moment that my interpretation was different from theirs. That understanding came afterwards, when the outcome could no longer be changed, leaving me with another version of the interview playing repeatedly in my head. I could see the answer I might have given with more time to process the question, and I began wondering whether asking for some interview questions in advance as a reasonable adjustment could have helped me communicate my experience more accurately.
For me, having questions in advance would not be about creating polished answers that are not genuine or finding a way around the interview. It would allow me to understand what is actually being asked, organise the relevant experience and give an honest answer that reflects what I know rather than whichever interpretation reaches me first under pressure. Research into autistic recruitment experiences has found that conventional interviews can create barriers which do not necessarily reflect a person’s ability to perform the actual job, while supportive adaptations to interview questions can help autistic candidates communicate their experience more effectively. Reasonable adjustments exist to reduce that disadvantage within recruitment, but knowing that now does not stop me replaying the opportunity where I did not ask.
“I did not lack the experience, but the way I answered meant they never got to see it.”
The danger of replaying an interview is that hindsight makes everything feel preventable. My mind can rebuild the conversation with the perfect answer in place, then treat that imagined version as proof that I failed to do something obvious. It becomes difficult to remember that an interview contains pressure, ambiguity and decisions beyond my control, because I now have one clear moment to blame. The feedback was useful and I will learn from it, but during those first few days it became another way of punishing myself for not understanding something I had not realised I was misunderstanding.
All of this is happening while my mental health is already struggling more than I can describe. Over recent months my medication has increased and I have started therapy, not as part of a planned period of personal development but because I reached a point where trying to carry everything alone was no longer working. The loss of work, the uncertainty around what happens next and the pressure I feel to provide for my family have gradually stripped away my sense of stability. There are days where I feel empty, useless and unable to recognise the capable person I believed I was before all of this began.
Without work, there is no reliable structure to my days and nowhere consistent for my marketing brain to go. I am volunteering and completing occasional freelance work, and I value the opportunities those give me, but they do not replace the experience of being part of a business, working with people towards something and having responsibility for a strategy that matters. I miss branding, planning, analysing, creating and finding the story that connects everything together. I miss having a problem to solve and knowing that somebody trusts me to help solve it.
Job searching has started to become more than the process of finding employment. It is slowly changing how I see myself. Every silence makes me question whether my experience matters, every rejection makes me wonder what somebody else had that I did not and every week without work makes the confidence I built over thirteen years feel less secure. I know logically that a recruitment decision can be influenced by countless things, including a closer match of experience, a stronger connection or one answer framed in a particular way, but when there is no explanation my mind fills the empty space itself, and it rarely fills it kindly.
I begin questioning whether I am actually as capable as I thought I was, whether the things I consider different and valuable are only impressive in my own head and whether another business will ever see enough in my CV to let me explain the rest. I wonder whether my autism is seen as a potential problem even when nobody would say that openly, and whether my breadth of experience makes it harder for employers to understand where I fit.
My path into marketing was not neat. I studied graphic design at school, multimedia and animation at college then film and digital media at university before working in retail, sales and administration. I did not study marketing formally, I found my way into it and learned by doing. Working in a small team and later carrying much of a marketing function alone gave me exposure to many different areas, including branding, content, social media, email, campaigns, commercial thinking, events and strategy.
For a while, I described that experience harshly as being a jack of all trades and master of none. I am not a highly technical social media specialist, website developer or paid advertising expert, and I have not spent years working with every platform or measurement system that appears on current job descriptions. I understand now that good marketing should not expect one person to do everything, because businesses need specialist marketers, designers, analysts and digital experts who can bring depth to their individual areas.
The part I am still learning to explain is where that leaves me. I understand how those specialisms connect, how a brand should develop and how strategy can give talented people a shared direction. I do not want to pretend that I am the deepest expert in every channel. I want to help build the team that brings those channels together, understand what the business is trying to achieve and create the structure that allows people to do their best work.
My ideal role would be within an established business entering a period of growth or change, perhaps rebranding, expanding its offer or beginning something new. I want the opportunity to arrive at the beginning of that evolution, look at what already exists and ask how it could become better. I want to shape strategy, build something meaningful and eventually develop a high-performing team around it. That is where my broad experience becomes useful, because I can see the brand, the audience, the commercial objective and the people delivering it as parts of the same story.
The problem is that businesses often need somebody who can immediately step into the exact role they have advertised, and I understand why. Recruitment is expensive, teams are stretched and employers need confidence that the person they choose can deliver what is required. I am not asking anybody to ignore genuine gaps or offer me a position based on passion alone. I am asking for the opportunity to explain how the experience I have built might fit somewhere less obvious than the job titles on my CV suggest.
“A CV can show where I have worked, but it cannot show the person I become when I care about what we are building.”
I have always believed that if I were recruiting, I would try to look beyond education and exact experience where possible, because passion and drive matter to me. That does not mean everybody should receive an interview for every application, and I know the volume recruiters manage can make that impossible, but I would want to understand the person behind the page before deciding what they could become. Perhaps that belief makes the current process harder for me, because I keep wishing it worked in the human way I would naturally approach it.
I sometimes feel that I need somebody else to speak for me before I enter the room, which is why I hope the right recruitment agency might become the bridge between my CV and a conversation. I do not need them to exaggerate what I have done or create a version of me that does not exist. I need somebody to understand the shape of my experience, recognise the direction I am trying to move in and give a business enough confidence to talk to me.
Once that conversation begins, I will be honest. Tell me what you want to understand and, where possible, allow me time to prepare so I can give you the real answer rather than the quickest interpretation my mind produces. If I am not right for the role afterwards, I can accept that, although I would always value knowing why because clarity helps me learn and stops my mind inventing explanations that hurt far more than the truth might.
I know there will be other people reading this who understand the strange emptiness of applying without hope, checking emails while fearing what might be there and questioning abilities they once felt certain about. Job searching can be demoralising for anybody, but as an autistic adult it can also involve trying to translate yourself into systems built around quick interpretation, confident self-presentation and unspoken expectations, while carrying the weight of every unanswered question long after the application or interview has ended.
I am still struggling and I do not have a positive conclusion to wrap around this experience. Therapy and medication have not suddenly removed the fear, and writing honestly about it does not return the confidence that has been disappearing day by day. I am trying to keep applying, keep volunteering and keep some connection to the work I love while a large part of me is frightened that I will remain at home, unable to provide and slowly losing touch with the person I spent thirteen years becoming.
Perhaps that is why I need to write this now, before I have reached the reassuring part of the story. I want recruiters and businesses to understand that the person behind an application may already be carrying more than the document reveals, and that one conversation can mean far more than another stage in a process. I want people living through the same silence to know that the doubt does not belong only to them, and I want those who have known me professionally to understand that beneath every attempt to remain constructive is somebody who has been hurt more deeply than he has known how to say.
I am not asking to be promised a job, excused from expectations or chosen because I am autistic. I am asking for the chance to explain what I have learned, how I think and what happens when I am given something meaningful to build, because behind the CV is still a marketer, strategist and storyteller trying to believe in himself again, hoping somebody will pause long enough to see what has become increasingly difficult for me to see through my eyes.
References and Further Reading
National Autistic Society, What are reasonable adjustments and when can they be requested?
https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/employment/what-are-reasonable-adjustments-and-when-can-they
Davies et al, Access to employment: A comparison of autistic, neurodivergent and neurotypical adults’ experiences of hiring processes in the United Kingdom
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10375005/
Maras et al, Ameliorating the disadvantage for autistic job seekers: An initial evaluation of adapted employment interview questions
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8108109/