Stephen Quinn

School was hard in ways I could not name at the time. Bright enough to get by, but the education system was not built for how my brain worked. University came later, as a mature student.

Then a career that looked fine from the outside. I excelled in every role, then got bored, then moved on. I was always hired as a doer, not a thinker. Brought in to execute, not to build. The work I was genuinely good at, building strategy, making connections, driving real change, rarely made it into a job description. And I was always drawn to what was new. Once something was figured out, the energy left. I kept fitting myself into shapes that did not quite fit.

My wife and I were both diagnosed as adults: me with ADHD, my wife and our kids with AUDHD. Getting a diagnosis later in life is its own kind of reckoning. It reframes a lot. The exhaustion, the boredom, the cycle of excelling then moving on: it all starts to make sense. The problem was never the person. It was the fit.

Volunteering with Little Brains Inclusive Well-being, a group for neurodivergent children, keeps the stakes clear. Those kids will need jobs one day. The workforce they walk into should be better than the one that existed for us.

Neuro Hire Network is built for UK adults who are neurodivergent, recently diagnosed, or still working out what that means for their career. Practical information. A job board that reflects how people actually search, think, and work.

Read the full story behind Neuro Hire Network.