PIVOT Framework icon — ADHD and autistic career coaching for meaningful transition

The Career PIVOT Framework:
ADHD & Autistic Career Coaching for Your Next Senior Move

The path you’re on no longer fits. PIVOT helps you choose the next move from self-knowledge, not external pressure.

That might be a new role, contracting, or building something of your own. Whichever it is, the work starts with how you actually operate, not with templates and tactics.

Generic career advice assumes you will adapt to whatever you choose. PIVOT works the other way round. The aim is a move that lasts, not another role you will be performing your way through inside a year.

How the Career PIVOT Framework Works

PIVOT Framework icon — ADHD and autistic career coaching for meaningful transition

The Career PIVOT Framework is a five-step career transition that starts with the person, not the tactics. Every step ends with something concrete.

  1. Start with you
    Position builds your foundation: core strengths, three to five non-negotiable values, how you work best, and the patterns that derailed past attempts. You leave with a Personal Foundation Profile.

  2. Choose and communicate
    Identify narrows the market to two or three directions that fit that foundation. Voice turns your strengths into a professional story that is not corporate-speak, and positions direct or analytical communication as an asset.

  3. Make the move
    Own sets an outreach routine that fits your actual capacity. Take covers interviews, negotiation and the first 90 days, with every offer tested against your foundation.

The steps build on each other, but a job search is not a straight line. The coaching adapts to where you actually are, not where a programme expects you to be. Check-ins run every one to two weeks during an active search.

Ready to begin?

Research Foundations

  • The PIVOT Framework is informed by established career development theory and emerging neurodiversity research. The structured approach draws on William Bridges and Susan Bridges' Transition Model (1991), which examines how individuals psychologically navigate major life changes through three phases: endings, neutral zones, and new beginnings.

  • The emphasis on person-environment fit aligns with ecological models showing that neurodivergent professionals often experience higher workplace misfit when accommodations are not properly addressed. Find out more from Elizabeth Follmer’s research and this IAAP review.

  • The Profile phase incorporates strengths-based career ecosystem theory, with research demonstrating that neurodivergent individuals may struggle to recognise their own strengths due to internalisation of deficit-based norms.

  • The framework's focus on sustainable working patterns reflects biopsychosocial models of neurodiversity, which emphasise adjusting the fit between person and environment rather than treating neurodivergence as a disorder.

  • Research published by Human Resource Management shows that mapping individuals' strengths, preferences, and environmental needs to suitable opportunities is fundamental to effective career guidance for neurodivergent professionals, addressing findings that employment is only sustainable when individuals are hired for their skills and suitability, not as charity.