I get interviews. That part of my job search works. After nearly 19 years at EMC and Dell, leading a CI/CD transformation across 22 Scrum teams and running the Architecture Review Board for Dell NativeEdge, my resume opens doors at companies I’d be proud to work for.

Then I get on a Zoom call, and things get harder.

I’ve been hard of hearing since birth, and I have ADHD. Both are invisible until they aren’t. I want to write about the gap between a strong resume and a rough interview, because I don’t think hiring teams see it, and I don’t think enough of us talk about it.

What a video interview actually asks of me

From the outside, an interview looks simple. One person asks questions and the other answers. For me it’s several jobs at once.

I’m listening through compressed audio and filling in words I didn’t quite catch from context. I’m holding the question in my head while I pick which story fits. I’m watching the clock. And with ADHD, working memory is the first thing to go when I’m nervous, so a detail I knew cold an hour ago can disappear mid-sentence.

When the audio drops, someone turns away from the mic, or two people talk at once on a panel, I lose the thread. Then I have a choice. I can ask them to repeat the question, which feels fine once and awkward the third time. Or I can guess at what they meant, and sometimes answer a question nobody asked.

Either way, the interviewer leaves with an impression. It doesn’t always match the person on the resume, and they don’t know why.

Why the gap closes once I’m on the job

Here’s the part that frustrates me most. Almost none of this is a problem at work.

At work there’s a meeting recap, a Slack thread, a Jira ticket. If I miss something, I follow up an hour later and nobody thinks twice. Over the years I’ve built habits around my hearing. I write everything down, I confirm decisions in writing, and I make sure nobody leaves a meeting with a different version of the plan. Those habits made me good at program management. They’re a big reason the processes I built held up after I handed them off.

The interview format strips all of that away. No follow-up, no notes, no second pass. It tests the exact conditions where I’m weakest and skips the ones where I’m strongest.

The disclosure question

Every candidate with a hidden disability runs the same calculation. Do I mention it?

If I don’t, I risk being judged on a performance that doesn’t reflect me. If I do, I risk it sounding like an excuse, or someone quietly deciding I’ll be “a lot of work.” Neither feels safe, and a lot of people default to silence.

I’ve landed somewhere in the middle. Disclosure is a choice I make company by company, and I’ve found a couple of ways to bring it up that feel normal instead of apologetic.

The first is the accommodation request, sent when the interview gets scheduled. It’s short and practical:

“I’m hard of hearing, so a video call with live captions turned on would work much better for me than a phone call. Could we set it up that way?”

If I’d rather not name it, there’s a version that skips the reason:

“Could we do this as a video call with captions on, and could questions also be typed in the chat? That helps me give you better answers.”

The second is how I talk about it in the room, if I choose to. I frame it as where my strengths come from, instead of something I’m working “despite”:

“I’ve been hard of hearing since birth, and it’s made me very deliberate. I write things down, I confirm decisions, and I make sure nobody leaves a meeting with a different version of the plan. That habit is a big part of why the things I built actually stuck.”

That tells them something true about how I work, and it gives them a reason to remember me.

What’s helped me as a candidate

• Captions, every time. Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet all have them built in. Windows 11 also has system-wide Live Captions (Win + Ctrl + L) that work with any app.
• Scripting the edges. I prepare my intro, my close, and lines for the hard moments, like “I want to make sure I answer the right question. Could you say that one more time?” Only the middle gets improvised.
• Headline first. I put the answer in my first sentence, then the story. If I wander, the point already landed.
• Asking what’s unclear. Near the end I ask, “Is there anything in my background you’d like me to clear up?” It brings doubts into the room while I can still address them.
• The same-day follow-up. If an answer didn’t land, I fix it in the thank-you email. That’s the version of me they’d actually be hiring.
• Warm introductions. Referrals get me into one-on-one conversations with people who already know my work, and that’s the format where I do best.

What hiring teams can do

None of these cost much, and they help every candidate.

1. Turn on captions by default. Don’t wait for someone to ask. Asking is the hard part.
2. Share the topics ahead of time. You’ll get better answers from everyone.
3. Type key questions in the chat, especially the multi-part ones.
4. Choose one-on-ones over big panels when you can. Crosstalk is brutal when you can’t hear well.
5. Let candidates follow up in writing, and read what they send. Most real work happens in writing anyway.
6. Weigh references from people who watched someone work. A former VP who saw two years of delivery knows more than one hour on Zoom can show.
7. Train interviewers on what a disclosure means. It’s information. Treat it that way.

The Job Accommodation Network has free guidance on interview accommodations for employers and candidates.

Why I’m writing this

Being hard of hearing has shaped my career and my confidence in ways most of my coworkers never saw. I’m done staying quiet about it. Disability advocacy needs more voices from people who are in the middle of it right now, and I’d like to be one of them.

If you’re a candidate dealing with this, you’re not imagining the gap. If you’re a hiring manager, keep the bar where it is. Just make sure your interview is measuring what the job needs.

I’d love to hear what’s worked for you, on either side of the table.