What Is One Of The Best Career Options For A Person With ADHD?
To help you identify the best careers for people with ADHD, we asked career coaches and HR managers this question for their best insights. From Fitness Trainer to Teaching, there are several career options that may be most suited to people with ADHD.
Here Are Seven Best Careers For People With ADHD:
- Fitness Trainer
- Emergency First Responder
- Software Developer
- Database Administrator
- Project Management
- Journalism
- Teaching
Fitness Trainer
ADHD people can become great fitness trainers because of their super–active nature. We all know that an ideal fitness trainer is one who is always on his toes and keeps clients like that. People with ADHD hate being sated for long. They always want an engagement and need something to burn out the extra enthusiasm they have in them.
Well, this is a perfect trait for people involved in the fitness industry. So, a fitness trainer or coach is what suits the most ADHD people.
Caroline Lee, CocoSign
Emergency First Responder
An emergency first responder is a great career choice for someone who has ADHD. That’s because they have a strong ability to solve problems, which is an essential skill to possess in critical situations. People with ADHD also thrive in fast-paced work environments and tend to keep their cool under pressure.
Jae Pak, Jae Pak MD Medical
Software Developer
The best part of the Dev’s work is that you never stop learning, and every day is full of diverse, engaging, and requiring constant hands-on thinking challenges – which is excellent for keeping the ADHD mind on track. Plus, most software tasks only take a few weeks in sprints called periods which helps prevent monotony.
Magdalena Sadowska, PhotoAiD
Database Administrator
When it comes to good careers for someone with ADHD, the structure is key. As a database administrator, you are working within systems with incredibly rigid rules and must interact with them in predictable manners.
While there is a lot of work and can be potentially stressful, you won’t find much in the way of ambiguity in this position. Routine and control is the key to making sure these systems are running in order.
Adrian Pereira, Eco Pea Co.
Project Management
Anyone with ADHD should thrive as a project manager. Project manager’s are lovingly referred to as “cat herder’s”, meaning that they spend most of their time chasing down statuses and responsibilities for the project team. They are rarely focused on one thing at a time.
Project managers, by nature, need to be able to switch in and out of topics rapidly, and then be effective in diagnosing what’s needed at a quick rate of speed. They must also have a high tolerance against decision fatigue. Folks with ADHD by and large make more decisions in a given day than most of us do in double that time.
Providing them a role that benefits from having ADHD are key to their success. A project manager is perfect in that respect. Whether it’s identifying an error in a process, then conducting an interview to bring on new staff, to next editing a newsletter, their mental agility is a perfect tool to have for any project manager.
Devin Schumacher, SERP
Journalism
For devoted reporters and writers who can deal effectively with day-to-day changes in work settings, a career in journalism is interesting, creative, and gratifying. Most journalists cover a wide range of topics, contact a diverse range of people, and turn out assignments quickly — all of which are ideal for someone with a lot of energy, a short attention span, a low boredom threshold, and difficulty maintaining continuous focus over days. However, meeting tight deadlines might be difficult.
Many people with ADHD thrive in jobs that enable them to interact directly with children, such as teaching or child care. These careers rely on your outgoing personality and intelligent inventiveness, but they could challenge your patience.
You must be able to think on your feet and shift from job to task rapidly if you want to work with children, and knowing the problems and capabilities of pupils with ADHD is a significant bonus.
Samantha Odo, Precondo
Teaching
Many students with ADHD would greatly benefit from an instructor who knows what it’s like for them on a daily basis. Too often, students with ADHD are misunderstood by their teachers and classmates and expected to act like students who neurologically are simply not the same as them. Instructors with their shared experience can offer specialized instruction that can help students succeed in their class and beyond.
Alex Wang, Ember Fund
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