How a software engineer used AI tools to help her autistic son find work

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A software engineer turned to AI after her autistic son struggled severely during his first job interview, which involved fast speech, open-ended questions, and overwhelming sensory stimuli. She identified that standard career programs assume uniform information processing, making them poorly suited for autistic adults who face challenges with ambiguous questions, implicit social cues, and sensory overload. To address this, she built a personalised career mentorship system using ChatGPT and Claude AI, designed to simulate adapted interviews, generate growth plans, and offer workplace strategies around her son's specific needs. The AI tools were intended to complement, not replace, human mentors by being available around the clock, endlessly patient, and adjustable to the user's pace. She developed a detailed user profile and a reusable base prompt, framing the AI as a neurodiversity-specialist mentor named Alex, and shared the template publicly for others to adapt.

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