The Neurodivergent Job Candidate

Recruiting Autistic Professionals

Marcia Scheiner, Joan Bogden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000473032
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Gestion des ressources humaines

This book provides guidance on recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding practices that will allow employers to successfully hire neurodivergent professionals into inclusive, competitive employment.

Today, 35% of 18-year-olds with an autism spectrum diagnosis attend college, yet they have a 75–85% under-employment and unemployment rate after graduation. While organizations are looking to expand their diversity and inclusion hiring efforts to include neurodivergent professionals, current recruiting and interviewing practices in general are not well-suited to this. With over one-third of the US population identifying as neurodivergent, employers need to address how to attract this talent pool to take advantage of a meaningful segment of the workforce. Readers of this book will gain an understanding of how to guide their organizations through the creation of recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding processes tailored to neurodivergent professionals in any field.

Written by authors with extensive experience working in the corporate world and consulting with Fortune 1000 companies on autism hiring efforts, this book is targeted at employers, acknowledging their perspective. Structured as a reference guide for busy recruiters, hiring managers, and supervisors, this book can be read in its entirety, in relevant sections as needed, or used as a refresher whenever necessary. This book also provides a background on the thinking styles of autistic individuals, giving the reader a deeper understanding of how to best support neurodivergent jobseekers.

Part I

Understanding the Essentials

Chapter 1 What Should I Know to Get Started?

In 1997, Apple unveiled an advertising campaign around the concept that throughout history people have gone against the grain and thought differently – and implied that Apple made tools for the kinds of people who “think different”. A montage of still black-and-white portraits celebrated visionaries like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Pablo Picasso, Gandhi, and others we associate with innovation, creativity, and social justice, while Richard Dreyfuss narrated:

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits …

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see the world differently …¹

The critically acclaimed “Think Different” campaign proved to be an enormous success for Apple and marked the beginning of its re-emergence as a marketing powerhouse that, according to Apple visionary Steve Jobs, “opened up a computer world for a lot of people who thought differently”.²

Around the same time, Australian sociologist and autism rights advocate Judy Singer coined the term “neurodiversity” (a blending of “neurological” and “diversity”) to articulate the needs of people with autism who did not want to be defined by a disability label but wished to be seen instead as neurologically different.³ In 1998, journalist and autism activist Harvey Blume introduced the concept to a broad audience when he wrote in The Atlantic, “Neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general. Who can say what form of wiring will prove best at any given moment?”⁴

Today, this idea of neurodiversity, that there is a natural variation in how the brain works and interprets information across people, has made its way into the workplace. If you’re reading this book, your organization wants to increase the number of neurodivergent employees in your workforce. Or maybe your organization is thinking about launching a targeted neurodiversity or autism hiring effort, and you want to learn the secrets to finding and recruiting neurodivergent, or more specifically, autistic candidates. Either way, you are reading this book because you want to employ talent that “thinks different”. Regardless of your reasons for reading this book, the strategies recommended for recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding candidates can have a positive impact on all of the individuals you seek to hire. Most of what we recommend focuses on clear communication and strategies for unbiased assessments of applicants’ skill sets.

Understanding the background of the neurodiversity movement and the issues that are important to autistic candidates is the first step to effectively attracting and retaining neurodivergent employees. This chapter will introduce you to the neurodiversity movement, provide an understanding of the use of language in the neurodivergent and autistic communities, and discuss issues surrounding disclosure.

As you learn about neurodiversity and autism, keep in mind that no two individuals on the spectrum are affected by autism the same way, and the behaviors they demonstrate related to autism will be unique to them.

The Myth of the “Normal” Brain

“Average”, “standard”, and “normal” are part of a concept we apply every day – from height to IQ, blood pressure, and even clothing sizes – to make sense of the world around us. Naturally-occurring ranges of values, when plotted on a graph, are surprisingly similar and will generally follow a bell-shaped curve (Figure 1.1), a common feature of the normal distribution in statistics that is used to model variations in nature and human traits in psychology.

Figure 1.1 The Bell-Shaped Curve of a Normal Distribution.

When describing human traits, the normal distribution predicts that about two-thirds (68%) of the people in a sample will fall within the “average” range, with fewer people represented at the extremes. For example, if we randomly sampled the IQ of 1,000 individuals, the average score would be 100 and we would expect 680 people to have IQs in the range of 85–115. Fewer and fewer people will be represented as their IQ scores get further away from 100 in either direction.

Our society skews toward what is considered normal or average. If the average women’s shoe size is a seven, a shoe store is likely to carry more styles in sizes five to nine than in size 11, as anyone with larger-than-average feet knows. Similarly, it is impossible to plot the complexity and variety of human cognitive and processing styles, yet in many ways society assumes that there is a standard or “typical” way of thinking, and tends to accommodate the people who fall into that camp. In reality, while there is no one “normal” way of thinking, most people assume that others process information the same way they do, if they ever think of it at all. As a result, those whose brains work differently can face significant barriers.

Neurodiversity 101

In defining neurodiversity, Judy Singer, who is on the autism spectrum herself, wanted to reframe the discussion around diagnoses, such as autism, away from the deficits typically associated with them to a more positive discussion of the strengths that can come with an autism diagnosis, such as:

• Extreme focus and attention to detail
• Accuracy on repetitive tasks
• Pattern recognition
• Logical thinking
• High productivity
• Innovative solutions to problems

While the initial focus of neurodiversity was on autism spectrum disorder (ASD), over time the term came to encompass a number of diagnoses including attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette’s syndrome, dyscalculia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), among others. The goal of the neurodiversity movement was to shift people’s thinking about these conditions away from considering them deficits, disorders, or impairments toward an acceptance of them as naturally occurring facts of nature similar to biodiversity, the variety of life on Earth at all its levels.

Today, we think even more broadly when we use the term “neurodiversity”:

Humanity is neurodiverse, just as humanity is racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse. By definition, no human being falls outside of the spectrum of human neurodiversity, just as no human being falls outside of the spectrum of human racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity.⁵

Because the cognitive functioning of every individual is different, we are a neurodiverse society. However, as a society we do have certain behavioral expectations and norms. Individuals who process information and react to their environment in ways that allow them to meet those expectations and norms have a neurologically typical cognitive profile and are referred to as neurotypical. Those individuals with brains that behave differently (autism, ADHD, dyslexia, etc.), causing them to diverge significantly from those standards, are referred to as neurodivergent.

It is important to remember that neurodiversity implies a society that is by nature diverse (see Figure 1.2), comprising both neurotypical and neurodivergent thinkers. Neurodivergence itself is diverse as well, and is made up of smaller groups, or neurominorities, such as autism.

Figure 1.2 Neurodiversity Terms.

The Language of Neurodiversity

The terminology around neurodiversity can be confusing. Hiring programs targeted at individuals with autism, ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, and other types of learning differences have included the terms “autism”, “neurodiversity”, and “neurodiverse” in their labels. In the context of the work environment, a few basic rules can be applied to ensure the correct usage of these terms. First, neurodiversity, on a stand-alone basis, is the idea that there are biological differences in all human minds. It is not a characteristic of any one individual.

Second, while neurodiverse generally refers to the neurological variations of a group, some researchers, writers, and advocates also use it to refer to a neurodivergent individual. Even online dictionaries differ in how to describe a person who is not neurotypical. In the US, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary does not list neurodivergent as an entry, defining “having, relating to, or constituting a type of brain functioning that is not neurotypical” as “neurodiverse”.⁶ The UK’s Cambridge Dictionary defines the same as “neurodivergent”, while the Oxford Dictionary cites both words. Throughout this book, we will refer to individuals who are not neurotypical as neurodivergent and groups as neurodiverse.

Third, autistic and neurodiverse (or neurodivergent) are not necessarily interchangeable terms:

• An autistic individual is neurodivergent, but a neurodivergent individual may not necessarily be autistic.
• The term neurotypical refers to someone who is not neurodivergent; however, a person who is not autisic is not necessarily neurotypical as they may be neurodivergent in another way.⁷

The Language of Autism

In all areas of society today, we see changes in how people use language to describe themselves and others. A heightened sense of awareness of how someone wants to be referred to in terms of their gender identity, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, etc., is occurring in our workplaces. This sensitivity to the use of language is no different for people who are neurodivergent and/or autistic.

Autism Spectrum Disorder

As the understanding of autism grows, the development of how we use language to refer to autistic individuals continues to ev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Authors and Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Understanding the Essentials
• PART II Recruiting Autistic Talent
• PART III Interviewing
• PART IV The First 100 Days
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Glossary
• References
• Index