How can recruitment professionals take a lead on neurodiversity?

The diversity and inclusion agenda continues to build momentum. With employers looking to move beyond good intentions, recruitment professionals have a real opportunity to show what they are all about by working with their clients to make tangible change happen. And nowhere is this more important than in areas that are still relatively misunderstood like neurodiversity.

According to Harvard Medical School, “neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways; there is no one ‘right’ way of thinking, learning, and behaving’. Our guide on ‘How to Recruit Neurodiverse Candidates’, produced in partnership with Uptimize, provides practical insight on how to adapt this recognition to recruitment. Here are some of the big messages: 

• Understanding diversity at work remains mixed among recruiters. While 52% are familiar with the topic, 39% are not. Neurodiversity at work has often been overlooked in the EDI sphere, with greater focus on more visible differences such as gender, race or ethnicity. In fact, the term “neurodiversity” wasn’t coined until the 1990s. Today, neurodiversity still doesn’t often appear in corporate careers websites or in EDI reporting. However, progress is being made.

• Only 30% of recruiters have knowingly placed neurodivergent candidates. This is likely to be because of a lack of familiarity with the topic, as well as candidates not disclosing the information because of potential judgment or misunderstanding. We can expect this figure to shoot up over the coming years.

• Almost 80% of recruiters say they have received no specific training on neuroinclusive recruitment and only 20% understood how to conduct a neuroinclusive interview. Despite patchy familiarity with the topic, the majority of recruiters surveyed agreed (70%) on the potential value of different thinkers at work.

• Linked to the above, 87% of recruiters believe that diversity is important to hiring managers. The business case for EDI is signed, sealed, and delivered. According to research from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), companies with above average diversity scores were nearly 20% more innovative. And a Deloitte study revealed that inclusive companies are twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets.

• Pioneering ‘autism hiring programmes’ have driven recognition of the positive impact neurodivergent talent can deliver. JPMorgan Chase, for example, found that its neurodivergent hires could be as much as 140% more productive than their peers, demonstrating why this is such an important issue for recruiters. At the same time, 69 % of recruiters acknowledged that barriers still exist in the recruitment process for neurodivergent candidates.

The hidden nature of neurodiversity can be a challenge for hirers. And neurodivergent talent pools risk remaining “untapped” because of a lack of knowledge, confidence, or barriers in conventional hiring processes. The opportunity for recruitment professionals is to take a lead on this area by reviewing current hiring criteria and procedures and boosting their general awareness. Our guide, produced in conjunction with Uptimize, is a good place to start!