Somewhere between 15% and 20% of the population is neurodivergent. The majority have yet to receive a formal diagnosis, and a significant number of those with a diagnosis choose not to share it publically. Over the last few years, we've seen a growing number of employers taking steps to be more neuro-inclusive, which is great to see. However, there is still a long way to go with recruiting, as most hiring processes contain significant barriers for neurodiverse people. There is also a danger that the move to AI-driven recruiting may make things worse if neuro-inclusion isn't proactively prioritized.
So, what steps can employers take to embed neuro-inclusion in their recruiting processes effectively?
My guest this week is Tania Martin, a neuro-inclusion consultant who was previously Head of EY's Neuro-Diverse Centre of Excellence in the UK and Ireland. In our conversation, Tania discusses the shortcomings of the traditional recruiting process and how we can rethink it to be better for everyone.
In the interview, we discuss:
- Harnessing neurodiversity in the workforce
- How EY's Neuro-Diverse Centre of Excellence was set up
- Why can making recruiting processes more neuro-inclusive be good for everyone?
- Accessing untapped pools of talent
- Intimidating job specs
- Assessment and spiky profiles
- Helping people to show their best selves during the interview process
- Educating hiring managers
- The role of technology
- What will neuro-inclusion look like for future generations in the workforce?
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[00:01:22] Hi there, welcome to episode 609 of Recruiting Future with me Matt Alder.
[00:01:33] Somewhere between 15% and 20% of the population is neurodivergent. The majority have yet to
[00:01:41] receive a formal diagnosis and a significant number of those with a diagnosis choose not to
[00:01:48] share it publicly. Over the last few years we've seen a growing number of employers taking steps to
[00:01:55] be more neuroinclusive and that's great to see, however there's still a long way to go with recruiting
[00:02:02] as most hiring processes contain significant barriers for neurodivergent people. There's
[00:02:08] also a danger that the move to AI driven recruiting may make things worse if neuro inclusion
[00:02:15] isn't proactively prioritised. So what steps can employers take to embed neuro inclusion in
[00:02:22] their recruiting processes effectively? My guess this week is Tanya Martin, a neuro inclusion
[00:02:28] consultant who was previously head of EY's Neurodiverse Centre of Excellence in the UK
[00:02:33] and Ireland. In our conversation Tanya discusses the shortcomings of the traditional
[00:02:38] recruiting process and how we can rethink it to be better for everyone.
[00:02:45] Hi Tanya and welcome to the podcast. Hello, thank you very much for having me.
[00:02:49] It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself
[00:02:54] and tell everyone what you do? Absolutely so my name is Tanya Martin and I am a neuro
[00:03:01] inclusion consultant. So working with organisations to help them understand and
[00:03:07] implement neuro inclusive design. And before I jump into a little bit more as to what that is,
[00:03:12] it's probably worth setting the scene. What is neuro inclusion? So this is specifically around
[00:03:21] neurodiversity and understanding how you harness neurodiversity within the workplace.
[00:03:27] So neurodiversity is actually everybody. We all have different ways of thinking,
[00:03:34] behaving, reacting. So actually neurodiversity does embody every single person's different brain.
[00:03:43] However there are individuals that have something called a spiky profile. So what you will find
[00:03:51] is that they might be exceptionally good at some areas but might struggle in other areas.
[00:03:56] So for example I've got ADHD. I'm quite creative, very good at connecting things that others might not
[00:04:06] but I struggle with organisation and time and trying to understand how I break something down
[00:04:17] into its component parts. So somebody who's neurotypical would be able to do all of those
[00:04:24] things and somebody who's neurodivergent might struggle with some tasks that others might find
[00:04:32] straightforward. And it's not just ADHD, autism, dyslexia etc. So I work in that area and I have
[00:04:41] built EY's neurodiverse centre of excellence and as I said I now work with organisations
[00:04:47] in this space trying to help them understand neurodiversity. Fantastic stuff. Tell us a little
[00:04:52] bit about the real advantages for employers who really kind of embrace being neuroinclusive.
[00:04:59] So there are a number of key advantages to employers who are embracing the neurodiversity agenda.
[00:05:07] I think the first one to point out is that there are people that are currently hiding
[00:05:13] in plain sight within organisations that are neurodivergent. What do I actually mean by
[00:05:18] that? So I'm talking about those that may only have recently been diagnosed, may not know yet
[00:05:26] that they are neurodivergent, that are neurodivergent and aren't telling their organisation. So if you
[00:05:34] are being neuroinclusive by design you're capturing those people that are within the
[00:05:39] organisation at the moment who require that support. It helps attract the best candidates
[00:05:45] to an organisation. So Generation Z, there was a piece of research done over the last year
[00:05:50] and 50% of them either self-identified or were diagnosed as neurodivergent.
[00:05:57] So what that is basically saying is we've got a generation coming up who
[00:06:01] if we don't embrace neurodiversity as an organisation they're simply going to go
[00:06:06] somewhere else so you need to be attracting that talent into the organisation. If an organisation
[00:06:12] focuses on strengths so I mentioned about spiky profiles you build teams where people play to
[00:06:21] their strengths. So you build a diverse team and as a result you get a better result. So you
[00:06:28] harness somebody's strengths and as a result of doing that you get a better result as a team.
[00:06:34] And it's also about employee wellbeing so you feel secure to share the challenges
[00:06:39] that you have without any judgement. So you're not afraid that it's going to impact your career,
[00:06:44] you're not afraid people are going to treat you any differently and as a result of that
[00:06:50] employers get loyal members of staff, they get the best out of people and retention rates are
[00:06:57] really high as well. So it's also not just good for those who are neurodivergent,
[00:07:02] it is good for everybody if we start thinking in a more neuroinclusive way.
[00:07:07] Absolutely. You mentioned that you were working with EY before and you set up their
[00:07:12] neurodiverse centre of excellence. Tell us about that, the practicalities of it, what it is,
[00:07:17] what it does but also how you managed to get it to that point.
[00:07:20] So the neurodiverse centre of excellence and I'm going to refer to it as the NCE going forward
[00:07:25] because it's a bit of a mouthful. It actually started in the US eight years ago. It started
[00:07:30] as an autism at work programme and our global leader here in Shookla realised really quickly
[00:07:36] that actually it wasn't just those that were autistic that needed extended support in the workplace.
[00:07:44] So let me be really clear about what the NCE is. It is all around extended support so it's how
[00:07:51] do we adjust our recruitment process because recruitment is one of the biggest barriers to
[00:07:55] entry into an organisation for those that are neurodivergent. So how do we adjust the recruitment
[00:08:00] process and how do we create an environment where those that are either underemployed or
[00:08:07] unemployed in this in the neurodiversity space can really thrive within an organisation.
[00:08:14] So how do you set that environment up to enable to harness the strengths that I've talked about
[00:08:19] but also make sure that we have adjustments in place for the areas that they might potentially
[00:08:23] have challenges. So my role was to build the Manchester NTOE working very closely with
[00:08:32] with a couple of others and that was everything from establishing an ecosystem so we were really
[00:08:39] clear we were not experts in the neurodiversity space so we needed to bring the expertise in
[00:08:44] and we also wanted to be quite visible about what we were doing because that was quite
[00:08:48] important in terms of a candidate attraction and so working with charities and not-for-profits
[00:08:55] and and other organisations who were neurodiversity specialists was part of me and part of my role
[00:09:02] is finding those people and building those relationships and then everything through to
[00:09:07] how do we attract the candidates, how do we recruit them. So what does the recruitment process
[00:09:13] look like? What does onboarding look like? How do we train the individuals? What coaching do we
[00:09:21] need to put in place? What adjustments do we need to put in place? So pretty much the whole
[00:09:25] employee life cycle was my responsibility internally for EY. It was an incredibly fascinating
[00:09:33] piece of work to do so my background I started off in recruitment years ago and it really
[00:09:41] started to change some of my views as to how to recruit and highlight to me
[00:09:48] some of the areas that actually knowing what I know now I might do differently. So it's a
[00:09:55] it was a super interesting project to be involved in and I'm pleased to say that the agenda at EY
[00:10:02] on neurodiversity is absolutely still a priority for them. It shifted slightly from
[00:10:09] NCOEs to neuro inclusion so it's how do we take what we've learned within the NCOE and roll it out
[00:10:14] broader which is absolutely the right direction in terms of progressing neurodiversity within
[00:10:21] organisations. So that's a really positive thing. Let's just dig into the kind of recruiting
[00:10:26] part of this because obviously that's going to be a big interest to everyone listening.
[00:10:30] What are the kind of barriers in the traditional recruitment process for people who are
[00:10:37] neurodiverse and what kind of adjustments can we make and how might that actually make recruiting
[00:10:43] better overall? So this is my area of absolute passion and I could talk about this for hours so
[00:10:49] I'm going to try and keep it as succinct as I possibly can. It really does span the whole
[00:10:56] recruitment life cycle in terms of having to think about this differently. If you want to
[00:11:02] attract and retain different thinking into your organisation and it does start with where are you
[00:11:09] looking. So from an attraction perspective we spent a lot of time working very closely with
[00:11:16] charities to identify candidates from a completely different talent pool than we would usually.
[00:11:25] I remember putting a LinkedIn post out when we were hiring saying I'm looking for the person
[00:11:30] not reading this LinkedIn post. So how do you attract talent into an organisation that actually
[00:11:39] is untapped and that might bring a skill set that might not think of your organisation initially
[00:11:44] as someone they might want to hire them but there's no reason why we shouldn't be hiring
[00:11:50] individuals outside of that standard talent pool so that attraction piece is really important.
[00:11:55] So thinking broader about that there are a number of neurodiversity specific recruiters out there now
[00:12:01] as well so potentially harnessing their services. The job spec so thinking really differently about
[00:12:09] job specs I often say job specs are full of fluff. There is a lot of words in there and there's
[00:12:16] a lot of information that actually potentially people don't need straight away and can be a little
[00:12:22] bit off-putting can be a little bit intimidating to certain audiences. So when we looked at our job
[00:12:30] spec I actually got my current team to pull it apart and literally tell me what is wrong with it
[00:12:39] from top to bottom and we completely rewrote it and a few things came out so somebody in my team
[00:12:47] who was super dyslexic he basically said I was interested in what the job title was,
[00:12:52] what you actually wanted me to do and how much you were paying and I needed that information
[00:12:57] accessible to me really quickly because actually reading lots of text is really difficult so we
[00:13:02] thought about the order in which we put the job spec together. Thinking about the skills
[00:13:10] required so the technical skills and using language such as one or two of the following
[00:13:18] or sorry two of the following as opposed to getting them to tick every single box.
[00:13:26] The other piece is around the language around how can we support you to make sure
[00:13:34] that this is a recruitment process where you can show your best self so not simply saying we're an
[00:13:42] inclusive hireer saying actually we want to make this we want to give you the opportunity to shine
[00:13:50] through this recruitment process so what do you need from us to enable that to happen
[00:13:55] and give some examples. Sometimes people don't know what they don't know and actually offering
[00:14:01] okay we can give you the interview questions up front which I know some people go oh my goodness me
[00:14:05] why would you do that and we did that for one of our processes every single person got them up front
[00:14:10] and actually it made a real difference in terms of the the responses we got
[00:14:14] and the time we spent interviewing and then from an interview process interview process I
[00:14:21] go back to when I was taught and so when I was trained around recruitment and somebody said to me
[00:14:28] communication is absolutely key and make sure they're making eye contact they have a firm handshake
[00:14:34] and if they talk too much and their language is not clear from size we need to mark them down in
[00:14:40] terms of their communication. We basically just ruled out anybody that's autistic or ADHD.
[00:14:46] The barriers are there and I think actually I can I can talk about the actual specific
[00:14:50] barriers I've just given you there but if we're really honest the biggest barrier that
[00:14:54] we've got in terms of recruitment is the hiring managers who are currently responsible for that
[00:15:00] recruitment and don't know any different and that I think is not only do we need to fix the
[00:15:06] recruitment process we also need to re-educate a whole group of hiring managers who don't
[00:15:14] know any different and when they're asked for a job spec they simply pull out the last one
[00:15:19] they had and they tweak it because they haven't got time to think about it so I think there's
[00:15:25] there's two ways we need to approach this it's not just what the recruitment team can do but also
[00:15:30] how do we get those hiring managers to engage with neurodiversity as a concept understand it
[00:15:36] and therefore interview in a slightly different way. Yeah I mean I think it's super interesting
[00:15:40] the way that the traditional recruitment process is set up which is just very
[00:15:46] excludes lots of people so I have ADHD and I looked back over my career and I worked out that
[00:15:54] a very few of the jobs I got I actually got through a normal recruitment process and in fact
[00:15:59] whenever I went into a normal recruitment process I didn't tend to get the job they were all through
[00:16:03] you know referrals or someone I knew or an assessment center process that was slightly
[00:16:08] different so you know and that was a real kind of revelation for me it was really interesting
[00:16:13] and I think also when you're doing some of the assessments and things like that one of the things
[00:16:18] that that I found when I've experimented with some of the assessment tools out there it will come
[00:16:23] back and say that I absolutely hate structure and need to work in a very kind of creative way
[00:16:29] and then the next page it will say I can't work without structure which is very confusing so
[00:16:36] yeah I mean I think it's really interesting but I think that it tells us a lot about the
[00:16:40] kind of the legacy recruitment process anyway I think doesn't it?
[00:16:44] Yeah absolutely and I was at that structure need structure but hate structure is a typical ADHD
[00:16:52] brain I think very often we um we contradict ourselves at every single corner so that
[00:16:58] that makes me smile yeah it things things I don't I don't think people are necessarily asking the
[00:17:05] right questions at the moment and I think this is what I've learned going through this
[00:17:09] neurodiverse centre of excellence process is it allowed me the opportunity to really
[00:17:17] disrupt what we do or what we did at EY in terms of thinking about things differently
[00:17:25] and I think very often we simply rinse and repeat a process simply because we've always
[00:17:31] done it that way and nobody really questions as to why we're doing it that way and it's
[00:17:36] only when you get a group of people together that are neurodivergent and you go why didn't this work
[00:17:41] and they literally sit there and they go this doesn't work this doesn't work this doesn't work
[00:17:45] it opens your eyes up and goes wow I never thought of it that way so it was a real privilege for
[00:17:51] me to have um to to have a group of people that were so open and honest about what didn't work
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[00:19:51] a lot of employers are you know looking deeply at skills at the moment in terms of
[00:19:57] becoming skills based organizations moving towards skills based hiring so kind of really
[00:20:02] shaking up that some of those old recruiting beliefs that have been there for decades do you think
[00:20:08] that will really help from a a nero inclusion perspective absolutely i let's be really honest
[00:20:16] every single person has passed their job that they love and pass the job that they don't like
[00:20:22] doing and the whole point of skills based hiring focuses on the actual skills required for a role
[00:20:34] and by doing so you get people that are going to bring their strengths to that role so it's
[00:20:41] getting away from this notion of a well-rounded individual so and like i get it i absolutely
[00:20:48] get it when you are hiring large numbers of people it is a much simpler process to just look
[00:20:55] for those people that tick every single box whether that is good communication skills
[00:21:02] ability to present excellent team player all of those things and by the way i'm still not sure
[00:21:08] i really understand what an excellent team player is and how that's defined so i i get it is
[00:21:14] it is hard to not want to get people to tick every box but if you focus on skills you really are going
[00:21:21] to be hiring those that might potentially fall down in some of those areas but might bring something
[00:21:29] really special to the role that you are actually trying to hire um particularly in the
[00:21:36] in the technology space when actually some of the things that we look for um really aren't
[00:21:42] necessary one of the things we did do as part of the work we did at EY was go these are the some
[00:21:48] of the things that you might be asked to do at work but we understand that not all of them are
[00:21:54] going to be your strengths but we will give you support to do that and sometimes i think if you
[00:21:59] you focus on the strengths of what is required but then soften the language around do you know
[00:22:04] what we understand you're not going to have to do everything um and we know that and we'll
[00:22:10] be able to give you some support around that um that will get people to apply to the job in the
[00:22:16] first place the other thing i'll say on on the skill side so we there's a there's a couple
[00:22:22] of really good examples i've seen recently so firstly um we ran a purely skills based
[00:22:29] assessment center so i was looking for um technical ability the ability to to solve
[00:22:36] problems and the ability in how they engage with the process and when i say engage it wasn't just
[00:22:42] who was the most vocal it was who was actually making really positive contributions in the chat
[00:22:47] as well so those were the three areas i was focused on as opposed to ticking lots of different
[00:22:53] boxes um but another really great example of skills based hiring recently that i saw was an
[00:22:59] organization that actually took somebody on for a six week job trial so rather than uh expecting
[00:23:07] somebody to um just go through an interview process and get the job actually give them the
[00:23:11] opportunity to come in and show what they can do actually uh within an organization so i think
[00:23:17] there's different ways to do it but i'm very pro skills um and focusing on skills i think that's
[00:23:25] how you get the most um neuro inclusive uh recruitment process um in place for organizations
[00:23:31] and you mentioned technology there and obviously you know we're now entering an area where AI is
[00:23:36] going to do everything everything for us what's the role of of technology in kind of neuro inclusion
[00:23:43] so i think it's got multiple roles to play so as a candidate it's useful if you're allowed
[00:23:49] to use it and i know the jury's out in terms of whether or not organizations are allowing people to
[00:23:55] use AI i think from a a recruitment perspective uh technology can be um really beneficial to
[00:24:06] people who apply but i'm going to say something i think it needs to be as an option so um
[00:24:15] for example i know a lot of people that use uh video interviews um as part of their um
[00:24:22] hiring process so what i mean by that is that people like are recording something and then
[00:24:26] submitting it and i know for neurodivergent individuals for some people that can be incredibly
[00:24:32] intimidating is there a is there an alternative to that uh there's an amazing piece of technology
[00:24:39] that um has been developed has actually developed for for NASA in terms of their communications
[00:24:44] that's starting to be trialled in organizations around actually interviewing using um text rather than
[00:24:53] video or speaking so giving a person a chance to reflect a chance to think before they have to
[00:25:01] answer um that's one of the things i often say if you if you're interviewing and make sure
[00:25:06] you give the space that you give you leave that pause um and that pause might feel like it goes on
[00:25:12] forever but it gives the person that you're interviewing that opportunity to really collect
[00:25:16] their thoughts and come back with an answer um so i definitely think there is a place for technology
[00:25:22] i think technology is definitely evolving um how we harness it i think we just need to see how it
[00:25:28] evolves but that optionality piece i think is something quite different in terms of thinking
[00:25:32] about it differently final question obviously the you know the knowledge and awareness of
[00:25:38] things like ADHD and autism has has dramatically increased in the last 10 years or so and i know
[00:25:44] that there will be lots of parents listening who have neurodivergent children currently going
[00:25:51] through the the education system and what would you say to them in terms of their children's
[00:25:59] sort of prospects in the in the workforce what what's the workforce of the future
[00:26:03] going to look like from this perspective i often liken the uh the neurodiversity journey
[00:26:09] to where we were 10 years ago around mental health so i think 10 years ago we were just about
[00:26:15] starting to talk about mental health and now it is is absolutely normalized within organizations
[00:26:21] that people have mental health and therefore organizations need to be aware of that and
[00:26:26] help employers manage that and i'm my hope is that the neurodiversity journey is is
[00:26:33] is at the start of that so where we start to normalize these conversations i think it is
[00:26:40] at the start we've got to be really honest and i i i very open about where e y r they
[00:26:47] still have lots to do and they will will be the first to admit that they've made a a good
[00:26:52] start but there's still a huge amount of work to do they nobody has fixed it yet but people are
[00:26:57] starting to think about that and i think that is a really positive step in the right direction
[00:27:02] employers are definitely catching on because of this this gen z step i mentioned we definitely
[00:27:08] have a generation coming through that are more vocal um that are are not afraid to use their
[00:27:14] labels i was at a an assessment center before christmas and somebody came up to me
[00:27:20] having no idea who i was and started talking to me about his autism and i think that's a really
[00:27:26] positive step in the in the right direction that people are not afraid to say this is me
[00:27:32] and i therefore expect something different and for anybody that's got a child that is currently
[00:27:37] at university or about to apply for a role the one thing i will say is don't hide it i think
[00:27:45] hiding it as actually probably doing more damage than than good we need organizations to know it is
[00:27:51] there we need organizations to react and if the organization does not react in a way that is
[00:27:57] is positive that says a lot about the organization and where they are on their journey because if
[00:28:02] the recruitment process is not set up for somebody who is neurodivergent it's very unlikely the
[00:28:07] environment that they're going to be moving into is going to be set up for that person as well
[00:28:13] so i think overall positive i'm feeling hopeful and there's a lot of us shouting about this at the
[00:28:20] moment which is a really good thing but realistically we are at the very beginning
[00:28:25] so it's not going to be perfect straight away tanya thank you very much for talking to me
[00:28:31] no worries it's been an absolute pleasure my thanks to tanya you can follow this podcast
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[00:28:46] channel by going to matt alder dot tv you can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com
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