Sharing an Example of Neurodiversity Affirmative Hiring

Hiring processes often unintentionally disadvantage neurodivergent candidates by expecting neuronormative performances without due scrutiny of their merits. We offer reflections as a neurodiverse research group on our experiences of hiring a researcher colleague while aligning with compassionate and neurodiversity affirmative frameworks. We make recommendations informed by our learning through this process. Ultimately, we are motivated to enable every candidate to demonstrate their abilities to perform the essential tasks of the job, while minimizing nonessential, and often unspoken, social, sensory, and thinking performances. Our hiring decisions differed from default practices by sharing responsibility for the interview process, making explicit the value of personal and professional experiences of neurodivergence, providing a choice of interview format, allowing the uncertainty of an encounter, providing honest feedback, and minimizing an expectation of neurodivergent disclosure or aesthetic diversity. We readdressed these details to enable each candidate to best represent themselves and minimize learned and ableist conventions. This Perspective offers a novel, critical reflection on recruitment, occupying both the hiring employer and candidate perspectives. We invite further scrutiny from researchers and hiring organizations on decisions that can unintentionally marginalize and stigmatize neurodivergent candidates, and on actions that can enable genuine equal opportunity for employment to all.