It’s ironic that someone who considers himself an expert on recruiting, which includes good interview assessment skills, was once a terrible interviewee.  I wouldn’t make eye contact. I answered questions briefly and often too literally. And I didn’t understand the value of the easy small talk that fills the first five minutes of every interview.

Hiring managers pass on those type of candidates (trust me, I experienced it). Not because of the technical screen, but because of “fit.”

The problem is that most of our hiring processes are built to reward social performance, not technical performance. And in specialized technical roles like cybersecurity, QA, data engineering, and systems analysis, that’s exactly backwards.

The Traits We Call “Red Flags” Are Often the Job Description

Autism and ADHD aren’t diagnoses recruiters should be trying to detect or accommodate around the edges. In the right role, the traits associated with them are the competitive advantage.

Pattern recognition and sustained attention to detail (the hallmarks recruiters often flag as “intense” or “rigid” in an interview) are precisely what you want in someone hunting for anomalies in a dataset or a security log. Hyperfocus, the thing that makes small talk exhausting, is the same trait that lets someone stay locked into a gnarly production bug for six hours straight without losing focus.

Employers who’ve built real infrastructure around this aren’t doing it as a social responsibility initiative anymore. Microsoft’s Neurodiversity Hiring Program has been running since 2015 and routes candidates into software engineering and data science roles. SAP’s Autism at Work program, running since 2013 across a dozen countries, was built specifically around leveraging pattern recognition and precision in testing and data roles. JPMorgan Chase has run a neurodiversity hiring track since 2015 that now spans multiple business lines. These aren’t charity hires. They’re built around the bet that certain roles are better performed by neurodivergent talent, not just equally well performed.

The best technical talent you’re not hiring is sitting in your reject pile because they didn’t perform an interview well. They’d have performed the job exceptionally.

Re-evaluate the Process

To fully embrace this, changes have to show up in your actual process, not just your job posting.

Unstructured behavioral interviews reward quick, confident storytelling.  Seriously consider if the role requires that skill or whether it’s testing for something adjacent to the job.

Instead of asking “walk me through a time you dealt with conflict”, ask the candidate to work through a real technical problem, out loud or on paper, the way they would do on the job (I go into detail on this subject in my article Behavioral Assessments 2.0:  Moving Beyond the “Tell Me About a Time” Question to Real-World Simulations).

Don’t treat eye contact, small talk, or interview pace as data points.  Consider what you’re actually trying to measure, and whether there’s a more direct way to measure it.

None of this requires lowering your bar. It requires admitting that your current bar is measuring the wrong thing for a lot of roles.

More Management Complexity?

Every company I’ve ever worked with had at least some managers who needed better training on communication styles and assessment skills.  There will always be some candidates in need of accommodation (different feedback formats, more explicit expectations, quieter workspaces, etc.). That’s real and as corporate recruiters and hiring managers, we are responsible to accommodate.

But weigh that against what you’re already managing: turnover on roles you can’t keep staffed and a talent pool you’re not even seeing because your funnel filters them out at the resume screen or the first interview. The complexity is a training investment. The current cost is invisible attrition of exactly the people you need most.

The Bottom Line

You don’t need a formal neurodiversity program to start. You need to ask, honestly, whether your interview process measures the job or measures comfort with your interview process. For a lot of specialized technical roles, those are two very different things.  Right now, most companies are optimizing for the wrong one.

What’s one thing in your current interview process that’s testing for “fit” instead of the actual job? I’d love to understand your thoughts on this.

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If you’re rethinking how your assessments and interview process screen for technical roles, let’s talk — estewart@ESTalentSolutions.com .

#TalentAcquisition #Neurodiversity #ADHD #Autism #Recruiting #HiringStrategy #ESTalentSolutions

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