7 top tips for creating a more neuroinclusive recruitment process

Creating an inclusive environment when recruiting ensures that every candidate has an equal opportunity to thrive. As well as being the right thing to do, a neuroinclusive recruitment processes is essential for harnessing the full potential of a diverse workforce and attracting the best candidates to your organisation.

Key takeaways

By reading this article, you will:

• Understand how to plan and communicate with neurodiverse candidates more proactively
• Learn how to adapt your assessments to be more neuroinclusive
• Discover how to promote a culture of respect and understanding

Are you serious about attracting the best talent?

Through delivering outplacement coaching I have learned a lot about neurodiversity in the workplace and this past year in particular have supported neurodivergent candidates with a range of wants and needs, including:

•  Helping people work out what reasonable adjustments will allow them to perform at their best
• Supporting neurodivergent applicants communicate and contextualise their needs to organisations

It is estimated that 15% of the UK population are neurodivergent, so if your business is serious about attracting the best, most diverse pool of candidates, here are some simple things everyone can do to help you create an neuroinclusive recruitment process.

1. Provide comprehensive pre-interview information
   Tell candidates well in advance who will be interviewing them, their role(s) in the process, when and where the interview will happen, and what they can expect during the process. If conducting a face-to-face interview, you can also include instructions on how to access the building, who they might meet on arrival, or a picture of the main entrance/reception area. This helps to alleviate anxiety and reduce the amount of mental energy expended before the interview even begins.
   
   
2. Proactively share interview questions in advance
   One of the biggest things to positively impact the quality of interview answers is to provide candidates with the interview questions in advance. This gives neurodiverse candidates the opportunity to process and decode the questions, organise their thoughts, and prepare their answers, reducing the cognitive load and ensuring the answers you hear give a fair reflection of their ability. You can overcome any concerns about this giving unfair advantage by sharing interview questions with all candidates (bearing in mind too that not everyone will disclose their neurodiversity at point of application), and ask appropriate, relevant follow-up questions to further probe the ‘rehearsed’ answers. This immediately changes an interview from an assessment of how well people perform at interviews to how well they may perform in the job role.
   
   
3. Ask clear and direct questions
   When writing your interview questions, make sure that they are unambiguous and devoid of figures of speech. Ambiguous or overly complex questions can create unnecessary stress particularly for neurodiverse candidates who might struggle with interpreting what they have been asked under pressure. 
   
   For example, instead of asking "How do you handle stress?", a more precise question would be, "Can you describe how you managed a time when you had to meet a tight deadline?"
   
   
4. Offering alternatives to interviews
   Recognising that traditional interviews may not always accurately reflect a candidate's abilities, consider if there are alternatives you can offer, for example giving candidates the option to participate in a trial project relevant to the job or reviewing a portfolio of their work. This won’t necessarily work for all job roles, but challenge yourself to think about what the person will need to do when they are in the role and find the best way to assess this, rather than automatically reverting to interviews. Again, this can be offered to everyone, regardless of whether they have disclosed any neurodivergence.
   
   
5. Notice any conscious or unconscious bias
   It is easy for interviewers to be swayed by conscious or unconscious bias relating to social norms, rather than assessing solely on performance in the assessments. This might include whether a candidate engages in small talk, has a firm handshake, maintains eye contact or fidgets. Notice any judgements you are making and, if these social conventions have no bearing on ability to perform the role, put them to one side.
   
   
6. Allow movement and use of focus tools
   To help aide performance and create a more relaxed and conducive atmosphere, candidates can be offered to move or use fidget and other focus tools during the interview to manage anxiety and maintain concentration. You might even want to provide these yourself, like neuroinclusive champions Innocent.
   
   
7. Provide a quiet and calm interview environment
   When online, make sure any backgrounds are free from visual distractions such as unnecessary clutter, people walking by etc., and microphones are muted when not speaking. For in person interviews, arrange a quiet, calm room that is free from distractions, neutrally or naturally lit with no strong smells and not visible to others in an open-plan office. This minimises sensory overload and allows candidates to focus fully on the interview questions and tasks.

These tips don’t just benefit neurodiverse candidates

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but hopefully a useful starting point to creating a neuroinclusive recruitment process and demonstrating that you’re serious about fostering a culture of understanding and respect for all employees. And the great thing about making reasonable adjustments to your process and communicating these proactively is that it will help all candidates perform at their best, whether they have declared a neurodiverse condition, have an undeclared need, or no additional needs.

If you want to offer comprehensive, practical and supportive career help to your exiting employees, speak to us about our outplacement services. We can also help with reviewing your current recruitment processes to help you offer the best experience to your prospective employees and attract the best candidates.