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Ketan Gajjar: Yeah. Hello everyone. And welcome to the Recruitment Curry show today. We’re going to be talking about unlocking the power of neurodiverse talent in recruitment. And we have Ed Thompson, the founder and CEO of Optimize. Ed, welcome to the show.
Ed Thompson: Great to be here.
Ketan Gajjar: Fantastic. So Ed, would you tell us about, a bit about yourself and Optimize what you do?
Ed Thompson: Yeah, we train organizations to embrace people and leverage the talents of people who think. In different ways, we’ve been going since 2016, when very few people and companies were talking about neurodiversity and neuroinclusion, and we felt that needed to change. So we started building training solutions for big enterprises like Google,
J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, and so on. And over time, the work that those big companies have done has expanded to being proactive inclusion programs, not just hiring programs. very much. And we’ve made efforts as well to democratize access to those materials so that any organization of any size with us to start bringing greater awareness of the fact that we all think differently to their work.
Ketan Gajjar: Wonderful. You’ve been around almost six, seven years now, and obviously there are more and more companies showing interest in this concept. So can you throw a bit of light on what exactly is neurodiversity, which is our first point of discussion, because I’m sure, there are lots out there who want to know, what does neuro diverse talent mean?
And yeah,
Ed Thompson: Yeah, so it’s really important to start here, I think, because this confuses people. And some people will see, will want to a list of, conditions and say okay, what’s in and out when we’re talking about neurodiversity, we have to take a state, a step back here and recognize neurodiversity means the variety of human brains across the board every.
Individual human has their own unique brain. You can’t, as one writer famously said, you can’t go to a museum and see the normal brain in a glass of jelly. It doesn’t exist. So that’s what neurodiversity means. Now within that human spectrum, there are people who either have a diagnosis or identify or both as being neurodivergent i.
Many people. people don’t get a diagnosis is neurodivergent till later in life. Sometimes one diagnosis is followed far later by another. And of course, many neurotypicals and neurodivergent people share overlapping traits. So I think when we’re talking about neuro inclusion, that it’s much better to think about, okay, let’s say recruitment for, for your audience.
If we know that our candidates are all going to have a different brain, that’s the starting point. The starting point isn’t, who’s going to put their hand up and say, Hey, I need help. That’s putting the pressure on them to do that. If we acknowledge that everybody thinks differently, we can start taking steps immediately to address the needs of the a hundred percent and not the 80%.
Ketan Gajjar: Of course. And then, which is why, obviously businesses like yours are helpful in also spreading the awareness across, the people who believe that, they’ve got something like this and then, the companies as well to adapt to that talent. And then that brings us to the second most important point, which is the misconceptions of neurodiversity or neurodivergent talent out there.
And then the myths as well. So if you couldn’t, could take us through that journey of, what are the misconceptions and what should people be careful about?
Ed Thompson: Yeah, I’m going to take that at two different levels because I think there’s cultural misconceptions about neurodivergences.
that are prevalent and damaging. And so these are the stereotypes of say autism as being, a white male kind of nerdy thing, or, of ADHD being a kind of male, young sort of person who can’t sit still and so on a dyslexic person who just can’t read. Whatever it is, and there are many of these.
And when we do focus groups with people in the community. they will often talk about how they face those. And for example, an autistic woman telling us, nobody believes her that she’s autistic because she’s a woman and, socially polished and married and so on. And I think those are, very, ubiquitous.
And I think those are in themselves a barrier to inclusion. And so that’s where I think, fundamental education of what is neurodiversity in reality and what are the true nuances and experiences of some of these demographics is really important. You also have misconceptions on the part of organizations.
And, some of the leaders or the HR folks and so on managers as well, who might make decisions to invest or not in inclusion or even neuro inclusion efforts. And I think there’s misconceptions there that are also problematic. Some of the ones that we see organizations think we don’t have people like that, right?
We, or maybe we might have somebody like that in that team, but we don’t in general, we know again, back to the stereotypes, that’s nonsense. And every team is neurodiverse and any organization of any size is going to have all sorts of different brains within it. So to say, we don’t have anybody like that is
is nonsense. And I think there’s, there’s more. Another one, sorry, I just lost connection for a second. Yeah. The other, there’s another one which I think is worth pointing out. A couple more actually. One back to my point about the kind of muddiness here. I think there’s a misconception that we can have nice clean lines here.
Okay who are the neurotypicals? Okay they’re fine. Let’s draw a nice line and figure out who needs support. Again, it’s not like that. Lots of people don’t necessarily want to share the fact that they’re neurodivergent. Lots of people might not know. So that’s, I think, another misconception.
And again, takes us back to that point of let’s just embrace the fact that everybody has a different brain. And I think the last one which can be quite damaging is, I think there’s a sense with organizations that. wherever they’re at is a sort of neutral starting point, and actually we’re doing okay.
And, maybe we could do better, but we’re fine as we are. And actually, I think if you look at some of the data and 90 percent of neurodivergent people typically not disclosing at work. And the effort and exhaustion of masking and some of the underrepresentation in the workforce that is suggested by data in this field.
I think it’s quite clear that most organizations have a negative starting point here when it comes to neurodiversity and neuroinclusion. Most organizations aren’t doing a great job. including talent that thinks differently. And so that, for me, that’s a misconception that sort of wherever we are is okay, I don’t think it is.
I think it needs changing.
Ketan Gajjar: Sure. Sure. Definitely. So it’s the gray area, obviously, which you highlight is that it’s not in black and white, it’s always the gray area that the company should be looking for. And then it’s still for the masses to embrace.
So what’s the starting point typically, for a business, if they want to literally take interest in this topic and, really make sure that they unleash the power of, neuro diverse talent.
Ed Thompson: I think it’s to start talking about it, if you really want the, the starting point and to begin a journey of talking about it, of wanting to listen, and having some of their internal folks who might identify as neurodivergent or allies giving them a voice.
Whether privately, okay, what, what do we think we need to do here, or if they would like more publicly to talk about their experiences. I think it’s about, empowering networks within the organization. If the organization has, a disability network or even an embryonic.
Neurodiversity network, empowering and funding those and just, beginning that journey to say, look, this is something we’re not expert in necessarily, but we want to take steps to be more inclusive of. And I think that path is where that’s the path then to, to empowering people to maybe bring in a partner like us to help.
And I think, things can move from there. Traditionally, I say traditionally, maybe not quite the right word, but The first organizations that looked at this area very much focused on hiring only and they said okay, how do we find, 10 autistic programmers in in, in this area because, we’re short of talent or whatever.
And I think that was great in terms of obviously providing opportunity and highlighting the fact that neurodivergent strengths were being sought. But I also think that those organizations realized over time, some of the stuff that I’ve been saying, which is that they are simply neurodiverse already and have many neurodivergent people in the organization who may or may not have been masking that fact.
And actually, I know this is a recruitment focused show, but if the goal is to hire. I still think a big piece of that is to have that inclusion effort on, within your existing teams and really try to create a place where people feel that they belong and feel comfortable. And I think in a, in the world of glass door and pretty transparent brand reputations when it comes to employment, I think that’s a really powerful magnet for talent as much as anything.
If this is some way that people really feel like they can be themselves, then of course, as we can talk about, there’s more you can do when it comes to hiring.
Ketan Gajjar: Of course. So basically, obviously start talking about it and, create that environment of trust and then faith that, they’ll be not, they’ll actually get help.
And, there’s somebody to, who’s going to listen to them and, then put in the steps to, for the support by working with businesses like yourself.
Ed Thompson: Yeah, you can, you could think of it as, the, what are the elements of somebody’s experience that were culture?
I think culture is, was the place to start. I think that’s then, leads to, as we start [00:11:00] learning about this leads to what could often be, locally managed adjustments when it comes to things like processes and policies. And then, of course, hiring. Reflects all of those things, right?
Hiring involves kind of culture. Are people aware of this? Are people inclusive of it? As people hiring can involve environments. If you’re, meeting people in person, hiring, of course, is itself a process. I think we start to think about those areas and then whether we’re not, we’re focused on the talent we have or the talent we want to bring in.
we can start making changes across those different areas that that help.
Ketan Gajjar: Definitely. Definitely. And then that leads us to the, obviously that the third point, which is again it’s massive, actually. So what are the barriers the neurodivergent, candidates face, across the entire, recruiting the standard or conventional recruiting processes in businesses these days?
Ed Thompson: I’ve talked a little bit about barriers, within organizations and. A lot of that I think flows from ignorance of neurodiversity. And so if we accept that every interaction at work involves people with different brains, if you are having meetings or whatever Zoom calls with your manager or whatever it is, and these are interactions happening between people with different brains, but most people aren’t thinking about that fact.
It can be problematic for people whose preferences don’t suit the norms that are shaped by the preferences of the majority. And as I’ve discussed as well, people can even face, marginalization and hostility when they start to talk about their differences because of some of these cultural stereotypes.
And we found with our focus groups only takes one manager and it takes one colleague to be particularly ignorant. And to lack patience and so on for somebody’s [00:13:00] experience to be really damaged. So again, I think that’s where starting with that cultural experiences is really important. But Barriers.
A ton of barriers, I think also just getting into organizations as well. And again, I know that’s a, the focus of your audience. I would start there and a lot of our focus group members start with not seeing an organization or an organization, not projecting that they want people like them, a lot of the time you will see an organization’s job descriptions, careers, website, talk about diversity and inclusion.
May have some examples of women or people of color, but rarely do you see an organization’s job description or website say, we actively welcome and embrace people with different thinking styles. So Immediately people can think do they really want somebody like me? That’s even before applying.
And then you have barriers because people aren’t thinking about clarity and neuroinclusion throughout. Whether it’s the wording of job descriptions, whether it’s some of the tests that are used in filtering, whether it’s some of the tools that are used in filtering. I’ve seen organizations use self video interviewing tools that, of course, might suit some people, but you could imagine others finding difficult.
And then interviews, of course ultimately, what is an interview? It’s a sort of social performance that can lean far more towards. Are you good at the social performance and are you good at building rapport than. Are you really being tested on what you’re going to need to do, in, in the job?
And again if interviewers are conducting interviews and they don’t know anything about neurodiversity, there is a real danger there that they will score down a candidate who maybe speaks in a flatter affect or a candidate who doesn’t make eye contact or a candidate who doesn’t appear to know when to stop or whatever it is.
So there’s a lot of these barriers, but those are all barriers that, we think can be quite easily removed. But again, if you don’t do anything about it, the danger is those barriers remain.
Ketan Gajjar: Of course. So again, going back to creating that culture of, embracing, neuro divergent talent, and you’re obviously talking more about it across the management team to the managers, to the hiring managers, interviewers, people, across the board to make sure that the barriers, come down as gradually, as the company progresses and, embraces the power of this talent.
Ed Thompson: Yes, exactly. Exactly. I think that’s where ultimately you want the embraced, by everybody. People talk about the importance of sponsorship and of course sponsorship gets stuff done. That’s valuable. I think often we’ve seen. Companies where somebody’s introduced the topic, somebody senior then discloses and says, you can get situations where the CRO suddenly says I’m dyslexic as well.
And I’m going to make this my big priority, which is, which is great. Yeah, but we’re very big on empowering and educating at all levels and not just making this a kind of top down mandate. And so we’re talking about recruitment. I think it’s much more effective rather than saying, okay, recruiters, here’s four things you need to do.
You don’t know why, but I’m just telling you need to do these. I think that’s far less effective than to really have recruiters understand and have some empathy with the fact that They don’t think the same as their candidates and their candidates don’t think the same as each other. If we start to really explore that, recruiters themselves can make some of these adjustments and they can be actually empowered to, to do that themselves.
I think that for me at scale is where you really see change. We talk about little things. If you have a, an interview in person, what’s the first thing you should do? We say the first thing you should do is say, is ask somebody, are they comfortable? The lighting, the
Ketan Gajjar: light,
Ed Thompson: whatever, the general sensory experience of the room.
It’s a small thing and most people will say yes, but if you have 20 candidates and a couple of them say, actually, no, I’d rather sit over there or, could we sit out in that room that we just walked past? We’re giving ourselves a better chance to hire the best people.
Ketan Gajjar: Of course. And then I think that’s a great point.
A couple of things there. One is you mentioned about accountability. People owning up this rather than just being one of the items, on the agenda and just, And two is, making sure that smaller things like you mentioned, are you comfortable just it puts the person into a nice zone that he has it’s not just a one way interview, but yes, it’s going to be an interactive session and basically it shows that you care.
Ed Thompson: Absolutely. And it shows you don’t think that everyone’s the same as you. And I think that’s I hope a lesson from this. Conversation, also a lesson in my book that’s coming out shortly, that recruiters, managers, people who have important roles when it comes to personnel to really be aware of the fact that You yourselves have a unique brain, and that’s great, that brain’s got you to where it’s got you, and I’m sure you have many strengths.
I’m sure you also have things that you’re less comfortable with. I’m sure if we listed five or six communication channels, you’d have your preference, and you’d have your lowest preference. And that’s the same with everybody else. So for a recruiter or a manager to be working and acknowledging that and then be willing to have these conversations and you can surface this stuff without talking about neurodiversity, neurodivergence, you can just say, look, I’m going to be your champion here.
I’m the recruiter. I think you’re a good candidate. I’m going to be your manager. be advocating for you to the hiring managers. How do you want us to communicate? What’s the best thing for you? I tend to like jumping on a call. I know that doesn’t work for everybody. Would you rather I sent you an email, little things like that, gonna really help
Ketan Gajjar: finding the best mode of communication and also putting it forward to the client.
the way it is just makes things so easier. And tell us more about your book, obviously you mentioned, and then I understand the title is a hidden force, unlocking the potential of neurodiversity at work. What does it cover?
Ed Thompson: It covers some of the stuff that we talked about today.
So I hope people interested in this topic would find more value from it. It covers, What is neurodiversity really? And everything we’ve learned there this human spectrum of different brains and why it’s taken us so long as humans to recognize that and how in the end we have started to recognize that.
It covers how this has become if you like a talent strategy as organizations have started to tweak. Gosh, we all have different brains. We should probably start thinking about that if we want to make the best out of our most expensive asset. It covers what can you as an individual do to bring neuro inclusion to your day to day work.
And it covers what can you do as an individual to bring neuro inclusion to your team and to your organization.
Ketan Gajjar: And then when is it out? Yeah, it’s out
Ed Thompson: April the 11th. It’s going to be available on amazon. com on April the 11th. That’s the launch date. We have A launch event here in Denver will have a virtual launch as well by optimize.
So yeah, excited to, to get it out there. And I’m really as well, excited and be privileged to be sharing. I think not just my own voice, but the voice of so many of the people that we’ve interviewed. I’d optimize and then my own direct interviews for the book, over a hundred people in this community, of course, many of them, you’re referring to themselves sharing their own stories of disclosure of barriers of success of challenges of advocacy and change.
And yesterday we had an optimized virtual event where we had two of those voices. I know we had others join the event who were also participants in the book as well. So I really hope that, like the work of the company, this book is really a reflection of the realities of this community.
And I think that’s a great way for all of us to learn. If a candidate tells us, look, here are three things that I wish everybody did differently. There’s often a bunch of stuff we can learn from.
Ketan Gajjar: Definitely. I’m definitely going to be looking forward to, reading the book and then, getting one once it’s published.
So in terms of I don’t know if you can, but are there any short examples you can give off? How have you supported some of your clients with, hiring NeuroDivers talent?
Ed Thompson: Yeah. An example I always I think it shows a few [00:22:00] different things.
is we were talking to a big company and their learning and development team were reviewing some of our e learning because they liked it and we’re thinking we think we want to add this to our mix, but we want to take a look first. So we’re going to do the training first, we’re going to see if we like it.
And when we circled back they said, you know what? We already have A sort of testimonial for you And when he started working with him yet, and it turns out that they were hiring at that point into that team They were hiring somebody into the learning and development team and they’d had one candidate who had by far the best Resume by far the best cv on paper But that candidate had been a little awkward at interview and hadn’t really built rapport with the team in the same way that others had.
And they were really honest. They said, if we hadn’t done your training, I don’t think we would have hired that person, even though they had the best team. So to me, that’s one crazy warning here. We all think that companies hire the best people, especially once we’re in them, because we think they hired me.
They must be pretty good at this, right?
Ketan Gajjar: Yeah. It’s
Ed Thompson: not the case. It’s not the case. And I think that’s quite scary. That, that doesn’t happen. But they said, because we’ve just done training about the fact that people think differently and present differently. And so we were able to ask this candidate questions that were helpful.
What have colleagues, managers done in the past to, to make you comfortable, to make you productive, to really focus on his strengths and so on. And in the end, they did hire. The best candidate, but they were so close to not doing it. So I always like that example, just showing you how quickly.
And if you’re talking about, look, we want more talent, we want more diverse talent that happened before we even started working with them. But just that ability to start thinking about the fact that people might present might think differently was so transformative for them, within seconds.
Ketan Gajjar: Definitely. So I have a very separate question here. Now, coming back to the UK recruiting industry, there are lots of companies which are, sub 10 in terms of the size what kind of training and support would your business, be able to provide if somebody wanted to, let’s say, learn more about neurodiversity than, and, this talent, which can actually help their clients.
And then, what kind of duration are we looking at as well?
Ed Thompson: Totally. Yeah. We really. Important to us, not just to have a solution for a Salesforce or an IBM or an Accenture, but to have a solution for every organization. I know that from the beginning of this company my friends who have startups themselves were saying, Hey, what can we do?
I think it’s important as well. There’s five of us, there’s 10 of us and so on. So we have a really accessible training platform. We’ll sell Just a handful of seats into that platform, whatever however big your team is There’s three of you. There’s five of you. There’s ten of you doesn’t matter and you’ll get access to the best material We have E learning, certifications on demand resources, live sessions without subject matter experts, everything you need really to start changing the way your team thinks about this and then to give you the tools to put this into practice.
Ketan Gajjar: Yeah. In terms of the DEI thing where does exactly Neurodiversity fit in the DEI?
Ed Thompson: I think that’s a great question. I wrote an article about this at optimized. com as well, specifically, because this was something that people were asking about something that that I was thinking about.
I think it very much has to fit within DEI programming right where we are now, because all of the imperatives around. Dei relate to neurodiversity and [00:26:00] neuroinclusion and although as I said several times in this Show neurodiversity relates to everybody. We are also talking here about minorities that have found themselves excluded, marginalized, stereotypes and so on.
And there is an urgent case for greater inclusion to change that. And just because of how this has happened, culturally, and look, the term neurodiversity wasn’t used till the late nineties and diversity and inclusion really started in the 60s with the civil rights movement. 25 years of this before anyone was even talking about neurodiversity neurodiversity really quite late to the party.
And so a lot of organizations, bigger organizations have done years of diversity and inclusion work and not covered this. So for them, it’s it’s the next thing. To me, it’s not the last thing. To me, arguably, logically, it’s the first thing. If we were to look at this coldly, and look at diversity of humanity coldly, I think it’s a pretty good place to start.
We’ve all got a different brain. Never mind anything else. So I think if you’re a smaller company, this is a great place to start because I think it really Opens up that conversation about difference that we could then take into say cultural or whatever differences I would say as well that I think here I’m big on you know Where can this take us as a business community because I don’t think in a sense.
It’s just an inclusion imperative I do think that’s the most urgent thing right now. But I think, where can this take us? If we start working as recruiters or as managers or as colleagues, and we start really acknowledging the fact that we all think differently, and we start building teams where we really have some powerfully different thinkers coming together on problems, to me, that leads to greater collaboration.
and ultimately better chance of innovative outcomes. And I think that’s exciting. And I’d like this conversation to get there so that in five, 10 years time, we’re not just talking about the urgency of inclusion because hopefully we’ve got through that. And we’re starting to see the fruits of neuro inclusion being we work better together and people are more comfortable.
People are more productive. And we can really leverage this human diversity of thought in a way that we’ve never done before
Ketan Gajjar: And then, I think on that point, there are more and more companies I believe, you know are embracing this kind of programs to make sure that people come and open and talk about these things
Ed Thompson: Yeah, absolutely.
And I think not just more and more but That’s more of a range to your point. So we are working with small companies as well as big and also the scope of this I think has changed particularly with the bigger companies that started by looking at this as if you like disability recruitment air quotes.
And so it was, we don’t have anybody like this, but we’d like some, so let’s go and try it. Do some strategic hiring initiatives, really bringing that into the mainstream of their recruitment processes. And again, recognizing some of the stuff I’ve been saying, all candidates have different brains, all candidates are neurodiverse.
So let’s start acknowledging that and let’s start recruiting more inclusively, more effectively.
Ketan Gajjar: Fantastic. So what’s one parting tip you’d like to, obviously give it to listeners. From this topic perspective,
Ed Thompson: it’s to consider neurodiversity in every interaction that you have. I think if you don’t, you’ll be less good at your job.
You’ll be less inclusive as a representative of your organization or brand. If you do, I think you’ll start to find all sorts of places that not only can you help others, but others can help you. And being able to advocate for yourself, whoever you are. And I’m an example of this. I had a traumatic brain injury.
I have a sensory sensitivity. Ketan, if you were my manager and you said sit there under these bright office lights, you’re not going to get the best out of me. Being able as well to say, look, here’s how I like to communicate. Maybe that’s not. How do you like to communicate? Or as a manager, here’s how I like to give instructions.
Does that suit you? Or as a colleague, here’s how I like to problem solve. Does that suit you? These conversations and just to start participating in those conversations. That would be what it’s it really.
Ketan Gajjar: Fantastic. Fantastic. So I can’t wait to obviously read your book The Hidden Force.
And yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show. Ed really means a lot. And I’m sure, lots of people got value out of this. And once I post on my channel there’ll be lots of people who will benefit from this. So thanks. Thanks once again. And yeah, you have a fantastic day.
Ed Thompson: Thank you for having me. Pleasure.
Ketan Gajjar: Cheers.
