Skip to main content

A little more about interviews and jobs

Nothing that I specifically need to add, just wanted to link to this, because it is such a model for how companies can act when it comes to hiring autistic people.

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/why-microsoft-hiring-autistic-talent-drive-creativity/1458408 


Speaking at the #DiverseMinds conference in London today (1 March), Michael Vermeersch, digital inclusion lead at Microsoft, said that the company’s drive to hire autistic talent has an 80% success rate. 
Sharing what he described as "the greatest feedback he had ever received," he explained how one such employee had stated: "For the first time in many years I feel like it is not a weakness to have a disability."

An open policy

Microsoft launched a pilot project to hire autistic people in April 2015. According to Vermeersch, when Mary Ellen Smith, the corporate vice-president for operations, spoke at the United Nations about a pilot scheme the company had launched to employ people with autism it received 800 CVs.
"We were getting CVs from brilliant people who were being disabled by society," he said, though he added that CVs aren’t the best way to assess talent. Instead Microsoft got people to come in and work and see how they could code. Then hiring managers looked at the different ways in which people solved problems. 
It is this different approach which drives innovation, Vermeersch said: "We have to ask ourselves, are we trying to get people in the organisation who are successful at interviews or are we trying to get people in with the best talent?" 
Microsoft partnered this new talent with job coaches who would explain company structures and processes. The company would also work to build a profile of the candidate and then identify how to best manage and ensure barriers could be removed. "Out of this we got great innovations, but we also saw that the managers involved became better managers across the board," he recalled.

Practical steps

According to Vermeersch the scheme has a success rate of 80%. "We are supporting all people and we train our teams to engage with each candidate," he said. The company offers practical support such as a special help desk and open source training on YouTube, all with a goal of making people feel "cherished and valued".
This approach also drives the brand’s focus on creating inclusive products such as Edge and the quiet function, which allows users to focus while using Windows 10.

Turning the tide

Vermeersch said when companies ask the question, "How are we hiring people with autism?" they need to recognise that they possibly already have staff with autism and always have.
"People who are currently blending, masking and absorbing all the barriers the workplace throws at them," he said. "All the while their colleagues might think, he or she is a bit odd. Not someone that a business needs to change or adapt around."
Talking about the challenges and prejudices still faced by autistic people in society and business, he added: "We are not broken, we do not need to be fixed. When I can be myself I am at my best." 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I get pissed off by a tweet

This is by no means the worst thing I've read about autism: Nevertheless, it struck a nerve, and pushed me over the line from 'maybe I should write a blog' to 'yep, definitely need to start writing a blog'. Over the past year, I've found myself increasingly assertive in opposing misconceptions and lies about autism wherever I find them. At the heart of these, so often, is the idea of autism as a disease - one you can catch, one you can perhaps cure. When this rears its head, you'll often find scientifically-literate folk fighting back - and I'm glad they do, it's important work. However, there's a personal perspective that I always want to add, something very simple yet so often overlooked: I am not a disease. Look at that tweet. It's not shouty and crazy, it's not full of woo. In a very level and apparently considered (if scientifically nonsensical) manner, it presents autism as a dreadful condition that one can catch from a p...
Post a Comment
Read more

I've not been able to write much lately

Hello. I know I've not added anything to this blog in a while. It's not been by choice. My brain has, for want of a better term, collapsed. The best I can do is to get out of bed at some point during the day, to eat, to breathe, to hydrate. Work - and some other daily life stresses, including my parents' health, but primarily work - has completely overwhelmed me. I can't do it any more; for one thing, there's been far too much of it, I've been covering three jobs for six months now, but there's also the strain of being in a work environment, the sensory overload, the masking, the unpredictability. What has been exhausting before has now become highly debilitating. My life has just... well, it's broken. I can't do anything. That, in itself, is saddening (I love to walk and to cook, and these have been taken from me of late), and being all sad and woe-is-me about that just serves to pile on to the underlying problem. Underlying problem being: autist...
Post a Comment
Read more

BREAKING NEWS: research suggests Pope may be Catholic

Going to hammer out a quick post today, because I'm annoyed. A link here: Spectrum: Ask me first - What self-assessments can tell us about autism It appears, blimey, crikey, knock me down with a feather, stone the bleeding crows, that after extensive research, an astonishing new discovery has been made: autistics might know something about the experience of being autistic. FFS. It is not amazing science breakthrough! to say that members of a minority (or otherwise oppressed/suppressed) community are the people to talk to when studying those actual people. Want to know about the experience of women? Ask women. Want to know about the experience of trans people? Ask trans people. Want to know about the experience of wheelchair users? Ask wheelchair users. Want to know about the experience of people of colour? Ask people of colour. Want to know about the experience of gay and bi people? Ask gay and bi people. And so on and so forth. Is it because autism is so often associated - wr...
Post a Comment
Read more