AGXStarseed
Well-Known Member
(Not written by me)
Job interviews can be especially hard if you're autistic. A Microsoft effort aimed at a wider spectrum of the workforce wants to solve that.
[Illustration: Brian Rea]
The day before Blake Adickman was scheduled to start interviewing at Microsoft last spring, he called his parents and kept them on the phone as he walked from his hotel to the building where his meetings were set to take place. His parents, back in Boca Raton, Florida, zoomed in on Redmond, Washington, on Google Maps and followed along. When he arrived at the building, he took a photo of its entrance and texted it to them. Then he turned around and retraced his steps to his hotel.
Adickman is autistic. He is 26 years old, with a full beard and a broad-shouldered build, but his affect—chatty, guileless, and eager to please—makes him seem younger than his age. One of the features of his autism is that he gets frazzled by unfamiliar experiences, and the practice walk to Microsoft was meant to try to diminish the newness of his surroundings. This was one of the most important moments of his life, and he didn’t want to mess it up.
In the past, Adickman had never disclosed his autism when he applied for jobs. Once, a manager had berated him for making a list of tasks on his phone instead of in handwriting, and he’d wanted to explain why he preferred typing to writing: a quirk in fine motor skills, associated with autism, that made for messy penmanship. "I have hypermobility," he’d blurted. "I don’t care what you have," his manager had replied. He would soon quit.
Adickman and millions of adults with autism often find themselves in a difficult bind. They struggle to get and keep jobs because of the disability, but if they disclose it so they can seek accommodations while applying or working—just as someone in a wheelchair, for instance, might request a ramp—they risk facing discrimination from managers or colleagues who mistakenly believe autism, because it affects the brain, must make them less able workers.
This time, though, was supposed to be different.
Normally, when someone applies for a job at Microsoft and gets through the early stages of consideration—the resume screening, the phone interview, maybe a homework assignment to assess their skills—they’re brought on campus for a day of intense back-to-back interviews with managers, where they’re quizzed about their experience and, if they’re applying for a technical position, asked to work out problems on the fly. But Microsoft had brought Adickman and 16 others to join the third cohort in a year-old program crafted especially for autistic applicants.
The program, which began in May 2015, does away with the typical interview approach, instead inviting candidates to hang out on campus for two weeks and work on projects while being observed and casually meeting managers who might be interested in hiring them. Only at the end of this stage do more formal interviews take place.
The goal is to create a situation that is better suited to autistic people’s styles of communicating and thinking. Microsoft isn’t the first to attempt something like this: The German software firm SAP, among a handful of others, have similar programs—but Microsoft is the highest-profile company to have gone public with its efforts, and autistic adults are hoping it will spark a broader movement.
What’s unorthodox about this, of course, isn’t just its setup. It also represents a novel, and potentially fraught, expansion of the idea of diversity. The impulse to hire more autistic employees is based on the same premise as hiring, say, women and people of color: Doing so not only welcomes in a wider range of creative and analytical talent, but brings more varied perspectives into an organization, and makes for a workforce that better reflects the general population of customers.
And yet, being autistic is considered a brain disorder, and it affects the way people process and communicate information—skills that are at the core of many white-collar professions. Adickman and his cohort were, in a sense, subjects in the third iteration of an ambitious experiment. Could the third-largest corporation in the world make the case that hiring and employing autistic people, with all their social and intellectual quirks, was good, not bad, for business?
"Are You Sure?"
It has been almost two decades since an Australian sociology student, who was on the spectrum herself, coined the term "neurodiversity" to signify that brain variations are normal and should be respected, just like differences in gender and race. People with autism, according to this philosophy, aren’t abnormal. It’s just that they might need some extra support to live in a society built with "neurotypical" people in mind. While that concept has gotten some traction in schools, the corporate world has taken little notice. But that might have to change soon.
Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, a catch-all name that includes a range of symptoms from muteness to the milder social awkwardness of Asperger Syndrome, have become much more prevalent over the past couple of decades. One in 68 children were diagnosed with ADS in 2012, up from one in 10,000 in the 1980s. Many researchers believe this is largely because growing awareness of autism has meant more children are being correctly diagnosed.
Soon those children will be old enough to enter the workforce. About half of autistic children have average or above-average intellectual ability, according to the CDC. The unemployment rate among autistic adults, though, is extraordinarily high—up to 80%, by some estimates, according to the advocacy group Autism Speaks, though precise figures are hard to find.
"As a whole, people with autism—even those who are quite bright, and intellectually quite capable—are facing worse job prospects because of their social challenges," says Dave Kearon, the director of adult services at Autism Speaks. Kearon and other experts believe that companies’ traditional hiring processes are biased against autistic candidates. Someone who looks at his lap instead of at his interviewer, for example, might come across as awkward or even rude. "They can’t get a job that’s commensurate with their abilities," says Kearon. "You’re really setting them up to fail."
I first met Adickman during his visit to Microsoft. The company had allowed me an exclusive look inside the autism program and, for three days, I sat in a conference room as Adickman and the 16 other candidates listened to classical music and worked in small groups to build simple devices out of Legos. Two men sat at the front of the room, observing them and taking notes that they’d share with managers. Later, managers themselves would stop by.
When Adickman and I stepped out of the room to talk for a couple of minutes, he stared off to the side instead of at me—a typical trait among autistic people—but this quirk didn’t reflect a general reticence. If anything, Adickman was more talkative and forthcoming than people usually are upon meeting a journalist for the first time. "I’ve been basically jumping from contract job to contract job," he admitted. "When I got invited out here, I was like, ‘Are you sure?’"
He was maybe the most self-deprecating of the candidates I met, but he was also among the most articulate in describing how autistic people can have significant job strengths, in addition to impairments. "They can have a drive toward something to the point of obsession. You don’t have to tell someone not to go home early. They’ll just stay."
It became apparent that Adickman was describing one of his own traits. One evening, I met him for dinner, and he told me he’d been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm and My Little Pony. He spent most of the two-hour meal deconstructing the programs.
People might think of them as different from each other, he said, the first cynical and the latter idealistic, but they both deal with how confusing human behavior can be: "They’re about conflicts that come with difficulties socializing." At one point, I tried to steer the conversation toward Microsoft, but Adickman said he couldn’t switch topics right then. Part of his brain had lit up when we’d started talking about his favorite shows, he said, and he wasn’t done.
Adickman sometimes imagined his own interactions as TV plot points, which helped him figure out resolutions, he said. He most related to one character on My Little Pony—a young dragon named Spike who is bullied and misunderstood. "I’m definitely him," he said. "He’s a guy who wants to help others, and he’s treated like ****, even though he’s really quite competent."
READ MORE: https://www.fastcompany.com/3062835/hr/microsoft-autism-hiring
Job interviews can be especially hard if you're autistic. A Microsoft effort aimed at a wider spectrum of the workforce wants to solve that.
[Illustration: Brian Rea]
The day before Blake Adickman was scheduled to start interviewing at Microsoft last spring, he called his parents and kept them on the phone as he walked from his hotel to the building where his meetings were set to take place. His parents, back in Boca Raton, Florida, zoomed in on Redmond, Washington, on Google Maps and followed along. When he arrived at the building, he took a photo of its entrance and texted it to them. Then he turned around and retraced his steps to his hotel.
Adickman is autistic. He is 26 years old, with a full beard and a broad-shouldered build, but his affect—chatty, guileless, and eager to please—makes him seem younger than his age. One of the features of his autism is that he gets frazzled by unfamiliar experiences, and the practice walk to Microsoft was meant to try to diminish the newness of his surroundings. This was one of the most important moments of his life, and he didn’t want to mess it up.
In the past, Adickman had never disclosed his autism when he applied for jobs. Once, a manager had berated him for making a list of tasks on his phone instead of in handwriting, and he’d wanted to explain why he preferred typing to writing: a quirk in fine motor skills, associated with autism, that made for messy penmanship. "I have hypermobility," he’d blurted. "I don’t care what you have," his manager had replied. He would soon quit.
Adickman and millions of adults with autism often find themselves in a difficult bind. They struggle to get and keep jobs because of the disability, but if they disclose it so they can seek accommodations while applying or working—just as someone in a wheelchair, for instance, might request a ramp—they risk facing discrimination from managers or colleagues who mistakenly believe autism, because it affects the brain, must make them less able workers.
This time, though, was supposed to be different.
Normally, when someone applies for a job at Microsoft and gets through the early stages of consideration—the resume screening, the phone interview, maybe a homework assignment to assess their skills—they’re brought on campus for a day of intense back-to-back interviews with managers, where they’re quizzed about their experience and, if they’re applying for a technical position, asked to work out problems on the fly. But Microsoft had brought Adickman and 16 others to join the third cohort in a year-old program crafted especially for autistic applicants.
The program, which began in May 2015, does away with the typical interview approach, instead inviting candidates to hang out on campus for two weeks and work on projects while being observed and casually meeting managers who might be interested in hiring them. Only at the end of this stage do more formal interviews take place.
The goal is to create a situation that is better suited to autistic people’s styles of communicating and thinking. Microsoft isn’t the first to attempt something like this: The German software firm SAP, among a handful of others, have similar programs—but Microsoft is the highest-profile company to have gone public with its efforts, and autistic adults are hoping it will spark a broader movement.
What’s unorthodox about this, of course, isn’t just its setup. It also represents a novel, and potentially fraught, expansion of the idea of diversity. The impulse to hire more autistic employees is based on the same premise as hiring, say, women and people of color: Doing so not only welcomes in a wider range of creative and analytical talent, but brings more varied perspectives into an organization, and makes for a workforce that better reflects the general population of customers.
And yet, being autistic is considered a brain disorder, and it affects the way people process and communicate information—skills that are at the core of many white-collar professions. Adickman and his cohort were, in a sense, subjects in the third iteration of an ambitious experiment. Could the third-largest corporation in the world make the case that hiring and employing autistic people, with all their social and intellectual quirks, was good, not bad, for business?
"Are You Sure?"
It has been almost two decades since an Australian sociology student, who was on the spectrum herself, coined the term "neurodiversity" to signify that brain variations are normal and should be respected, just like differences in gender and race. People with autism, according to this philosophy, aren’t abnormal. It’s just that they might need some extra support to live in a society built with "neurotypical" people in mind. While that concept has gotten some traction in schools, the corporate world has taken little notice. But that might have to change soon.
Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, a catch-all name that includes a range of symptoms from muteness to the milder social awkwardness of Asperger Syndrome, have become much more prevalent over the past couple of decades. One in 68 children were diagnosed with ADS in 2012, up from one in 10,000 in the 1980s. Many researchers believe this is largely because growing awareness of autism has meant more children are being correctly diagnosed.
Soon those children will be old enough to enter the workforce. About half of autistic children have average or above-average intellectual ability, according to the CDC. The unemployment rate among autistic adults, though, is extraordinarily high—up to 80%, by some estimates, according to the advocacy group Autism Speaks, though precise figures are hard to find.
"As a whole, people with autism—even those who are quite bright, and intellectually quite capable—are facing worse job prospects because of their social challenges," says Dave Kearon, the director of adult services at Autism Speaks. Kearon and other experts believe that companies’ traditional hiring processes are biased against autistic candidates. Someone who looks at his lap instead of at his interviewer, for example, might come across as awkward or even rude. "They can’t get a job that’s commensurate with their abilities," says Kearon. "You’re really setting them up to fail."
I first met Adickman during his visit to Microsoft. The company had allowed me an exclusive look inside the autism program and, for three days, I sat in a conference room as Adickman and the 16 other candidates listened to classical music and worked in small groups to build simple devices out of Legos. Two men sat at the front of the room, observing them and taking notes that they’d share with managers. Later, managers themselves would stop by.
When Adickman and I stepped out of the room to talk for a couple of minutes, he stared off to the side instead of at me—a typical trait among autistic people—but this quirk didn’t reflect a general reticence. If anything, Adickman was more talkative and forthcoming than people usually are upon meeting a journalist for the first time. "I’ve been basically jumping from contract job to contract job," he admitted. "When I got invited out here, I was like, ‘Are you sure?’"
He was maybe the most self-deprecating of the candidates I met, but he was also among the most articulate in describing how autistic people can have significant job strengths, in addition to impairments. "They can have a drive toward something to the point of obsession. You don’t have to tell someone not to go home early. They’ll just stay."
It became apparent that Adickman was describing one of his own traits. One evening, I met him for dinner, and he told me he’d been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm and My Little Pony. He spent most of the two-hour meal deconstructing the programs.
People might think of them as different from each other, he said, the first cynical and the latter idealistic, but they both deal with how confusing human behavior can be: "They’re about conflicts that come with difficulties socializing." At one point, I tried to steer the conversation toward Microsoft, but Adickman said he couldn’t switch topics right then. Part of his brain had lit up when we’d started talking about his favorite shows, he said, and he wasn’t done.
Adickman sometimes imagined his own interactions as TV plot points, which helped him figure out resolutions, he said. He most related to one character on My Little Pony—a young dragon named Spike who is bullied and misunderstood. "I’m definitely him," he said. "He’s a guy who wants to help others, and he’s treated like ****, even though he’s really quite competent."
READ MORE: https://www.fastcompany.com/3062835/hr/microsoft-autism-hiring
