Jose Velasco’s experience in early talent recruiting (ETR) dates back to 2013 when he was VP of products and innovation at SAP, a large transnational software company that hires STEM profiles in large volume. The company has more than 100,000 employees.
At that time, Velasco led SAP’s Autism at Work program in the Americas region. Autism at Work was designed as a means to provide an alternate employment path for qualified autistic candidates.
“One day, during a discussion, one of our top engineers who is autistic asked me, ‘Do you prefer that I look at you in the eye or that we have a meaningful conversation?’” recalls Velasco, now SVP, strategic operations, Autism
Society of America.
“Some of the challenges that many autistic people have are that they may have a weak handshake or they may not be able to look at you in the eye during conversations. Humans can create about 10,000 facial expressions, but for an autistic individual
who's attuned with attention to detail, 10,000 expressions and movements can be very daunting and distracting.”
Velasco suggests that those in ETR ask themselves if they need to use the same protocols—firm handshake, eye contact, strong personality, and more—for all candidates.
“Thankfully, there are a lot of great companies that are rethinking this and thinking about the future of the workplace. The future they envision includes competencies to hire and sustain neurodistinct individuals,” he says.
The effort is worth it, Velasco stresses. Many autistic college graduates work in technology precisely because it is an exact science and that is where they flourish.
“Sometimes, when you look at things that can be considered deficits, on the other side, they can be advantages or an affinity for a certain topic,” Velasco points out.
“For example, there are autistic people who have a low tolerance for mistakes. They prefer precision. When we talk about a field like engineering, employees need to have a low tolerance for mistakes or, otherwise, the bridge could fall down.
“There are people on the spectrum who have the ability to systemize, which is an incredibly valuable talent that is often beyond [neurotypical] capabilities. When you put together these traits—including, in some cases, incredible memory to
retain massive amounts of data and recall at a moment’s notice—their abilities match well with those needed in the job.”
Velasco says there are five phases of successful hiring, onboarding, and retaining new hires with autism. These include:
- Sourcing and screening—Organizations should develop the ability to interact with candidates who have neurological differences, including those impacting executive function skills like organizing, prioritizing, and communicating. Some of these differences can manifest as, for instance, a candidate not returning a recruiter’s phone calls or emails. Many organizations may move on to the next candidate in this case, but they would be missing out on a talented employee who may be a great contributor if the employer is just able to understand and accommodate that difference during recruiting and mitigate it through job coaching once the candidate is in the organization.
- Preemployment training—Employers can partner with nonprofit organizations that are experts in providing employment training for individuals who have neurological and behavioral differences. Part of this training is assessment to understand if the competencies of the individual are a match for the competencies that are needed in the organization. This requires a little more dedication than a typical pathway and could be part of a university curriculum.
- Interviewing—This involves providing accommodations like having no rapid-fire questions, not using panel interviews, and more that would be uncomfortable—and perhaps insurmountable—for autistic candidates. To accommodate candidate needs, employers should provide questions in advance to the candidate. Many of these adjustments are not difficult, but they do require the employer to be intentional.
- Onboarding—Have job coaches assist autistic new hires with the orientation process, which includes filling out forms, getting an introduction to the facilities and other employees, and more.
- Retaining—One way to work toward retention is to create a “support circle” around each neurodistinct new hire. This circle is made up of a manager, a team buddy, a mentor, and a job coach. These members of the circle would check in with the employee regularly and would be available to provide support.
“It’s one thing to hire neurodistinct people, but it’s another thing altogether to retain them,” Velasco says.
“The goal should be to keep them from ‘hire to retire,’ which is the ability to sustain these employees by providing them with the support they need to build their career in an organization.”
This is an important factor for many reasons, including an organization’s bottom line.
“We know that replacing an employee in a company can cost anywhere between 50% to 100% of the yearly salary of the person,” Velasco says.
“It’s in the best interest of employers to retain their employees—both neurodistinct and neurotypical—not only for financial reasons, but also because they are the intellectual capital of the organization.”
Kevin Gray is an associate editor at NACE. He can be reached at 
