Traditional recruitment processes are often built around an implicit idea of what a good candidate should look and sound like. They communicate confidently. They maintain eye contact. They respond quickly. Their career history follows a logical progression. They understand the unwritten rules of an interview and know how to present their strengths convincingly.
But how much do those signals actually tell us about someone’s ability to perform the job?
As part of Clevry’s Perspectives on Talent series, we speak with leaders, practitioners, and experts who are helping shape the future of work. Through these conversations, we explore the challenges organisations face today and the strategies they are using to build stronger, more adaptable workforces.
For this edition, we spoke with Russell Botting, Neuroinclusion Services Director at auticon UK, about what neuroinclusive recruitment really means, how seemingly ordinary hiring practices can disadvantage neurodivergent candidates, and why organisations need to get better at assessing the capabilities that matter for the job.
Fair doesn’t always mean treating everyone the same
For Russell, neuroinclusive recruitment starts with understanding the difference between equality and equity.
Candidates should be treated fairly. But fairness does not necessarily mean every candidate must go through a process in exactly the same way.
“Fairness does not necessarily need to look the same for every person,” Russell explains.
Some candidates may need different forms of support or adjustments to give them an equal opportunity to demonstrate what they can actually do.
That changes the way organisations need to think about recruitment.
Rather than designing a standard process and only adapting it once somebody asks for help, Russell believes organisations should proactively consider where neurodivergent candidates might unintentionally be disadvantaged.
Clear communication is one of the most obvious places to start.
Candidates should understand where they are in the recruitment journey, what each stage involves, who they are likely to meet and what will be expected of them. They should also be reminded that adjustments can be requested at all stages of the recruitment process.
But the issue goes deeper than communication.
Russell points to lengthy job descriptions, unclear instructions and ambiguous interview questions that depend heavily on candidates interpreting social expectations or unwritten recruitment norms.
The question organisations should ask is what they are really trying to assess.
“The goal is to assess someone’s ability to perform the role rather than their ability to navigate ambiguity and decode recruitment norms.”
“Fairness does not necessarily need to look the same for every person.”
Neuroinclusion is becoming a business issue, not just a compliance issue
Russell believes growing awareness of neurodiversity is changing how organisations think about inclusion.
Many employers will already have neurodivergent people within their workforce, whether those individuals have disclosed it or not.
At the same time, organisations are competing for skills and trying to broaden their talent pools. If their recruitment process unintentionally prevents some people from demonstrating their capability, that becomes more than an inclusion issue.
It becomes a talent issue. “There is likely to be talent that organisations overlook when recruitment processes create unnecessary barriers”, Russell says.
Different ways of processing information, approaching problems, and responding to challenges can offer valuable perspectives and approaches within teams.
Russell points to problem solving, innovation and creativity as areas where different ways of thinking can contribute to stronger teams.
There are, of course, legal responsibilities too. In the UK, under the Equality Act 2010, employers have an obligation to provide reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process. Expectations around social value, diversity and inclusion are also increasingly reflected in procurement frameworks (e.g. PPN 026) and the expectations of employees, customers and investors.
But Russell believes organisations should look beyond compliance.
“It’s no longer just a compliance issue. Increasingly, it’s a business issue.”
When businesses are already struggling with skills shortages or competition for specialist talent, excluding capable candidates because of the structure of the hiring process is a genuine risk.
“It’s no longer just a compliance issue. Increasingly, it’s a business issue.”
Bias often hides inside ordinary hiring decisions
Bias in recruitment does not necessarily come from deliberate discrimination.
Often, it comes from perfectly normal human judgement.
Recruiters and hiring managers constantly interpret signals: what a career gap means, whether somebody seems enthusiastic, whether they appear confident, how quickly they answer or whether they seem like a good cultural fit.
Russell sees risks beginning as early as CV screening.
Recruiters may make assumptions about employment gaps, career changes, periods of unemployment or unconventional career histories.
Yet those patterns do not necessarily tell us anything meaningful about someone’s underlying capability.
Russell sees this firsthand through auticon.
“We have consultants who were previously unemployed for multiple years or were working in warehouses before working at auticon. Now they are contributing significantly to highly technical government and public-sector projects.”
Some are self-taught. Some have followed highly unconventional routes into technology.
And some are now the people colleagues turn to when faced with particularly complex technical problems.
A recruitment process built around a narrow definition of what a successful career trajectory should look like could easily have filtered those candidates out much earlier.
“We have consultants who are self-taught coders who were previously working in warehouses, but are now working on very complex, government-related work.”
Eye contact, confidence and enthusiasm can be misleading
The interview introduces another set of potential biases.
Russell frequently sees organisations placing weight on behaviours such as eye contact, body language, confidence, speed of response and perceived enthusiasm.
The problem is that those signals can present very differently between candidates.
An interviewer might associate eye contact or an outgoing presence with competence even though neither is essential for the job.
They might pay more attention to visible behaviours such as fidgeting or communication style than to the quality of the candidate’s answer.
Or they may accurately notice a behaviour but incorrectly interpret what it means.
Russell describes this as the difference between unconscious, observational and interpretation bias.
“A long pause to process may be misinterpreted as lack of knowledge, when it may instead reflect differences in information processing, communication style or the need for additional thinking time”, he explains.
Similarly, limited eye contact may be interpreted as disengagement. A flatter or more monotone communication style might be read as a lack of enthusiasm.
“In reality, this may simply reflect different approaches to communication or working memory, where people may require more time to respond to questions effectively, especially if questions are unclear or ambiguous.”
These judgements can build on one another.
An interviewer sees a behaviour, interprets it according to their own expectations and then makes a judgement about motivation, competence or suitability based on that interpretation.
That is why Russell believes recruitment decisions need to be grounded much more firmly in evidence of job-relevant capability.
“A long pause to process may be misinterpreted as lack of knowledge.”
Are we assessing the job, or performance in the interview?
For Russell, one of the fundamental problems with traditional recruitment is that organisations often end up assessing a candidate’s ability to perform well in an interview rather than their ability to perform well in the job.
“We often focus on performance in interviews rather than performance in the role itself.”
A traditional interview can favour somebody who responds quickly, builds rapport easily and knows how to present themselves convincingly.
Those may be useful capabilities in some roles. In others, they may have very little relationship to performance.
Russell believes organisations can reduce this gap by defining clearer assessment criteria and tying them directly to the requirements of the job.
What capability are you trying to assess?
What would good evidence of that capability actually look like?
And are all candidates being judged against the same criteria?
Multiple interviewers can help provide a more balanced perspective, particularly where they bring different expertise. Russell suggests, for example, combining an HR perspective with somebody who understands the specific role.
But he also makes an important point about how those interviewers make their decisions. They should score candidates independently before discussing their views.
Otherwise, an early opinion from one person can frame the conversation for everybody else.
Independent scoring reduces the risk of groupthink or a stronger personality shaping the assessment of the whole panel.
“We often focus on performance in interviews rather than performance in the role itself.”
Neurodivergent talent isn’t one type of talent
When conversations turn to neurodiversity, it is easy to fall into another trap: associating particular diagnoses with a fixed set of strengths.
For instance, neurodivergent individuals may demonstrate strengths such as attention to detail, analytical thinking, creativity, pattern recognition or innovative problem solving, depending on the individual, the role and the environment. These should not be assumed to apply universally.
Russell is careful not to do that.
“I always caveat these questions by saying neurodivergent people are not a homogeneous group. Each neurodivergent person brings a unique set of strengths and perspectives.”
Strengths vary between individuals just as they do among those who are not neurodivergent. They also depend on the role, the environment, the person’s interests, support and wellbeing.
There is no single cognitive capability or personality trait that defines neurodivergent talent.
Within auticon’s work with neurodivergent technology professionals, however, Russell has seen individuals demonstrate particularly valuable strengths in different contexts.
These include strong attention to detail, sustained accuracy, pattern recognition, analytical reasoning and innovative approaches to problem solving.
He also sees deep expertise developing around areas of particular interest.
“People can become the go-to person for a specific area of technical knowledge.”
“People can become the go-to person for a specific area of technical knowledge.”
And the strengths are not purely cognitive.
Russell points to rationality, rigour, persistence and determination when tackling difficult problems, alongside qualities such as empathy, authenticity and a strong sense of fairness.
But he returns to the same caveat. These strengths are not fixed attributes of neurodivergent people.
“Like everyone else, people perform well when the environment, the role, the support and their wellbeing are aligned.”
“Neurodivergent people should not be viewed as a homogeneous group.”
Give people the opportunity to show what they can actually do
If CVs and traditional interviews can obscure capability, organisations need other ways for candidates to demonstrate it.
Russell talks about this in terms of ecological validity: assessment should resemble the real tasks, challenges and situations somebody will encounter in the role as closely as possible.
That might mean a work sample, a coding challenge, a spreadsheet or data task, a written communication exercise, or a realistic scenario where the candidate has to demonstrate how they would respond.
Russell uses auticon’s own recruitment of coaches as an example.
Because coaches need to communicate with different stakeholders, candidates complete a presentation exercise. They may also be presented with a coaching scenario and asked how they would respond.
The exercise then continues.
“We might give them a scenario and then ask them to send an email to a client based on that interaction.”
That gives the hiring team evidence across several areas at once.
How does the candidate respond to the situation? How do they demonstrate empathy and judgement? How do they communicate?
And can they turn their reasoning into a professional client interaction?
It is far closer to what they will actually do in the role than simply asking them to describe their strengths in an interview.
“Assess the real skills and work capability in ways that actually relate to the role.”
Using psychometrics to bring more objective evidence into hiring
Alongside practical work samples and job simulations, Russell sees an important role for psychometric assessments in creating a more robust recruitment process.
But they need to be used thoughtfully and as part of a broader assessment strategy. As with any selection method, psychometric assessments should be evaluated for accessibility, validity and potential adverse impact, and should not be relied upon in isolation.
“There isn’t one single assessment or method that tells you everything about a candidate.”
“There isn’t one single assessment or method that tells you everything about a candidate.”
For Russell, the starting point therefore shouldn’t be choosing an assessment. It should be understanding the role.
What capabilities, behaviours, technical skills and cognitive skills genuinely contribute to success? Organisations can then select assessment methods that evaluate those attributes as accurately and fairly as possible.
This is where psychometrics can add another valuable source of evidence.
Traditional interviews can be heavily influenced by subjective impressions such as confidence, communication style, rapport or perceived enthusiasm. Russell argues that well-designed and appropriately validated psychometric assessments can provide an additional source of structured data to complement interview-based assessments.
He points, for example, to assessments of job-relevant capabilities such as numerical reasoning, abstract reasoning and attention to detail. Where those capabilities genuinely matter for performance, structured assessment can provide more concrete evidence than an interviewer’s impression of whether somebody appeared confident or enthusiastic.
Personality assessments can provide another perspective, while situational judgement tests can explore how candidates are likely to respond to realistic workplace situations.
The strength comes from combining these different sources of information.
“Psychometrics, work examples, situational judgement tasks and personality measures are useful in a combined approach to assessing suitability.”
Clear criteria, benchmarks and scoring methods help ensure candidates are evaluated consistently against the requirements of the role, rather than the individual preferences of whoever happens to be assessing them.
But Russell makes an important distinction: an assessment should not be assumed to be neuroinclusive simply because it is standardised.
How it is communicated, administered and interpreted still matters.
The key is to start with what success in the role looks like, then choose assessment methods that give the best evidence of those capabilities.
One simple adjustment: ask the question twice
When Russell is asked what one change organisations could make to become more neuroinclusive, he deliberately chooses something simple.
Ask every interview question twice.
It doesn’t require new technology. It doesn’t cost anything. And it can be applied to every candidate.
Russell explains that some autistic people, people with ADHD and other neurodivergent candidates may benefit from additional time to process verbal information.
But the adjustment also removes a social barrier.
Candidates may not fully hear or process a question the first time, yet feel uncomfortable asking for it to be repeated because they worry that doing so will make them appear inattentive or slow.
Repeating the question automatically removes that concern.
It also improves the quality of the employer’s assessment.
“If a response is based on a misunderstanding or only partially hearing the question, that impacts the employer’s ability to fairly assess that candidate’s response.”
And because the question is repeated for everybody, nobody needs to disclose a diagnosis or request special treatment to benefit from it.
Russell describes this as a universal-design approach to interviewing.
It can support neurodivergent candidates, but it may also help anyone who is nervous, stressed or simply processing a lot of information during an interview.
“It’s a small change, it costs nothing to implement and requires minimal training.”
“It’s a small change, it costs nothing to implement and requires minimal training.”
Recruitment needs to get closer to the reality of work
Looking ahead, Russell talks about using assessment methods with greater ecological validity, meaning they more closely reflect the tasks and situations people will encounter in the role.
In other words, hiring methods should include realistic tasks that candidates will face once they are in the job.
“Too often we assess the ability to perform well in a traditional interview rather than the ability to perform the job.”
That could mean structured psychometrics.
It could mean job simulations, coding exercises, presentations or written communication tasks.
It could mean better structured interviews and clearer scoring.
Most often, it means combining different sources of evidence rather than expecting a CV and one or two conversations to reveal everything an employer needs to know.
At its heart, neuroinclusive recruitment is about giving people a fair opportunity to demonstrate what they can contribute.
But many of Russell’s recommendations extend far beyond neurodivergent candidates.
Clearer instructions.
More relevant assessments.
Less reliance on first impressions.
Better structured interviews.
Practical tasks that reflect the real job.
Small adjustments that remove unnecessary barriers.
All of them can improve the quality of hiring decisions for everyone.
The more closely recruitment assesses the realities of work rather than somebody’s ability to navigate the conventions of recruitment itself, the more likely organisations are to recognise talent they might otherwise miss.
About Russell Botting
Russell Botting is Neuroinclusion Services Director at auticon UK. With a background in clinical psychology, he has worked across adult mental health, specialist learning disability and autism services, diagnostic services and psychometric assessment.
He joined auticon in 2018 and today oversees its coaching teams in London and Edinburgh alongside the delivery of neuroinclusion service projects across the UK and Ireland. His work focuses on supporting neurodivergent professionals and helping organisations build more inclusive environments in which different ways of thinking and working can thrive.
