Let’s consider this scenario: You’re interviewing a prospective candidate for a job role as a software engineer. The individual seems to possess the skills and knowledge you’re looking for but he/she also exhibits a few social eccentricities — maybe they rock back and forth or don’t make eye contact.

Potential hires like these are most often rejected from the candidate pool solely because they don’t seem like the “right culture fit.” But what’s the cost of leaving this massive pool of highly qualified workers untapped?

When you don’t hire neurodiverse people, you miss out on talents and gifts that these individuals have to contribute to drive innovation in your organization.

Neurodiverse individuals are those with developmental disabilities such as autism, ADHD, OCD and social anxiety disorders. Notwithstanding, there’s a growing understanding that these people aren’t disabled per se, but rather differently abled. Though they tend to struggle with social skills, they possess higher-than-average abilities when it comes to attention-to-detail, out-of-the-box thinking, processing information, pattern recognition, etc.

In the era of global diversity awareness, it’s important to recognize that diversity is multifaceted, encompassing not only factors like gender, race, and ethnicity but also neurodiversity. Neurodiverse individuals, such as those with developmental disabilities, represent a valuable dimension of this diversity.

Employers need to recognize that the traditional recruiting process cannot fairly assess the capabilities of neurodiverse people. In order to hire this group, recruiters need to adjust their hiring practices and ensure their recruitment process supports neurodiverse talent.