Turning autism into an advantage at work
Jonathan Andrews is young, ambitious and has autism.
He was diagnosed as a child. And when he started applying for jobs, he put it on his applications despite being advised otherwise.
"What I really wanted to do was to show why it can be a positive. There are lots of these traits that people might overlook in favour of the fact that, well, this person's not doing well or [isn't] presentable in an interview."
Jonathan says certain traits of people with autism could be helpful for employers including attention to detail and "special interests", meaning extreme dedication to certain things that interest them.
He disclosed he has autism to his prospective employers because he wanted to see if he was interviewing for a company that wouldn't judge his condition and would take it seriously.
Jonathan says the best prospective employers "didn't drill down on it and see it as the only thing to talk about in the interview".
He tells Piya he's happy there are programs designed to recruit people with autism, like the one Microsoft introduced in 2016. But he doesn't want to see it become a situation where people are hired because they have autism, or pigeonholed into science and tech only.
This story was originally published on March 12, 2017.