Turning autism into an advantage at work

Image | Jonathon Andrews

Caption: Jonathan Andrews started working to get employers to understand why they should go the extra mile to boost the neurodiversity in their workplaces

Jonathan Andrews is young, ambitious and autistic.
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 autistic people could be helpful for employers including attention to detail and "special interests", meaning extreme dedication to certain things that interest them.
He disclosed he was autistic 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(external link) in 2016. But he doesn't want to see it become a situation where people are hired because they are autistic, or pigeonholed into science and tech only.