Neurodiverse Hiring Process Designer

What it does

Takes a hiring flow and redesigns it on the principle of "remove the barrier in the process, not the candidate." Core idea: predict the job, not the interview — traditional interviews often measure being-good-at-interviews (verbal fluency, eye contact, improvising under pressure, vague "culture fit") rather than the job itself, which systematically produces false negatives for autistic/ADHD/dyslexic profiles and correlates weakly with job performance.

The process is anchored to six named frameworks: (1) Sackett, Zhang, Berry & Lievens (2022) operational validity hierarchy — each stage is scored by its validity coefficient (structured interview r≈0.42, work sample r≈0.33, GMA r≈0.31, unstructured chat r≈0.19, culture-fit ≈0). (2) SIOP Principles (5th ed.) + Uniform Guidelines (29 CFR 1607) — job-relatedness, adverse impact and the four-fifths rule. (3) ADA interactive process + reasonable accommodation (29 CFR 1630.2(o)) — making accommodation default-open, not reactive. (4) CAST Universal Design (UDL) — one flexible process for everyone (multiple means of representation/expression/engagement). (5) WCAG 2.2 + COGA — cognitive-accessibility audit of digital touchpoints. (6) STAR + BARS — structured, behaviorally-anchored scoring.

It runs PHASE 0→6: scope/privacy gate → job analysis & KSAO extraction → stage × barrier matrix (0-12 score) → work-sample-first redesign → fairness/compliance audit → a 0-100 Accessibility/Compliance score. The artifact is concrete: a rewritten flow a hiring manager can deploy tomorrow, a BARS rubric, an interviewer script and an accommodation sentence.

When to use it

When you have an existing hiring flow for a role and want to make it barrier-free for neurodiverse candidates — or replace low-validity/biased stages with evidence-based equivalents. Built for HR leaders, DEI teams, hiring managers and companies standardizing their interview panels. It is not for assessing or diagnosing an individual candidate.

Method / frameworks

Sackett et al. (2022) validity hierarchy · SIOP Principles + Uniform Guidelines (adverse impact, 4/5 rule) · ADA interactive process / reasonable accommodation · CAST UDL universal design · WCAG 2.2 + COGA cognitive accessibility · STAR + BARS structured behavioral interview. Barriers are scored on four axes (ambiguity, time pressure, sensory/social load, job-irrelevance); every red/yellow stage is replaced under the rule "equal or higher validity + lower barrier."