Google has partnered with Stanford University to create a pool of neurodiverse individuals to boost neurodiversity hiring by the tech giant.
The recently launched Google Cloud Autism Centre will be working alongside Stanford University School of Medicine’s Stanford Neurodiversity Project in this direction. The Project is an initiative meant to provide support and expertise to corporates looking to work on neurodiversity hiring.
This program aims to empower hiring managers in Google Cloud to understand the needs of neurodiverse individuals and introduce the necessary adaptations in the hiring process. Besides training these managers, Stanford will also help train the applicants and provide their extended support throughout their employment at Google.
While making the formal announcement of the initiative, the president of global customer operations at Google Cloud Rob Enslin said, “We are taking this approach to break down the barriers that candidates with autism most often face. We will offer candidates in this program reasonable accommodations like extended interview time, providing questions in advance, or conducting the interview in writing in a Google Doc rather than verbally on a call.”
Enslin insisted that these accommodations don’t give those candidates an unfair advantage. In fact, he believes this just helps to remove an unfair disadvantage from their paths, providing candidates with a fair and equitable chance to compete for the job.
Closer to home, NGOs are also providing employability training to autistic individuals to boost neurodiversity hiring in India.
