Thank you Dr Christina Zaza for the wonderful workshop "Creating A Supportive Workplace for Neurodivergent Employees". ecopeeps had great feedback on the session and we appreciate being able to continue learning together. Our Manager of Talent Acquisition, Kristen, shares some insight below on how our talent team works to ensure neurodivergent candidates have a positive experience when interviewing with ecobee. #ecobeeLife #ecobee #DEI #LearningAndDevelopment
🧠 Thank you to our DEI Working Group for organizing a great session today for ecobee, “Creating a Supportive Workplace for Neurodivergent Employees." We got the chance to connect with Christine Zaza, PhD, who works at the University of Waterloo as a Workplace Accessibility Specialist. Christine discussed hiring and the difficulties Neurodivergent folks face during interviews. I wanted to share a few ways our Talent Acquisition team works to ensure Neurodivergent candidates have a positive experience with us and can effectively share their experience and skillset. -We provide detailed preparation emails to the candidate before the interview. This includes names of the interviewers, agenda, focus areas of the questions, how candidates can prepare, what areas of their experience the interviewers want to learn about, what they can expect, and how they can best organize their answers -We are working to incorporate more of what we call “Long Form Questions”. Long Form Questions are detailed interview questions that we send a few days in advance of the interview so that candidates can spend time preparing their answers. This makes for a better conversation as the candidate has time to think through previous examples in more detail rather than putting them on the spot -Breaks between interviews and/or throughout longer interviews -Accommodations can be made upon request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the recruitment process, which we outline in every job posting 💡Some ideas I got from attending this session: -We conduct interview training and cover body language and bias, but I think there’s an opportunity to cover supporting neurodiverse candidates -For any in-person interviews, we could put some fidget toys in the meeting room -We could add an accommodation blurb in all of our interview confirmation emails (in addition to the job posting) to ensure all candidates see it and know that we can accommodate 🌱 Fellow Recruiters & Candidates: I would love to hear what you’re doing at your workplace, or any ideas you have that we could implement!