By Mille Frydensberg, Business Service Director at Specialisterne Denmark
There is a saying in the recruitment industry that goes something like: Hire slow – fire fast! And perhaps there is something to it. In any case, figures show that there were challenges in 22% of companies’ recruitment attempts (Styrelsen for Arbejdsmarked og Rekruttering (STAR) 2025).
That is not just inconvenient for the recruiter and the hiring manager — it is also costly for the company. A bad hire is estimated by several recognized recruitment firms to cost between 75% and 150% of the annual salary.
When you add the shortage of labor on top of that — particularly in IT and tech, where Ingeniørforeningen i Danmark (IDA) estimates an acute shortfall of approximately 7,000 IT professionals (IDA analysis) — it becomes more important than ever:
- to look for candidates in unique and non-traditional places, and
- to change the recruitment process so it is inclusive enough for more people to actually be considered.
Drawing on Specialisterne Denmark’s¹ recruitment process, here is some motivation for how you can expand your talent pool by creating a neuro-friendly recruitment process.
Bonus: it improves the recruitment process for everyone.
Start With the Core Tasks — Not “The Perfect Candidate”
One of the biggest barriers for autistic candidates is that job postings often describe the perfect candidate who can do everything: be a specialist, socially competent, present to large audiences, and be excellent at stakeholder management — oh yes, and be the fun colleague we all want to sit next to at the company party.
This excludes many autistic candidates who may be excellent at the core task but cannot see themselves in the full wish list. For many, lacking even one competency is enough for them to conclude the job is not for them.
Here are some approaches that help:
- Describe the job based on concrete tasks and must-have requirements, and be mindful of which tasks are truly central to the role — be as specific as possible.
- Remove unnecessary nice-to-have requirements that lead candidates to disqualify themselves.
- Avoid metaphors and fluffy buzzwords like “rockstar”, “ninja,” and “walk the extra mile”, because some people read these very literally and become uncertain about what is actually expected.
- Include a step-by-step guide to the recruitment process in your job posting, recruiters should avoid ambiguity when they can – more information about interviews, dates, and location is better than less.
Finally, challenge hiring managers who are looking for an exact replica of the previous employee. You are not hiring a copy of the person who left—you are looking for someone who fills the team’s current gaps and increases diversity. Often, this means being open to a candidate with a different background or style than what you have previously experienced.
Do You Really Need a Cover Letter?
Some people are genuinely talented writers. Others are able to identify the support they need in order to complete all of the application requirements. And others are skilled at prompting AI for support — ask yourself whether that really measures a candidate’s motivation or competencies.
Perhaps you should consider whether the position actually requires sharp writing skills in order to code flawlessly in Python or be the project manager with a great overview. Consider dropping the cover letter and instead asking a few written preliminary questions directly relevant to the position, or let the candidate solve a concrete, well-defined task. Use the answers — or the task — as the basis for the conversation once at the interview stage, and be curious about how the candidate thinks and works.
(You might also consider dropping the CV — but that is a conversation for an entirely different article.)
Make the Process Predictable and Fair
Job interviews are hard for most people. But they can be downright terrifying if you are autistic — not least because many people want to be prepared. Autistic candidates often spend enormous energy decoding the situation: What does the room look like? Who will I be speaking with? How many people will attend? How long will the conversation last? And most importantly: what does the interviewer want to hear? The result is that energy is spent on everything other than demonstrating the professional expertise you are actually interested in.
At Specialisterne, professional competence is what matters most. Therefore, at Specialisterne Denmark, candidates receive, for example, a coding test or a pattern recognition test in advance, which becomes the focal point of the conversation. It helps autistic candidates demonstrate something concrete, gives space to think, and does not ask hypothetical questions such as: “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
You help the process by:
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- Sending questions in advance and explaining the format (time, agenda, who is attending), so the candidate knows what to expect. Autistic people (and the rest of us) perform best when they know what they will be asked about and can prepare professionally. The result is not polished, rehearsed answers — rather better and more considered ones.
- Providing practical details: where to meet, how to find the room, what happens when, and ideally sending photos of the venue.
- Keeping to time: if you say 30 minutes, it is 30 minutes (going over can create stress — not the impression of interest).
- Asking questions about the candidate’s actual experience and way of working.
- Allowing space for pauses and reflection. Some people need to think before they respond. You simply need to hold the silence.
- Explaining why you are asking the question.
- Being cautious with AI and personality tests, which are often trained on “the majority” and thus risk filtering out neurodivergent profiles on false grounds.
And most importantly: be curious — not normative. We are accustomed to a firm handshake, eye contact, and precise answers to what is asked — in other words, we are used to judging people based on familiar signals such as body language, pace, facial expression, and small talk. But if someone is neurodivergent, their non-verbal communication may be different.
The question is therefore not whether the candidate fits your idea of how an interview “should” look, but rather whether they can do the job. Because you can absolutely find your new data scientist who crunches the wildest data and finds new patterns and methods without making eye contact, right?
Competencies Over Behavior
Recruiting in a neuro-inclusive way is not about lowering the bar or making special accommodations. It is about getting better at seeing the competencies before we judge the behavior — and about removing the barriers and biases we have built into our own processes. It is about respecting the competencies instead of prioritizing the behavior.
When recruitment systems reward performance in interviews over the ability to do the work, we risk filtering out some of the most valuable competencies. Not because the candidates lack professional skill, but because they do not fit a narrow conception of what a “good candidate” looks and acts like.
The reality is that we are facing a shortage of labor, high costs from bad hires, and a need for more robust solutions in increasingly complex organizations. In that context, it is not courageous — but necessary — to rethink how we recruit.
Respecting the competencies over the behavior is not a social project. It is common sense. And for most companies, the gains will be clear: better matches, fewer bad hires, and access to a talent pool that is far too often overlooked.
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