MacMusic  |  PcMusic  |  440 Software  |  440 Forums  |  440TV  |  Zicos
spectrum
Search

Successful IT Startup Actively Hires People On the Autism Spectrum

Wednesday May 8, 2019. 03:50 AM , from Slashdot
Suren Enfiajyan shares a report from Fast Company: Ultra Testing, a New York-based software testing and quality assurance startup, employs over 60 workers remotely across 20 states, 75% of whom are on the autism spectrum. Not only was the company open to hiring neurodiverse employees, but it actively sought them out. Though small, the company punches well above its weight class, growing an average of 50% year-over-year since its founding in 2013, with 60% of revenues coming from Fortune 500 clients and the remainder from hypergrowth startups. Its innovative employment and talent management strategies have also received accolades and praise, including an honorable mention in Fast Company's World Changing Ideas awards.

CEO Rajesh Anandan founded Ultra Testing alongside his former M.I.T. roommate Art Shectman after discovering research on the overlooked strengths common among autistic individuals. Anandan's wife, who worked with autistic children at a community mental health clinic in Oakland, had also pointed out how much energy is spent trying to improve the skills that are lacking rather than nurturing the children's often remarkable natural talents. 'Individuals on the autism spectrum are more likely to have strengths around pattern recognition, logical reasoning ability, enhanced focus, and so on,' says Anandan. 'That's not to say that everyone on the spectrum has those abilities, but based on peer-reviewed studies published in scientific journals, there is evidence that there is an over indexing of those abilities -- and those very abilities are exactly what you would look for in quite a few roles, especially around quality engineering or quality assurance.' The report goes on to say that the company utilizes Slack for all of its communications, which makes it much easier for their staff to communicate because many people on the autism spectrum struggle with their communication skills. 'Furthermore, after one teammate quipped how great it would be if humans came with a user manual, Anandan developed the 'BioDex' and attached it to each employee's Slack profile,' reports Fast Company. 'The 28-point BioDex includes instructions on how each team member prefers to receive critical feedback, their preferred communication medium, their typical response time, and more. The company also polls every team member daily at 5 p.m. with a single question related to inclusion and well-being via Slack and shares responses anonymously with the rest of the team.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/X3RUP_xFndo/successful-it-startup-actively-hires-people-on-...
News copyright owned by their original publishers | Copyright © 2004 - 2024 Zicos / 440Network
Current Date
Mar, Fri 29 - 01:46 CET