Neurodivergence in Recruitment Survey

Recent advances in organisational psychology and human resource management have foregrounded the importance of signalling during recruitment as a critical mechanism through which applicants infer an employer’s diversity climate. The progressive work of Dr. Holly Miller and Dr. Nancy Doyle (2025) demonstrates that neurodivergent candidates actively interpret recruitment processes, assessment formats, and organisational communications as signals of inclusion or exclusion, often prior to any direct interpersonal interaction. Their findings show that ambiguity, procedural rigidity, and opaque assessment criteria disproportionately disadvantage neurodivergent applicants by amplifying uncertainty and cognitive load during selection. Importantly, the study reframes inclusion not as a post-hire accommodation problem, but as an upstream signalling challenge embedded within recruitment architecture itself. This reconceptualisation establishes recruitment as a psychologically consequential stage in which perceived organisational intent, legitimacy, and fairness are continuously inferred by neurodivergent candidates.

Building directly on this framework, the present research situates neurodivergent applicant experiences within a strategic human resource management and signalling theory perspective, with particular emphasis on resource-based views of the firm. Whereas prior work has largely examined inclusion through descriptive climate perceptions, this study advances the literature by interrogating how firm-level investment, capability deployment, and recruitment design choices function as costly and credible signals to neurodivergent applicants. By focusing on applicant attraction rather than post-entry outcomes, the research addresses a persistent empirical gap concerning how neurodivergent individuals evaluate organisations before disclosure, onboarding, or accommodation occurs. The survey instrument therefore captures how candidates interpret recruitment signals such as transparency, flexibility, adjustment practices, and communication tone as indicators of organisational competence, trustworthiness, and neuroinclusion.

The significance of this neurodivergence in recruitment survey lies in its capacity to empirically connect individual applicant perceptions with broader theories of signalling, attribution, and competitive advantage. By eliciting first-hand accounts of recruitment experiences, disclosure decisions, and adjustment practices, the study enables a nuanced assessment of how inclusive intent is inferred under conditions of information asymmetry. In doing so, it extends Miller and Doyle’s (2025) contribution by incorporating strategic HRM expenditure and signalling intensity as explanatory variables in applicant sensemaking. The findings are expected to inform both academic debates on neuroinclusive labour markets and practical policy discussions on how organisations can design recruitment systems that enable, rather than deter, neurodivergent talent—without requiring premature self-identification or reliance on symbolic diversity statements alone.