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Neurodiversity is far better understood than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean people with conditions like autism, ADHD, and dyslexia can’t have a tough time getting and keeping a suitable job.

Today’s startup wants to help with its specialist talent-acquisition offering. Read on to discover Neurovirse.

But first:

• I was recently interviewed for the Scaling Green Tech podcast and we had a really good conversation about insights from my experiences of working in the early-stage startup world. Watch here

ALSO:

• Liverpool-based accelerator Baltic Ventures has named its co-founder Carl Wong as its new CEO.

• Wong previously co-founded startup LivingLens with David Woods, who is also joining Baltic Ventures as chief commercial & operating officer.

• Congratulations to both - I worked with them a lot back in my Tech North days.

– Martin

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Neurovirse wants to make it simple to hire neurodiverse talent

It’s not that long ago that ‘neurodiversity’ wasn’t part of most people’s vocabularies. But now it’s increasingly common to think of conditions like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and dyspraxia as part of life’s rich tapestry, rather than as problems that need fixing.

But while these conditions might now be better understood, that doesn’t erase the challenges neurodivergent people have. One particularly difficult problem is around getting and keeping a job. Research shows far higher levels of unemployment and underemployment among neurodivergent people than the general population.

Employers have good reasons to hire more neurodivergent people, says Mike Hulse, CEO and co-founder of Neurovirse, a startup that aims to connect employers with neurodiverse candidates.

Aside from it just being a good thing to do, Hulse says employers are missing out on strong candidates if they don’t specifically target the neurodiverse population.

“Many people with neurodivergent conditions and diagnoses have particularly strong skills that don't exist in the general population.

“Every person is different, and I never want to generalise or hire by condition, that's not okay. But it is true that some people with specific neurodivergences are particularly good at some tasks, and in some cases, employers might want to leverage those, what we call, ‘superpowers’. Our tagline is that we're changing neurodivergence from stigma to superpower.”

What’s more, the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires reporting on how companies operating in the EU foster a more inclusive workforce and workplace. This adds a sense of legal urgency to what Neurovirse offers.

Neurovirse allows neurodivergent people to register with its platform. They answer 90 questions in an assessment Hulse says takes around 10 minutes to complete. They don’t need a formal diagnosis to take part, just a personal suspicion is enough, and there’s no charge to be on the platform. Neurovirse’s tech then matches them with job vacancies that fit their particular circumstances.

“The AI matching is based on clinically valid scientific tests. We've got 5 million data points for assessments… We don't do the hiring or the offers, the employer does that as they would normally do, but we provide a source of great candidates that are really keen to work. We know that they will be suited to not just that company, not just that team, not just that type of role, but that specific job,” Hulse says.

Rather than rely on CVs, Neurovirse creates a ‘success profile’ for each candidate, showing the employer why they’re a good fit for their specific vacancy.

“The best way to be successful in this space is for us to do the hard work up front, match the right candidate to the right job, and then the hiring manager just receives that person's success profile. They don’t need to interact with the Neurovirse platform if they don't want to. All they need to know is ‘here's a great candidate that can do this job, that's interested in your company… here's why they're good for this job’,” Hulse says.

“We're selling to large companies globally, who hire large numbers of people around the world every day. Those companies want to hire more neurodivergent people,” Hulse says.

The startup has developed a working MVP that it has tested with employers and candidates. The next stage will be to turn it into an enterprise-grade platform for deployment at scale.

The story so far

Hulse has co-founded Neurovirse with Kevin Blair and Ben Usher. All three come from a corporate talent acquisition background, which certainly helps when it comes to providing a stream of vacancies for the platform’s tech to draw on.

“We've seen how hard it is for companies to hire great talent over a long period of time in different countries around the world. And so we're able to design the platform with that knowledge in mind,” Hulse says.

“We're using our industry knowledge with our recruiter hat on. If we design something in a way that we know will be used and we know will be valuable, then we're hoping that it takes off with our customers.”

The Liverpool-based team plans a soft launch in the coming weeks to refine the product ahead of a big marketing push in the UK, EU, and Australia later in the year.

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