This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Keren Coney, Research and Knowledge Director at AGCAS and a Careers and Employability Consultant at Liverpool John Moores University, and Mark Allen, Careers Consultant at Imperial College London. Keren and Mark are trainers for AGCAS and Ambitious About Autism and are previous authors of What Happens Next?, which explores the destinations disabled graduates in the UK.
Autistic graduates experience higher unemployment levels than all other disabled graduate groups. Those who are in work are less likely to be employed full-time, to be in secure employment, or to hold a role requiring a degree. These discrepancies were highlighted in AGCAS’s recent What Happens Next in Challenging Times report and emphasised in the Buckland Review of Autism Employment, also published in February.
As careers professionals who support autistic students to navigate the transition to employment, we know this gap is due to a myriad of reasons. From the ambiguous language of some job adverts to recruitment practices that assess a skillset that differs from that which is required in the job, autistic students face many potential obstacles on the journey to obtaining graduate employment. Fearing judgement, many autistic candidates are understandably disinclined to share their condition with recruiters, a process which usually forms the starting point to request adjustments. Regularly, neither the applicant nor the recruiter is aware of the adjustments that could help level this playing field.
To aid students with sharing information about their disability with prospective employers, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) launched the Student Adjustments Planner last November and plans to roll this out in universities in time for the next academic year. While trials have shown that using the planner leads students to feel more confident in sharing information, it is still in an early form and we don’t yet know how this planner will be implemented in universities. It is important that employers take responsibility for ensuring the accessibility of their recruitment processes and workplaces. The Buckland Review rightly centres on how employers should change their behaviour and practices in the direction of an inclusion by design approach and outlines various methods to enable this underused and unrecognised pool of talent to access the labour market.
