The Interview Illusion: Why Autistic Adults Get Passed Over—and What Employers Still Don’t Get

Friday, April 25, 2025.

A handshake. A smile. A little banter about traffic or your favorite coffee shop. For many employers, this is the sacred opening rite of a job interview. But for autistic adults, it’s often the start of a silent dismissal.

First impressions, we’re told, are everything.

They determine who gets hired, who gets promoted, and—let’s be honest—who gets invited to lunch.

But research continues to show that the way we assess “people skills” in interviews isn’t just flawed. It’s discriminatory (Sasson & Morrison, 2019; DeBrabander et al., 2023).

A new study just published this month drills into this problem with refreshing clarity.

It suggests that people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are routinely passed over in hiring decisions not because they’re less qualified, but because they don’t meet the neurotypical criteria for charm, ease, or small talk fluidity (Grossman, 2025).

And unlike a bad résumé or thin experience, these judgments happen in seconds—before a single skill is discussed.

But even with training, even with disclosure, the fix isn’t automatic. And that’s where the critique begins.

The Interview Is a Social Performance

Let’s call a spade a spade. A job interview, especially in the U.S., is less about competence and more about bullshit likeability theater.

Who performs confidence the best? Who reads the room? Who modulates their smile like a seasoned TED speaker?

In the study, young adult participants with and without ASD were videotaped in mock job interviews.

When evaluators watched these videos blind, autistic candidates were consistently rated lower on likability, warmth, and social competence—despite being rated equally qualified on paper (Grossman, 2025).

But when the evaluators read transcripts of what the candidates said—without the facial expressions or body language—their evaluations were equal or even better for the autistic participants.

This suggests that what autistic people say is not the problem.

It’s how they are perceived saying it.

This is not new.

Previous work by Sasson and colleagues (2017) found that autistic adults are rated more negatively within seconds of interaction, even when their verbal content is indistinguishable from neurotypical peers. These judgments persist even after longer exposure. Like a permanent first impression tax.

Masking the Difference: At What Cost?

Some interventions try to train autistic adults to perform better in interviews—by practicing eye contact, modulating tone, or adjusting body posture (Strickland et al., 2013). In other words: masking.

Masking can sometimes work in the short term.

But the cost is high. Studies show that long-term masking in autistic adults leads to higher anxiety, depression, and burnout (Cage & Troxell-Whitman, 2019).

It’s the emotional equivalent of holding a fake smile for hours on end—and getting hired not for who you are, but for how well you imitated someone else. It’s oppressive neuronormative hegemony at it’s most unconscious.

Even if masking works in an interview, it often breaks down on the job.

This raises the stakes for burnout, job dissatisfaction, and turnover. It's not a pathway to meaningful inclusion. It’s camouflaged attrition.

The New Study’s Solution: Education + Disclosure

Grossman (2025) tested two ideas in tandem: 1) Give evaluators basic education about autism and 2) Let them know which candidates have an ASD diagnosis.

When evaluators only received one of these (education or disclosure), they continued to rate autistic candidates poorly.

But when they had both—the knowledge and the context—they rated autistic candidates as equally hireable.

This is big. It means it’s not enough to know that someone is autistic. And it’s not enough to vaguely “know about autism.” But together? The combo seems to create a deeper shift: a reframing of behaviors not as defects, but as differences.

This echoes previous work by Austin and Pisano (2017), who found that hiring managers with deeper autism understanding were more likely to appreciate the unique work styles and attention-to-detail often found in autistic candidates.

But Let’s Not Get Too Comfortable

This all sounds great. But here’s the critique: even this “solution” still puts the burden of explanation, vulnerability, and stigma on the autistic person.

Let’s be candid and cut the bullshit. Disclosure is not without risk.

Studies show that disclosing a disability—especially a misunderstood one like autism—can lead to subtle forms of bias, exclusion, or paternalism (Davidson & Henderson, 2010). The moment someone says “I’m autistic,” they risk being seen as less competent or less stable, especially if the employer’s idea of autism is outdated or narrow.

And while employer education helps, the question becomes: What kind of education? One training video won’t undo a lifetime of cultural programming about who is “professional,” “normal,” or “leadership material.”

If the education still treats neurotypical behavior as the gold standard, all we’ve done is add a PowerPoint to the prejudice.

Rethinking What Interviews Are For

This raises an even deeper question: why do we still worship at the altar of the traditional interview anyway?

My labor studies degree comes in handy sometimes. Here’s something that may surprise you.

Interviews are poor predictors of job performance across the board—not just for autistic candidates (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). They reward confidence over competence, charm over consistency.

And they systematically disadvantage people who communicate differently—whether because of neurodivergence, cultural background, anxiety, or trauma history.

For roles that don’t require high social interaction—software development, research, logistics, etc.—why do we use social grace as the gatekeeper? It makes absolutely no fu*king sense.

Instead, consider:

• Skills-Based Trials: Can the candidate do the thing in question?

• Asynchronous Interviews: Let people record answers in their own time.

• Panel Diversity: Include neurodivergent team members in the hiring loop.

• Universal Design in Hiring: Make the entire process accessible and bias-resistant from the start (Black et al., 2020).

From Awareness to Structural Spiritual Change

Awareness is a start. But the deeper shift is philosophical, perhaps even spiritual.

Hiring autistic adults is not just about being nice.

It’s about recognizing the failure of a narrow, aesthetic idea of competence—and expanding our definitions to include authenticity, hyperfocus, originality, and resilience.

Autism isn’t a communication deficit.

It’s a difference in communication style. And interviews—especially those conducted like beauty pageants for extroverts—are not neutral arenas.

They are very gauntlets of neuro-normative bias.

If employers truly want neurodiverse talent, they’ll have to redesign their gates.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

References

Austin, R. D., & Pisano, G. P. (2017). Neurodiversity as a competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review, 95(3), 96–103.

Black, R. S., Weinberg, L. A., & Brodwin, M. G. (2020). Universal design for employment: Research and recommendations. Work, 66(3), 497–505. https://doi.org/10.3233/WOR-203216

Cage, E., & Troxell-Whitman, Z. (2019). Understanding the reasons, contexts and costs of camouflaging for autistic adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(5), 1899–1911. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-03878-x

Davidson, J., & Henderson, V. L. (2010). 'Coming out' on the spectrum: Autism, identity and disclosure. Social & Cultural Geography, 11(2), 155–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360903525240

DeBrabander, K. M., Morrison, K. E., & Sasson, N. J. (2023). First impressions of autistic adults are consistently negative across multiple levels of exposure. Autism, 27(1), 120–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613221113888

Grossman, R. B. (2025). Why people with autism struggle to get hired − and how businesses can help by changing how they look at job interviews. The Conversation, April 17, 2025.

Sasson, N. J., Faso, D. J., Nugent, J., Lovell, S., Kennedy, D. P., & Grossman, R. B. (2017). Neurotypical peers are less willing to interact with those with autism based on thin slice judgments. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 40700. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40700

Sasson, N. J., & Morrison, K. E. (2019). First impressions of adults with autism improve with diagnostic disclosure and increased autism knowledge of peers. Autism, 23(1), 50–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361317729526

Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 262–274. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262