How Career Services Can Support Neurodivergent Students (feat. Jackie Warner)

Career Everywhere

Jackie Warner, the Assistant Director of the Center for Career Success at Thomas Jefferson University, shares how career services professionals can support neurodivergent students.

In this episode, Jackie talks about:

• What neurodiversity is
• What unique challenges neurodivergent students face when it comes to career development
• What accommodations career services teams can make for neurodivergent students
• How to advise students on whether or not they should disclose to an employer that they’re neurodivergent
• How to make programming more inclusive for neurodivergent students
• And more

Jackie said the biggest thing career services professionals can do to better support neurodivergent students is to be an ally for all disabled students and to just be there for them.

“If a student tells you, ‘Hey, I really need to take notes, can you please take a break in between talking or talk slowly or just let me write that down,’ or ‘I really need to edit this while you're talking. So can you give me a moment to fix that?’ Or even, ‘Hey, I see you made notes on my resume. Could you email that to me?’ Those are really easy things that students might ask for,” Jackie said.

“And we might say, ‘Well, no, you're an adult and that's extra work for me.’ But we don't know why they're asking that. They could be asking that because they're neurodiverse. They could be asking because they have anxiety. Maybe English is not their first language.

That's an easy accommodation we can make for all of our students, is just listening to what they need and believing them.”

Resources from the episode:

• Jackie’s LinkedIn profile
• Jackie’s “support toolkit” PDF: Tips for Working with Students Who Are Neurodivergent
• Job Accommodation Network
• Queens College/CUNY Neurodiversity Hub
• Neurodiversity Hub
• Neurodiversity in Business
• Autism at Work
• UConn Center for Neurodiversity and Employment Innovation

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