In the academic job market, campus visits are viewed as opportunities to showcase scholarship, teaching, and collegial relationships. In practice, however, they often function as multi-day social auditions, where candidates are expected to move seamlessly from formal presentations to dinner parties, hallway conversations and spontaneous small talk, while projecting confidence and intelligence. For most people, these rituals are exhausting but manageable. For autistic scholars, they can be insurmountable obstacles.
As an academic with autism, I know first-hand how hiring practices conflate intelligence with social performance. In these high-stakes encounters, what is measured is not just one’s ability to research, teach, or mentor, but also one’s ability to follow unspoken social rules and display normative likability. However, there are strategies and adjustments that colleges can make to ensure a fairer process for neurodivergent candidates.
Campus visit as social test
Generally speaking, autistic candidates are disadvantaged in standard interview formats, which, as Christopher E. Whelpley and Cynthia P. May write, tend to “focus on interviewing techniques, appearance, and social interactions rather than on the skills required for a specific position.” Because autistic people’s social skills and conversational patterns do not match neurotypical standards, they can appear rude or disinterested in conversations, even when they are attentive and engaged. For people with autism, social interaction can be extremely difficult, from finding the right way to express their thoughts to understanding when it’s their turn to speak.
A campus visit is often similar to a long job interview where everything needs to be evaluated. From formal work conversations to casual coffee chats, candidates should embody polished, spontaneous professionalism. However, these conditions privilege those who excel at social performance and disadvantage those for whom constant interactions are arduous and exhausting.
Research confirms this. Sandra C. Jones notes that autistic academics often struggle with the hidden social demands of professional life: “For many autistic people, understanding and following social rules, interpreting the actions and reactions of others, masking autistic behaviors, and combining ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ interactions are all laborious activities.” In a competitive recruiting environment, these challenges become even greater.
Should I stop talking or keep talking? Did I really answer this committee member’s question? Am I making too much eye contact, which might be viewed as intimidating, or too little, which might be viewed as rude? These were the questions I struggled with on my first campus visit because the “natural” flow of neurotypical conversations was a mystery to me (and still is to this day).
“Adapting” to someone whose natural tendencies differ from social norms requires strong impression management skills, which most people with autism lack. Therefore, we often tend to cover up. We try to imitate the behaviors and speech patterns of non-autistic people, but this is not only exhausting but often unconvincing. In this case, what is assessed is not the quality of the candidates’ research or teaching, but their ability to interpret invisible rules and follow them under pressure.
The importance of self-narration
Academic interviews almost always include open-ended questions with little structure, such as “Tell us about yourself,” “What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?” or “What can you bring to our department?” Neurotypical candidates often know how to use these questions as an opportunity to sell themselves; Katie Malas et al. wrote, “However, candidates with autism find it difficult to interpret such questions, which hinders their ability to formulate and recall relevant and appropriately detailed responses that convey their best qualities and most relevant experiences.”
The difficulties people with autism face when trying to tell their lived experiences are well-documented. As Tilait Tanweer et al. “Children and adults with autism have difficulty recalling events and facts from their personal lives,” the book states, and when they do, their storytelling is perceived as lacking coherence and appeal. The requirement to be able to organize information that is already in a candidate’s application materials on the spot seems redundant and serves no purpose other than to once again force candidates to adhere to neurotypical conversational standards.
For omnidirectional candidates, vague and open-ended prompts are opportunities to perform. They instinctively know that they are inviting them to engage in impression management tactics to put their best foot forward possible. When asked to talk about themselves, they strive to balance objective facts with a strategic framework of their professional experience. They will naturally know which information is relevant and which details might bore their audience. Conversely, autistic candidates may find these questions intimidating because too brevity can appear bland, while too much detail can make a person appear boring or arrogant.
The candidate’s experience and achievements are already on their resume and profile, so there’s technically no reason to ask them to repeat that information. Avoiding questions that simply require candidates to restate facts from the dossier, or ensuring that such questions are phrased in a way that indicates the specific nature of the information sought, will enable autistic scholars to develop their thinking in an appropriate and satisfying way, thereby closing the qualitative and quantitative gaps between neurotypical candidates’ answers and their answers.
Defend the Written Format
From articles to book proposals and grant applications, scholars are constantly asked to express their thoughts, ideas, and results in writing. Yet despite the centrality of writing in academic life, campus visits are almost entirely oral and conversational.
Work talks or presentations must be held simultaneously and in person. The interview portion is conducted verbally, requiring candidates to talk about themselves and their research in a natural and relatively informal way. Various lunches, dinners, and spontaneous exchanges with potential colleagues and students are all designed to test candidates’ cooperative and social skills in settings ranging from very formal to casual. However, instructional demonstrations may be the only portion of a campus visit that requires oral presentation.
In a study conducted by Philippa L. Howard and Felicity Sedgwick on the preferred communication methods of people with autism, they found that “many participants stated that they had difficulty with the speed of verbal communication, so using written forms allowed them ‘time to process’ what was said to them, their reactions, and responses.” This is consistent with previous research, which has consistently shown that people with autism tend to prefer written communication over oral forms of interaction. Personally, I know I can write a compelling grant proposal, but during a 20-minute Q&A, my answers may come across as bland or complicated.
Not only does a written format give people with autism time to think about their answers and the tone they want to adopt, but it also reduces “the difficulties people with autism may face interpreting verbal and non-verbal cues during interactions,” as Órla Walsh et al. Put it. The asynchronous and mediated nature of written communication makes it less likely that autistic candidates will be viewed as unlikable, rude, or embarrassing by hiring committees. Candidates can focus on clarity, accuracy and substance, qualities that are most important in academic assessments.
Given that application materials already provide the hiring committee with a detailed understanding of a candidate’s skills, the additional requirement of a marathon interview may seem less like a fair assessment and more like an unnecessary social filter. In a study conducted by Mikaela Finn et al. on the job interview experiences of autistic candidates, “participants recommended changes to the interview structure to include providing questions in advance…or information about the structure…and being able to ‘write down answers’ to questions rather than ‘verbally express’ information.” This type of accommodation could make hiring practices in academia more equitable without compromising its integrity.
What inclusivity would look like
Hiring committees often use the social intensity of campus visits as a way to assess suitability. But fit can often serve as a proxy for personality, likeability, or sociability, which are qualities defined according to neurotypical norms. If colleges are serious about equity, they need to rethink what they measure. Specific steps may include providing interview questions in advance, allowing written or asynchronous responses, and placing less emphasis on social activities during campus visits.
As it stands, academic recruitment is not a neutral process. This is a social test designed by and for neurotypical people that systematically disadvantages autistic candidates. By conflating sociability with hireability, committees risk excluding outstanding scholars whose only failure is not knowing how to follow the unwritten rules. In my opinion, the academy should aim to hire people who can research, teach, and think in transformative ways, whether or not they have mastered small talk and eye contact.
