What do employers miss when a candidate stumbles through an interview? According to Justin Nelson, sometimes they miss one of the sharpest minds in the applicant pool.
Nelson is a Managing Director at JP Morgan Private Bank in Connecticut, where he heads the Asset Management and Financial Principals Coverage Team. The group oversees more than $15 billion in assets. He has spoken about the hidden abilities of neurodiverse workers, particularly people on the autism spectrum, and why financial firms should pay closer attention.
Strengths Behind the Struggle
Nelson acknowledges the obvious hurdle first. He identifies communication, and specifically the ability to interact with people, as the biggest difficulty for these candidates. Ordinary conversation, something most people never think twice about, can be very hard for them.
Then he turns to the other side of the picture. “Usually what that means is that while they may have a harder time connecting and communicating, they’re exceptional in other areas. They can be extremely creative and have amazing computational skills which far exceed the norm,” Justin Nelson JP Morgan notes.
Those abilities matter in finance. Portfolio analysis, modeling, and reporting reward people who think carefully and catch small errors. Conventional hiring, however, often filters out neurodiverse applicants before anyone measures what they can do.
Turning Talent Into Results
Once hired, these employees do their best work inside clear structures. Nelson advises managers to define tasks precisely and explain how each one connects to a larger plan or set of rules. When that happens, he says, these workers tend to be extremely exact within a given framework and can become some of a team’s best performers.
The JP Morgan managing director pairs this view with volunteer work. Justin Nelson supports Adelphi University’s Bridges Program, which helps high-functioning students on the spectrum, and Broad Futures, which matches neurodiverse candidates with employers.
His framework comes down to three moves: change the interview process, structure the work, and partner with specialist groups. The cost is modest. The potential payoff, for an industry short on skilled people, is a deeper bench of analytical talent. See related link for more information.
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