Microsoft’s unique hiring program gives disabled applicants a helping hand

The key to unlocking the perfect resume isn’t easy and you’d never think that listing “traumatic brain injury” or “Parkinson’s” or “deafness” would give you a leg up. But Microsoft sees it differently. It actually makes people uniquely qualified to work among the tech elite.

“I come from a small little village outside of Birmingham in the [United Kingdom], never in a million years would I imagine coming to Microsoft,” Jenny Lay-Flurrie said. “I was more nervous about the fact that I was wearing a suit and everyone else was wearing jeans.”

That nerve-wracking interview was 11 years ago. But, as it turned out, her attire didn’t matter. Lay-Flurrie got the job at Microsoft as a European Support Manger. Then, in January 2016, she took over the job as Microsoft’s chief accessibility officer. She’s someone who figures out how to move invisible groups into positions at Microsoft.

“When I first got involved I think there were five or six communities at Microsoft – there are now 14. The latest ones to launch were Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injury, bipolar – really, I love that we’re expanding into groups that are invisible. That have some toughness to them,” Lay-Flurrie said.

She says an inclusive hiring program has been a windfall for Microsoft because they’re hiring from largely untapped talent pools. The Autism community, for example, has an 80-percent unemployment rate.

“When you hire great talent then it starts to filter and spread and they bring that empathy and understanding into their day jobs, think of innovations and think of things we can do to improve,” Lay-Flurrie said.

She is the perfect example of the rewards of hiring inclusively because Lay-Flurrie is deaf. Incredibly, she pulled off her interview 11 years ago by lip reading.

“I wasn’t honest about my deafness and my deafness is pretty bad. It’s deceptive because my speech is pretty good and I’ve retained my British accent. But, my deafness is pretty horrible. I wasn’t open about it, I never told anyone that I couldn’t really hear speech I said I had deafness but nowhere did I ever identify to the level that I have because I thought that it would be held against me,” Lay-Flurrie said.

The opposite happened when, a few months into her new job, she had to come clean that her deafness was causing her to struggle at work.

“You know, you’ve got a lot of people talking, a lot of accents, lot of phone calls and so I did reach a couple of walls where it was kind of ‘am I going to stay here or not?’ And there were some great people in [human resources] that said ‘Jenny, you’re missing a trick’ try this captioning thing, try this interpreting thing,” Lay-Flurrie said.

Today, Lay-Flurrie uses an interpreter, who sat to my right as I interviewed her. But, we never broke eye contact with each other. She continues to help others with disabilities thrive at Microsoft. People like Joey Chemis, who has Autism, and is somewhat of a math genius.

“I can do a lot of this mathematical stuff in my head. Some of it I have to write down, but a lot of it, like, for example, I took a philosophy class that was on logic and there was this one logic question … I rose my hand, because I had solved it my head in about five seconds, and so I rose my hand and just rattled off the answer – they were shocked,” Chemis said.

He has the skills, he has the degree, but Autism kept him from taking the next step into professional employment. He was working part-time in fast food instead.

People with Autism can struggle with social interactions. The usual intimate interview process is unthinkable for someone like Chemis, who also struggles with making eye contact.

“I can get sensory overload. It makes me want to shut down and not look you in the eyes and just kind of retreat for five minutes,” Chemis said.

So, Microsoft developed a new job interview process for people with Autism. A two-to-four week process that starts with an informal group meeting off of Microsoft’s campus. You make that cut and you make it to interviews on campus.

“It was really cool. It was scary but it was also really cool. We get to meet a lot of the hiring managers at Microsoft and then we also got to do some informal chats and demo a presentation that we put together as a project they gave us as kind of take-home homework. So, rather than being in an interview setting where they’re grilling you with questions and making you whiteboard and stuff they gave us more of a take-home homework assignment that we could perfect and do our thing with,” Chemis said.

Today, he’s working his dream job at Microsoft as a data scientist.

“They’ve made me feel really warm and welcomed here and I even had a coworker, who kind of talked to me on the side, and he was like ‘Joey, they kind of made us do all this stuff related to Autism and they made it this big blown out ordeal and then you get here and I find out you’re just another one of the guys.’ I’d like people to understand that I’m basically just no different than any of the other people at Microsoft,” Chemis said.

Lay-Flurrie felt that same way 11 years ago when she thought being deaf was something she had to hide.

“I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m now doing a job that uses all of my skills, every single day to help make things better for people and customers … organizations and more. I love my job,” Lay-Flurrie said.

And, there’s room for more.

“I would say ‘come as you are, whatever you are’ including your disability. Self-identify, tell us what you need to be successful, let us help you – whether that’s interpreters, captioning, you need screen reading equipment. Whatever it may be, bring that up when you apply for your job because we see it as a strength,” Lay-Flurrie said.

You can send your resume to MSAutism@microsoft.com or BING search Microsoft Inclusive Hiring to find out more about the program.

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