The Power of Skills-Based Hiring for ADHD & Invisible Disabilities

Good morning, everyone. I hope you're having an amazing day today. It's Tim and Danielle with ND OutLoud, and we are here talking about skill-based hiring and why it's so important for those with indivisible— invisible— indivisible— invisible disabilities and ADHD, a neurodivergent Specifically, obviously, because that's our main topic around here. But it's invisible disabilities as a whole. It's a really important thing that we need to, and corporate world needs to switch to, and they have been slowly getting there.

Yeah, they have been. You know, there's a lot of statistics that I could bring to this discussion. And, you know, it's funny because we've talked about this in other capacities and other discussions, but I don't think it's something that could be talked about enough. So we have been seeing really since— now that I'm thinking about that, we need to go way back in time to our childhoods. So there's a certain country that plays a big culprit in our political landscape here in the United States that enacted a policy that was quite short-sighted. China. So China, in, I believe it was 1981 or '82, enacted a policy that required that every family in China can only have one child. So now fast forward to 2024, almost 2025, China's workforce is shrinking big time. So we know that back in 2019, there's some other statistics, but the one in 2019 is the one that I know the best. 45 million people left the Chinese workforce in 2019, and then that was further exacerbated by the pandemic. You know, COVID played a big role in even shrinking it even further. So when I entered the workforce space in my first workforce development job in 2014, I started noticing trends when we started looking at the actual numbers that a lot of manufacturing coming from China were But a lot of manufacturing that originated in the United States and then migrated to China is now coming back to the United States. So that concept is called reshoring. And I know— I knew of companies that I worked with directly that were right in the process of purchasing the machinery and the tooling that was necessary in the manufacturing facility to start hiring people and start really kind of enacting some very unique hiring practices because they realized that we need to hire people, we to hire them now, and we can't go about the conventional way of doing that. And so that's the trend that had been going on for quite some time. You have both political parties that have played— that had tried to take credit for it, but it's really just economic stuff that's been happening worldwide that had played into that. American manufacturing at the corporate level down to the blue-collar is growing. big time, and you really need to be going about unique hiring practices that hopefully eventually won't be unique anymore, but they're unique now.

So I just saw, and I haven't read the whole article yet because I've been at a conference for over a week, but there is an article that just came out that because of— regardless of what you think of the political landscape in the US, that's not what this conversation is, I'm putting that out there now— that because of the tariffs that are going to be coming, that even more manufacturing is going to be coming back into the US very quickly Because they're not going to have a choice. So we're looking at all of those numbers that we've seen consistently growing about to shoot up, and Canada is also experiencing that right now. So, and and I talked to somebody from Canada this last week at the conference, and they're they're seeing a huge need for more employees and hiring practices and all of that in in Canada right now. So we're looking. looking at North America as a whole needing to have very different hiring practices than they have in the past. So I, I went looking just because I've been, I've been in conference mode and I've had these conversations so much lately that 67% of the adults with ADHD are employed compared to 87% of people who are non-ADHD. And less than 47% of ADHD adults have full-time employment.

Yeah, no, I believe Bob. I believe Bob.

And you want to know who's going to be great on an assembly line? ADHDers. Some, not all ADHDers. I'm going to put that out there because there are some ADHDers that that would drive insane. But ADHDers love, for the most part, in general, love repetitive work because they don't have to think.

Yeah. So, you know, the, the, that, um, um, neurodivergent individuals, Individuals with disabilities where, you know, perhaps you have someone that may not necessarily be able to work full-time, but if you could find 2 individuals with disabilities that want to find that part-time work, then you just put a position and you hire both of them, and you're saving the company money in the long run when you're doing that. So, you know, that's among many things that we, we as NDI Loud can work with, you know, really can sit down with your talent acquisition, HR, And helping them understand all the different little, little things you could do that you probably never thought of. Because the numbers show us that you are going to have to do it whether you like it or not. So like—

Yeah, you're not— I mean, you're not going to have a choice. Again, how many millions of people are leaving the workforce in the next 5 years in the US? I don't even remember what that number is because every time I see the number, it's growing. Like, I can't believe how much it jumped in the last couple of months when I looked at Whatever that number is.

Yeah, we know the 1.4 to 1.7 million people that are in the baby boomer generation is going to be leaving the workforce over, over from now until 2030. So we have basically about 6 years of a mass, mass migration, I guess, of people leaving.

And that's just baby boomers. There are part of my generation, Gen X, the Gen X generation that is starting to leave the workforce and not necessarily because they're retiring, but because they have to take care of those baby boomers. who need at-home care, parents, all of that, that need that at-home care. A lot of Gen Xers, especially Gen X females, are having to leave the workforce because it is not being accommodating to somebody my age who needs to take care of their aging parent.

Yeah, that, you know, we call that the sandwich generation where you have basically the millennials and my generation, Generation X, that taking care of children and their parents at the same time while also working full-time. And it's an inevitable thing that's going to happen when you have a very large sector of the workforce that are older baby boomers. 72 million people are in that cohort. And so, yeah, they're going to have to be cared for. And then you have children as well. And that's a very hard place for so many adults to be in. And there's a lot of employers that don't really understand that, or they're like, well, who cares? You signed up for the job and you need to do it. without them understanding that, you know, the quality of work is probably not there. And then, you know, you have a lot of people just quitting because they can't do it.

Yeah, because employers are not even willing to have conversations. And unfortunately, it's gotten better. It's gotten way better over the last 5, 10 years. But there's still a lot of employers who are trying to operate on very old baby boomer World War II thinking. Or World War I thinking, which I couldn't believe I've come up against that myself a couple times. And I was like, whoa, that's over 90 years ago, people. That's not how the world works anymore, like at all. So this is where skill-based hiring comes in. And we really, really need to talk about what that actually means. So what is skill-based hiring, Tim?

Yeah, so really, employers, no matter if you're a large corporate employer that has 90,000 people in the workforce down to, you know, just a small mom-and-pop small business on Main Street America, you really need to assess your roles and figure what skills are necessary in those roles and then make that really the basis for hiring individuals. And then when it comes to the, you know, let's talk like, you know, in a vacuum sort of space where you have an individual that comes off the street that applies for that role that does not have those skills at all. Employers really need to have a mindset of, okay, well, this employer has— this employee, potential employee, sorry, has some of the necessary skills in terms of soft skills. The fact that they showed up to apply for the role, through the interview process, you were kind of like understanding who they are as individuals. You probably should go ahead and take a chance and have a training program in place to be able to train those people up individuals up on the skills that are necessary. So that, that's a vacuum situation. And then on the other side of it, if you're taking high school and college-age individuals, so anywhere from 18 to 28 age range, you really should be looking at a parallel pathway of education and on-the-job training happening at the same time. So tapping into your local community colleges and, you know, short-term training programs. 6-month certification-based training programs that are credentialed while they're also learning on the job in a parallel pathway where maybe eventually they do eventually get their bachelor's degree or master's degree, but they're doing it in a parallel pathway rather than the linear pathway of you graduate high school, you go to school for 4 or 6 years, and then you enter the workforce. That model doesn't work necessarily anymore for most roles. Now, if you're talking like doctor, lawyer, That's not the role, that's not the pathway that you need to take for the most part. But like, you really need to look at the parallel pathway of education and work happening at the same time. And that pathway is something that has been popular in countries like Germany, Italy, the UK, really all over Europe, Australia as well. The registered apprenticeship pathway is basically what it is. It doesn't have to be called apprenticeship. Some In some countries, it's not called that, but the whole idea of really training people up and having a methodical process involved, basically a form that you fill out of the deliverables, X number of hours on this skill, checked off. Okay, now they're good at that skill and they work, they methodically build those skills to basically build the model employee one by one. And that's what it means.

And you're building a better employee for most base, especially manufacturing jobs, office jobs, um, all of those types of jobs. Even if bookkeeping— there are so many ways to teach somebody to be a bookkeeper through apprenticeship and through basic certification trainings where they're guided by somebody who already works for you. So you already probably have a built-in system for this, you're just not looking at it that way. And I think a lot of companies don't necessarily look at their current employees as a training system, and they really can be. I remember, like, our dad— so those that forget, Tim and I are brother and sister— our dad went to work for GM right out of high school, and it was AC Delphi or Delco. I don't remember what it was called when he went to work there, but he learned on the job through apprenticeship. and was— worked for that company until he retired. And a lot of companies I saw, I saw— and again, I have a million articles to read that I missed out on over the last week, but I saw an article of employees complaining about there's no loyalty to companies. Well, you aren't giving employees a reason to have loyalty. And apprenticeship and growth, giving people the ability to grow and learn more within certifications and apprenticeship is a huge way to develop that loyalty. And that's what most people coming from out of World War II— they came from the battlefield and had to go into the workforce. They left high school. Most of them didn't even graduate from high school, went to war, came home with no skills other than what they learned on the battlefield and learned through apprenticeship. And again, that's our strongest generation for manufacturing, office jobs, and all kinds of things right now. So let's go back to that thinking, because that thinking is a proven thinking.

Yeah, you know, like, we are America, and it's mostly America, but we've seen that generally worldwide really got into the mindset of you must have a bachelor's degree in something before you are even qualified to enter the workforce. And it created basically that industrial complex almost of, you know, billions and billions of dollars that went into creating an education system that you were putting what's required to enter once you graduated from college, graduated from high school. But the problem is that generation now is really tired of being in $90,000, $100,000, $130,000, $140,000, $200,000, $250,000 debt when they're done with a bachelor's, master's, or doctorate degree. And so there's a lot of dissension that's happening that's kind of like played into— that's another layer that's added in terms of, you know, you don't need to go to college anymore. Nobody really wants to go to college anymore and put themselves in debt unless it's a career pathway that requires college degrees. There's some that do, but we know that the American economy as it stands now, 75% of jobs in the— in new jobs in this economy do not require a bachelor's degree. 85% of those jobs don't even require an associate's degree. So like, it's all about skills. If you have the skills, you're in a place in which you can find that sustainable employment. And then on the employer side, you need to understand as well And I, you know, I've talked to some employers about this. Well, there's— I just can't seem to get through them. Like, for example, there's an IT company here in Boise, Idaho, that I saw on the website that every one of those jobs required 3 different IT certifications and a bachelor's degree for an entry-level position. And I was telling them, like, you don't necessarily need to do that. Like, you can probably remove the bachelor's degree requirement. Probably maybe have 1 or 2 certifications that are required and then have a training program that's built in in which you can get the additional certifications as you learn on the job. Oh, no, no, sorry, we can't do that. That's, that's the way we do things. And those roles are still on the website. So that, that's the mindset of what they have. They can't find people. But then—

And I will tell you, as someone who worked in IT for years, our best employees were the ones that we took out of high school and homeschool kids. Like, we had a— well, my son being one of them, at 14, he was a VoIP engineer because he was working with other VoIP engineers and learning everything. And he eventually got certifications through being taught through apprenticeship and journeyman style, and it was fantastic for him.

Yep. Yep.

So by the time he was 18, he was an IT engineer. Because of that.

Yeah, I believe that. And, you know, like, you know, like we said, you know, it's not all bad out there because we're seeing a lot of employers that are being— that are kind of understanding this. Like larger companies like Microsoft have, you know, alleviated some of those requirements in terms of bachelor's degrees and all that. So it's good that we're seeing those large, large employers that are basically the leaders in the field that are starting to realize that. But there's still some very slow-turning, slow-moving companies that are doing that, which is why you can reach out to Danielle and myself. We can really sit down with you and have the— we're going to come into the situation from a professional standpoint, from a statistical standpoint. So we're not going to be just talking about what we feel. We're going to actually bring numbers to this conversation. But You know, we'll come in with some bias and some bluntness as well. You know, you need to change this and that. We're going to be honest with you, but it's going to be done in a way of really kind of helping you understand the whole layout of what it is that you need to do. And we can actually walk you through that process as well.

Absolutely. And so again, we come at this from data, and we also have skill-based learning that we can Test employees. We can show you how to see who would be a good employee or a potential employee to come in and see if they're great for an apprenticeship path, those kind of things. There are lots of things that we can do from provable data standpoint for all of these things. And a lot of these things are, are really— they're fairly simple. You just have to have the skill to know what to look for in your employees. And also you're having Companies are having a terrible time hiring right now, even out of the college pool, because unfortunately, somebody with a college degree— and we can't blame them, we've forced all this whole entire generation, multiple generations, to go to college before they can do anything— they can't come in earning $20 an hour because they can't. They have to start paying back those college loans, and $20 an hour isn't going to cut it. And if you are restrictive in your hiring practice, that means that they can't work. I know millennials that have 2 or 3 full-time jobs, and no, I'm not kidding. They're doing them all simultaneously because they have to. They don't have a choice. And if your hiring practices are restrictive, you can't— we— you can't pull from even the college pool. So that is decreasing your hiring pool.

Yeah, it absolutely is. And then going beyond that, in terms of individuals with ADHD, individuals that are neurodivergent, individuals with some type of documented disability, visible or non-visible, like we know that the unemployment rate for individuals with disabilities is about double the national average, and that's a fairly stagnant rate. So no matter what the non-disabled individual unemployment rate is, the disabled unemployment rate is usually about double, and we're working very hard to lessen that. But that's probably an underreported number. And then you have a lot of individuals that are not really participating in the workforce because they don't really have the hope that they're going to be actually considered for a viable role. So that's another thing where, you know, we've talked about this in previous conversations, is that this is another thing that we'll come into when we're sitting down with you at the corporate level. is to help you understand that here's the culture that you need to develop to be able to then hire individuals with disabilities, which then may help your current employees that also have a disability that maybe they need just a little more help and support in that one particular area. Now they're that much more productive because you've created a culture within your company that really understands disclosure, that everyone can be comfortable in disclosing their disability when it comes to individuals with ADHD, which our current employees, but then there could be the new employees that you're trying to hire from that talent pool, helping you understand what things you need to do to help them be more successful in their jobs. That's all part of that package of what NDL Labs can do, because that is a talent pool that most employers are not tapping into as much as they should.

No, they aren't. And I mean, we've got neurodivergent community, we have the Hearing impaired and deaf community that are very underemployed but really highly trainable. We have people with things like diabetes and MS and things like that that just need some accommodations at work. And if you are willing to have those conversations and to make some adaptations that probably, one, aren't expensive for you, and two, are easy and would actually work well for your— and increase Productivity for your whole entire workforce, not just the one individual with whatever. We've talked about that so many times here on the show that you can increase your talent pool by 40, 50, 60%. And that's a huge amount.

Oh, it is huge. You know, it's interesting that, you know, you mentioned deaf and hard of hearing individuals. I am— in the past, I've been doing a conversation with a very, very, very large very well-known food manufacturer based in Maryland that wants to hire— I partner with another company called Translate Live, and they have this device, it's basically a 2-sided tablet that translates spoken languages, over 200 languages and dialects in real time, including American Sign Language with a separate package with live interpreters. And this employer wants to buy a bunch of them so that they can hire deaf and hard of hearing individuals in this role because they realize that they need to do this. So that's just one example of what we can do coming in with helping you understand that there are so many people that you can tap into, so much talent out there that's so easy to get to. Like, we're talking Maryland that has one of the largest deaf populations in the United States. So they're coming to realize, hmm, Spending $2,500 and purchasing these devices is a good investment, because we now have productive employees that are going to be major contributors to our company. So we need to see more of that.

We absolutely need to see more of that. I know a lot of employers hear, well, I have to purchase something, so that makes it not worth it. $2,500, that's not even a full month's pay for most employees. Give me a break. But even most of these accommodations that we are— like we've talked about in the past, are already built into the systems you already use in your own company. Teams, Microsoft Teams has so much of this stuff. Zoom, Google Trends. I mean, all of these things have these abilities. You're already using the software. You're just not using its full capabilities. And having somebody like NDL Loud, we come in and we show you everything that this stuff can do for you. And AI is giving us so many more cool things to offer very, very cheaply or free. That it's— there's so much that we can do right now, and now is the time to start adapting and adding these things in so that in the next 5, 7 years, when half your workforce disappears, you've got somebody already trained. Because you want your current workforce training the upcoming workforce. You want loyalty, you want dependability, you want that knowledge transfer. And right now, that's another thing I discussed last week at CHAD with a few people, is there's not that knowledge transfer. When people leave a company right now.

Yeah, you know, that's such a perfect thing because I was just gonna like circle back to a previous comment that we made. So thank you so much for saying this, um, that, you know, when we talk about the registered apprenticeship piece of this, uh, I just want to talk a little bit about that because, you know, again, we're always going to talk about numbers and, uh, the statistics and the data that's behind everything. We know that 92 to 96% of registered apprentices stay with their employers 5 years after the apprenticeship is over. And that, that's as far as they, they take that statistic. So it probably will be beyond 5 years, but that's, that's what the, the U.S. Department of Labor tracks. So, you know, so we're talking a retention of pretty much 100%. Like, if we're talking 93 to 96%, that, that other 4% is just, you know— Go ahead.

I'm gonna— we actually do have statistics, and I can't find the actual number again, but it was over 90% of everybody trained in World War II after they came home in apprenticeships kept their jobs through retirement.

Oh, yep, I believe that 100%. And so it's a tried and true method that, you know, registered apprenticeship has really been around since the 1930s, so before World War II. So the foundational elements were already there. For after the war, for them to just implement that and move forward. Registered apprenticeship basically takes the job description that you have, and they have over 1,300 different apprenticeable roles in the United States right now, which is probably even more now than the last time I tracked that. So if you have over 1,300 roles, including accordion makers, there's an accordion maker apprenticeship program. So there's that, and there's for everything else. But basically you take the job description and then they match that with a training program that the U.S. Department of Labor already has. And then the employer can then tweak it to what their specifications, which doesn't take that much time to do. And then boom, you have a training program. And then you can tap into your local education system, whether it's high schools or community colleges, to have the training done there while they're also paying them to work on the job. And then the great thing about this is employers can— it's justifiable that they can actually pay them a rate that's a little bit less than what the market rate is because you're taking them from no skills. But then it's got like a step-by-step process of you work X number of hours and then your pay raise is this, and then you work X number of hours and your pay raise is this. And then you get down to the other end, which is anywhere from 2,000 hours, which is basically a year, to 6,000 hours for basically 3 years or 8,000 hours for 4. And, you know, basically then you have a long-term employee that has those skills that are built. So that's something that I've done in previous roles. So like, I can very easily help an employer and walk them through that process of setting up a registered apprenticeship. Or like, some companies don't want to call it an apprenticeship for some reason, so you don't have to call it an apprenticeship. But the bottom line is that they You, as an employer, you already have the structure in place internally. We would just formalize that through that process, and then they get a national certification at the other end that is portable throughout the United States. So it's really a great thing.

It's a great thing. And again, so kids, kids, and I'm calling them kids because I'm old enough, I can do this now, kids coming out of college. do not have actual skills. They have knowledge, but they don't have actual skills. You have all of these people retiring with that knowledge, and you're losing your knowledge for your company. If you start with an apprentice-based or a skill-based learning system in your company, you're going to mold your employees into the employee you want, rather getting— than getting somebody who has a preconceived notion of what their, their position should be. And anybody who goes to college, you have a preconceived notion of what, what you should be doing and how you're going to do it. And that's not my job, and that was not in my job description. I mean, you're going to get that with anybody, but like at all. But we see that more in college-educated individuals, and they also have an expectation of higher pay because they've gone to college. Where when you're taking somebody through an apprenticeship, I will tell you right now I helped somebody get a job this week while I was at the conference. I helped somebody who had not had a job get a job, and she was willing to start at $15 an hour because she's going to learn on the job with a $5 raise after 1 year. So for her first whole year of employment, she's willing to earn $15 an hour just to learn a skill.

Yeah. And then, you know, the key in that, that you have a mentor that built into the apprenticeship That's the knowledge transfer piece of it. So you get in the, you get in the book-based learning for that, whatever that role is, but then you get in the knowledge transfer of that, probably that baby boomer that's been doing that job for a while and helping them, you know, guide them in what skills they need to learn that is not in the books. So it's really a perfect system that has worked and it's tried and true. 85% of Germany's workforce is through registered apprenticeship. Um, and many other European countries as well. So that, that's really what we need to do, and NDI Alloud can come in and help you through that whole process. So full picture, individuals with disability, creating a culture of disclosure, um, helping you understand individuals with ADHD like myself and Danielle, and helping them kind of understand what the things that you can do internally to really help them be more successful on the job, how to hire individuals that are neurodivergent. That whole picture, like there's so much value that we can bring to your table.

Absolutely. So if you have questions, if you are like, apprenticeship, I haven't thought about that, I haven't thought about how that would actually work, let us know. Tim and I have done this a million times. Tim has done this more than me because I took a break from doing that. But we, we, we have done this. We have data to show you. We have processes to show you. We also have support systems. If you're like, I wish we could do this, but we just don't have the staff to support that. There is staff in your county, in your state to help support with a disabled individual if you're bringing people with invisible or visible disabilities in. We have so many support systems that are already in place. You just have to tap into vocational services. I mean, TIM, all kinds of things. There are so many ways to get the support that your company needs to hire the people that you need. in a way that's going to make the most sense. And again, I really want to harp on that knowledge transfer. I had that conversation so many times last week. There is not a good knowledge transfer process right now for people leaving companies, whether it's through retirement or leaving because better pay or whatever. There isn't a good knowledge transfer. Your company is suffering from not having that knowledge transfer.

Yeah, um, and we can really help you formalize what that looks like. and develop internal policies to make sure that the knowledge transfer happens, because that's not something that happens over a week or 2 weeks. It's something that needs to happen over months and years. And absolutely, that's important, and we can help you with that.

And I'm going to tell you right now, for every company that says to me, I have processes and procedures so nothing gets lost, no, you don't. You are not covering for every individual thing. I guarantee it. As somebody who is an operational consultant, that is not something that ever is true. Knowledge happens through working hand in hand with somebody, and that's where skill-based learning and skill-based training comes in. If you have questions, if you need some help, if you want to develop a program and really be able to hire a workforce, and you know that your workforce is going to be retiring over the next few years, reach out to us. We are absolutely here to help. We have so many ways to help you. And again, based on knowledge, based on data, not based on feelings and projections into the future that nobody actually knows what they look like. Please reach out to us again at ND Out Loud. Tim at ND Out Loud, Danielle at ND Out Loud. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. You have so many ways to reach out to us. We look forward to hearing from you.