Savants in the It Industry - Chances of and Challenges in the Recruitment of People with Asperger’s Syndrome as Software Experts.

Savants in the IT industry

Chances of and challenges in the recruitment of people with Asperger’s syndrome as

software experts.

Ramona Bernbaum

Savants in the IT industry

Abstract

This essay deals with the topic of hiring savants as employees for companies in the IT

sector. Savants are people who suffer (mostly) from diseases that are part the Autism Spectrum

Disorders (ASD). Whereas their social skills are underdeveloped, their analytical skills

especially in dealing with numbers and words are extremely high.

Software companies highly value this ability for software quality management as savants provide

high quality work with a low error rate. In the text, the advantages and challenges that the

recruitment of people with the Asperger’s syndrome implies will be described and set into the

context of hiring disabled person’s in general. Within this examination, the focus lies on the

software sector, as it is the most common area of business for savants to work in.

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Savants in the IT industry

Introduction

Nowadays, software companies are striving to find talented employees.

Their unusual methods to do so reach from hiring genius college dropouts, mathematicians and

physics to NASA engineers or highly gifted high school graduates. But lately the companies

have recognized that there might be a group of people who’s performance might be even better.

They are hiring Savants.

Savants are people who demonstrate a level of skill in certain cognitive activities that is

way beyond of what is considered average or normal. Those activities can include features like

mental math, play music and memorize large amounts of data (Treffert, 2009). As noticeable as

their savant qualities are, as fundamental is their lack of social skills and various other mental

disabilities.

The savant-syndrome most commonly is a symptom of a disease known as Autism

Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but it may root in other similar mental disorders.

Many Savants show...