A NEW website is helping people with autism to find work.
The site, designed and developed for free by Allstate NI as part of a Dragon’s Den style Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative, will boost a fledgling social enterprise that is changing the way businesses think about people on the autistic spectrum.
Specialisterne NI is a specialist recruitment agency that works to enable £16k+ job opportunities for people on the autistic spectrum.
It does so by creating awareness of the skills people with autism can bring to a company and by supporting job seekers to secure jobs and coaching within job roles.
In 2014 Allstate NI ran a Dragon’s Den CSR programme where teams were invited to pitch ideas that would meet a social good, while making use of their talent.
The Allstate NI website team, headed up by Paddy Warnock, decided they would like to develop a website for a social enterprise that may otherwise not be able to do so.
The team were successful in their pitch and were awarded £2,000 by the Dragons.
They initially reached out to Business in the Community NI, who hosted a competition to invite local Charities and Social Enterprises to explain why a website would help them achieve their social aims.
The team selected Specialisterne NI as the subject struck a chord on a personal level with some of the team members. Specialisterne NI manager Sharon Didrichsen said: “Having worked for large multinational and leading local recruitment consultancies, I could see the difference that an effective website can bring.
We wanted to make it easy for employers to advertise jobs that people on the autistic spectrum can access, and for job seekers to apply.
Sometimes all the support our candidates need is to be pointed in the direction of a job that matches their skills, and the website can do this.”