Around one in seven people in the UK are estimated to be neurodivergent but for many, traditional recruitment processes are anything but inclusive, leaving talented people struggling to get their foot in the door.
With legislation like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) now requiring larger businesses to report on workforce diversity and provide reasonable accommodations, companies that aren’t prepared risk not only falling short on compliance, but also missing out on a significant untapped talent pool.
One start-up hoping to change that is Neurovirse, a Liverpool-based talent platform designed to connect neurodivergent candidates with enterprise-level jobs.
READ MORE: 275 jobs at risk as Cheshire carmaker Bentley feels EV slowdown and Trump Tariffs
The business was founded by a trio of talent acquisition veterans with decades of experience working at global companies, but for co-founder Ben Usher, his own career journey began in a very different world: in front of the camera as a five-year-old child actor.
Now aged 31, his earlier years were spent appearing in prime-time adverts and on TV shows including Grange Hill and Nickelodeon’s House of Anubis and he was even the face of the NERF Gun adverts for three years.
“I fell out of love with acting,” Usher tells Prolific North. “But there isn’t a great deal of money in it, unless you get a huge break. You can’t plan your life around it because you don’t know where your next paycheck will come from and you can’t plan any aspect of your life.”
At 18, he decided to get a “proper job” and soon found himself in recruitment, spending the next decade working in talent acquisition for household names from Very to Manchester United. That experience would later prove invaluable in shaping Neurovirse.
The company’s other co-founders, Kevin Blair and Mike Hulse, have been pals for 25 years and bring decades of global recruiting expertise having served as VPs of talent at the likes of Salesforce, IBM, Airbnb, and Oracle and plenty more.
But for all three, the motivation behind Neurovirse is deeply personal. Blair’s son has autism, while Hulse’s son has ADHD, with both having struggled with traditional hiring processes.
“These guys are in global positions of power and they were sitting in a room 15-18 months ago and said: ‘Hey, we need to do something about this for the future of our children’,” he explains.
Usher was introduced to them in 2025, after pitching a talent company he hoped to start while they had already began building the idea behind Neurovirse.
“I spoke to Kevin for months and he was impressed by my background, my entrepreneurial drive, and my ambition,” he says.
“We met up and had a four hour dinner then the next day they asked: ‘Do you fancy coming on the journey with us?’ So, there’s now three of us on the journey!”
They also have Michael Paterson, the founding CTO at HR tech unicorn Beamery, on board as a CTO advisor.
READ MORE: £2bn boost for quantum computing sector as Chancellor Reeves announces “pioneering programme”
“They’ve led global recruiting teams for the past 25 years at some of the world’s largest companies. They understand what a good platform should look like and needs to look like, and they understand what these global recruiting teams need at the moment.”
“From stigma to superpower” and how the platform works
The trio’s mission is to tackle the lingering “stigma” around neurodiversity and change the way it is understood in the workplace.
“There are so many talented, high-functioning people who would be incredible for enterprise companies, but they’re not getting access because recruitment and interview processes are set up for neurotypicals,” he explains.
Some companies still rely on lengthy assessment centres or task-based interviews that don’t reflect the real work someone would do day-to-day.
“It’s just completely wrong because we’re asking neurodivergent people to do things that they would never be expected to do in the job on a day-to-day basis if they were to be successful in the role,” he explains.
“There are a lot of people that are unfortunately not making it through the interview process but they would be an unbelievable asset to the business or particular job they’ve applied for but they’re not being given the opportunity to be able to showcase their skills.”
So how does it work? The Neurovirse platform gives candidates a ‘safe space’ to complete up to a seven minute neurodiversity assessment, delivered in partnership with a specialist provider. Once completed, this generates a ‘success profile’ designed to replace the traditional CV.
“We don’t think employers get much from a CV when it comes to understanding behaviours, traits or strengths, particularly for neurodivergent individuals. The success profile instead offers a clearer picture of who someone is and how they work.”
From there, the platform’s AI matches each profile to relevant roles. Employers simply post a job and receive a shortlist of candidates, ranked by how closely they align with the role and the wider business.
But how does the platform ensure it is inclusive of neurodivergent talent, rather than creating a separate hiring track? Usher says this comes down to how it is built: “co-designed with neurodivergent individuals” at every stage to ensure it reflects their real needs and experiences.
Policies like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) now require large companies, those with over 1,000 employees and €150m+ turnover, to disclose workforce diversity, including the number of neurodivergent individuals they hire.
“Under the ESG framework of the directive, businesses are now legally required to report on workforce diversity, disability, reasonable accommodations, inclusivity policies, and the number of neurodivergent individuals they hire each year,” he says.
“While compliance is a bonus, our core ethos is social impact. We aim to help over a million neurodivergent individuals globally gain access to enterprise job opportunities they might otherwise miss, connecting them with leading companies worldwide.
READ MORE: “I felt like a hindrance”: Uncovering the battles facing the North’s neurodiverse creatives
“Businesses won’t have a choice, they’ll have to address this by law. At the same time, it opens access to an under-leveraged talent pool of highly capable individuals often overlooked by traditional recruitment. Our mission: ‘from stigma to superpower’, reflects the untapped potential of these candidates.”
The future
It’s still early days for Neurovirse, but the trio have built an MVP and are in discussions with major businesses to come on board.
The team is also raising up to £550,000 through a special purpose vehicle (SPV), inviting investors to join the round, and have been in talks ‘morning, noon and night’ with VC funds and high-net-worth strategic angels as they look to take the business to the next level with an enterprise product.
When I ask how those calls are going, he jokingly gestures to a few supposed grey hairs, though it’s hard to spot them.
Looking ahead, he says Neurovirse has some ambitious plans for the future that includes expanding the platform into a “one-stop shop” for neurodivergent services, including an AI-powered onboarding coach to help businesses integrate talent effectively. They also want to provide workforce insights, allowing companies to assess gaps and identify potential hires who complement their existing teams.
But the ambition doesn’t stop there. In five years, Usher hopes to have helped over a million candidates, reach £29.5m ARR (annual recurring revenue), and potentially sell the platform to a major professional talent network.
“We don’t really have any competitors in the UK right now that are doing what we are doing in that we start right at the beginning of the recruitment process, matching neurodivergent candidates to businesses,” he says.
“It’s about giving people a fair chance. There are incredibly talented individuals who just haven’t been given the opportunity. We want to change that.”
