Best Practices for Hiring Managers

Mathew Yaworski

May 6, 2025

Summary
Job interviews can be incredibly stressful, even for candidates who do not stutter. Persons Who Stutter are often arbitrarily not hired due to their stuttering. This Article provides best practices for hiring managers when interviewing candidates who stutter.
Bullets
Hiring managers need to keep an open mind.
The degree or severity of a candidate’s stutter during the interview is not a predictor of how they will speak in the workplace or when during their job.
Demonstrating empathy and compassion can help make them relaxed and engaged in the hiring process.
Resist the urge to interrupt a candidate.
Hiring managers should use structured interviews with standardized scoring metrics to evaluate candidate’s answers. To help objectively evaluate candidate’s experience and skills, consider having candidate’s submit past work samples or complete a test.

In this Article, I look at some best practices for hiring managers when interviewing Persons Who Stutter.

This Article beings with the presumption that a candidate has already disclosed their stutter and requested accommodation. Disclosing your stutter or disfluency is a personal choice. Normally, you are not required to disclose your disfluency when you apply for a job (you might be required to disclose if you are applying for a position targeting disabled candidates). Once you disclose and request accommodation, you fall under the protection of your applicable human rights or accessibility laws.

Before we get started, it is important to review a few key considerations:

Stuttering is a form of speech impairment and a disability.
Employers must offer reasonable accommodation to candidates during the interview process; and
Candidates have the right to ask for accommodation.

Keep an Open Mind

A job interview can be incredibly stressful, and a candidate’s stutter could be at its worst.
Focus on what the candidate is saying, not how they are saying it.
The degree or severity of a candidate’s stutter during the interview is not a predictor of how they will speak in the workplace or when during the job.

Confirm the Candidate’s Accommodation

The job process is inherently stressful but persons requiring accommodation may be more anxious, nervous, or stressed than other candidates. Confirming a candidate’s accommodation(s) at the start will help to reduce their anxiety and put them at ease. If not, they may go through the interview focusing on whether the interviewer(s) were aware of their accommodation(s), rather than focusing on providing the best answers to any questions put before them.
Even if a candidate received prior confirmation of their accommodation(s), it is a good practice to affirm or review their accommodation(s) at the start of the interview.

Be Empathetic

Proactive hiring managers will always ensure they answer the question of how they (or the organization) can accommodate the Person Who Stutters.
Persons Who Stutter can be shy or reluctant to engage with their interviews. Remember, the hiring process is always daunting, and stutterers are unlike other candidates. For Persons Who Stutter, introducing and speaking about themselves can be the most challenging and determinative part of the process.
Demonstrating empathy and compassion can help them relax and be more engaged in the hiring process.

Recognize Bias & Avoid Stereotyping

Employers often overlook the true potential of Persons Who Stutter (and other candidates with disabilities) because of negative stereotypes. Stereotypes of stutterers are often that they are nervous, shy, quiet, self-conscious, withdrawn, tense, anxious, fearful, and guarded.
Reject the stigma that Persons Who Stutter are ill suited or cannot work in careers that required increased sociability and communication and better suited to jobs that require minimum social interaction.
Arbitrarily discounting a candidate because they stutter is a disservice to you and your organization. Disqualifying potential employees because of their stutter will deprive your organization of the valuable skills that these individuals can contribute to the workplace.

Let Them Answer

Resist the urge to interrupt a candidate.
Listen attentively and patiently.
Wait for the person to finish.
Do not try to fill in words or complete sentences.
Maintain natural eye contact, even when the person is stuttering.
If you are not sure if a candidate has finished their answer or has anything further to add, ask them 😊.

Use Structured Interviews

Many interviews are unstructured, meaning they are flexible and more like a conversation. What this means for the recruitment process is that not every candidate may be asked the same questions.
Structured interviews involve asking each candidate the same questions in the same order. Unstructured interviews, although often attractive because of their flexibility and fluidity, are very subjective which may invite legal or human rights challenges from unsuccessful candidates.
Answers should be scored against a standard grading scale developed with specific reference to the job requirements, as well as your organization’s culture and values (see consistent scoring metrics below).

Develop Structured Scoring Metrics

Structured interviews help, but objectivity in the interview process is not guaranteed by using identical questions. As part of the structured interview process, hiring managers (or hiring panels, see below) should identify acceptable responses to their structured questions and place them within a standardize rubric, for example, a scorecard.
Investing the time and effort to develop effective metrics will be repaid in improved, more sustainable hires.
A good scoring metric will have a defined scale (number or letter). This serves to provide a fair, comparative platform for interviewers (hiring manager or preferable a hiring panel) to document their thoughts and how they ranked a candidate’s answers against the acceptable responses.
Ranking a candidate’s responses within scorecard objectively assists hiring managers by providing a quantifiable record. It also shows that a candidate was given equal and fair consideration based on the quality or accuracy of their answers.

Use Hiring Panels

Hiring panels can be a strategic tool for assessing how a candidate interacts in a group setting or even under pressure while highlighting your organization's diversity and culture.
Hiring panels should be diverse. Panelists with different perspectives will help make interviews more inclusive and thorough.

Incorporate Work Samples or Tests as Part of the Recruitment Process

In addition to questions, considering having a candidate demonstrate their experience or skills by providing a prior work sample(s) or completing a test. Any work sample(s) or test should relate to the work they would be responsible for if they were the successful candidate. This allows hiring managers or hiring panels to evaluate the quality of a candidate’s work or their knowledge.

Do you have any ideas for future articles? If there a particular employment topic or issue that you would like me to address in a future article, let me know! You can reach me at: mathew.yaworski@stutter.ca

All correspondence will be treated as confidential.

Disclaimer: The opinions and statements in this article are solely the author’s and do not represent the Government of Canada or the Department of Justice Canada. Nothing in this article should be construed or relied upon as legal advice or opinion. Consult a lawyer for specific advice concerning your situation.

Mathew Yaworski, BCL/JD, is the CSA's Employment Advocacy Coordinator. Mathew is a litigator for the Government of Canada practicing management-side labour and employment law. Before receiving his law degree, Mathew held senior positions in human resources (labour relations) with various public sector employers.