Fairfax Co. student launches app to help neurodivergent job seekers

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology rising senior Navya Tuteja created Raaha, a free artificial intelligence tool that assists neurodivergent job seekers.(Courtesy Navya Tuteja)

Navya Tuteja’s mom is hard of hearing, but when she was younger, she didn’t really understand what that meant.

But as she got older, she realized that at work, her mother’s disability “wasn’t visible enough for people to take seriously, and she never got the accommodations she needed,” Tuteja said.

Now a rising senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Virginia, Tuteja observed a similar pattern at school. Students who approach problems differently were “looked down upon or didn’t get as much support as they needed, because their disability wasn’t visible, and they were often seen as less capable,” she said.

Those experiences prompted Tuteja to create Raaha, a free artificial intelligence tool that assists neurodivergent job seekers in determining whether a potential job will fit the way they work. Raaha means “path” in Hindi, Tuteja said, and the product’s tagline is, “Find your way.”

“I’ve worked with lots of neurodivergent, like, students and families, and I think one thing I kept noticing is getting the opportunity wasn’t necessarily the hard part, but it was ending up in an environment that isn’t built for how your brain works,” Tuteja said.

While several jobs platforms detail salary, location and benefits, Tuteja said it’s much less clear whether the work environment will be a good fit.

The free site asks users to paste a job description and take a short work-style quiz.

The data is processed by Anthropic’s Claude AI, using a prompt Tuteja created with the help of neurodiversity specialists.

The site then generates personalized results.

Factors such as tasks, task structure, work pace, communication, work environment and schedule predictability are all scored.

The project has been in the works for a year and launched about a month ago. So far, over 200 people have used the site.

“Raaha obviously begins with neurodivergent job seekers, because they bear the greatest cost when information is missing,” Tuteja said. “Everyone deserves to know what a workplace will actually be like.”

The tool is web-based now, but it’s pending App Store approval, Tuteja said.

Tuteja recently received an email from someone who said they have ADHD and came across Raaha. They were searching for a computer science job, and the site “really helped them figure out if it’ll suit their environment.”

“What I’ve learned is job descriptions contain a lot of hidden information,” Tuteja said. “When a company says something like self-starter, like or fast-paced environment, they have consistent meanings.”

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Scott Gelman

Scott Gelman is a digital editor and writer for 鶹. A South Florida native, Scott graduated from the University of Maryland in 2019. During his time in College Park, he worked for The Diamondback, the school’s student newspaper.

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