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Algorithmic Hiring Needs a Human Face


resumes, folders, and a laptop computer, illustration

Credit: Golden Sikorka

The way we apply for jobs has changed radically over the last 20 years, thanks to the arrival of sprawling online job-posting boards like LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, and the use by hiring organizations of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to screen the tsunami of résumés that now gush forth from such sites into human resources (HR) departments. With video-based online job interviews now harnessing AI to analyze candidates' use of language and their performance in gamified aptitude tests, recruitment is becoming a decidedly algorithmic affair.

Yet all is not well in HR's brave new world.


Comments


Joseph Bedard

Thank you for this well-written and well-researched article. Regulation would be a premature overreaction at this point. There are many vendors and companies with incentives (such as their own survival) to improve the hiring process, and therefore market forces should engender improvementes in the technology before any effective regulation is put in place. In the case of Nilan Johnson Lewis, their own vetting process revealed that algorithmic hiring was problematic, and they then adjusted accordingly. As this article also pointed out, "...some already are acting to deconstruct the worst pillars of algorithmic hiring, including Amazon, General Motors, Ikea, LinkedIn-owner Microsoft, Google, Slack, and McDonald's." This article makes me optimistic that recruiting will improve without regulatory intervention.


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