Your next job interview may be with a computer.
Employers large and small are using automated tools to help them source, recruit, interview, and select the right candidates for open positions. In the last decade, the number of vendors offering AI hiring tools has soared. In fact, some kind of AI has likely already read your resume.
But new tools add new layers to algorithmic evaluation. Think scraping your social media to compile your candidate profile, deploying chatbots to ask you about your qualifications, transcribing and scoring video interviews, or making you play logic games to determine your personality traits. (We’ve got a whole podcast episode dedicated to these types of evals.)
AI hiring vendors are optimistic that tools trained on data make the hiring process more efficient and equitable. Human recruiters are fallible. By handing evaluations over to science-based algorithms, they suggest, we can make recruitment more objective—and eliminate human bias from the hiring process.
Take a look at the algorithm’s outcomes, though, and AI reveals itself to be more subjective than scientific. Quartz’s Gabriela Riccardi reports on the many, many (many) ways AI hiring tools have made arbitrary—and sometimes discriminatory—judgments against job candidates. The stakes, she adds, could lock you out of your next job.
POP QUIZ: SAY HELLO TO AI HIRING
AI hiring tools have been caught screening out job candidates in some strange ways.
Which of these is a real reason an AI negatively scored a job app?
A. The applicant interviewed from a dark room
B. The applicant appeared on video with a bookshelf behind themC. The applicant spoke with a regional UK accent
D. The applicant graduated from a women’s college
Find out by reading the story.
CASHING IN
2 million won ($1,510): The amount South Korea is paying new mothers upon the birth of their child in an effort to boost the low country’s birth rate. Parents also get smaller monthly payments until the child reaches school age.
And in a bid to battle the labor shortage, US companies want to give these bonus programs a try, too.
As far as employees go, mothers are at the highest risk of dropping out of the workforce,especially in the US, where childcare is expensive, hours are long, and parental leave can vary wildly. The US remains the only wealthy country in the world without a paid family leave policy.
Enter: the baby bonus. Quartz contributor Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza writes about these new big-bucks programs for employees. Cash in on the report.
YOUR PASSION PATCHWORK
Ever been told to “follow your passion?” It’s kind advice, but doesn’t work for multiple-hat-wearers. Passion is often something much more fluid, more like a patchwork quilt with varying colors and textures that form a collective story.
If you’re feeling less than passionate about your work, it may be time to draw it out. Pull out a piece of paper, make a list of what you’re passionate about, and, if you’re up for it, draw a quilt square to represent each of your powerful passions.
DON’T BE SO SURE
Being decisive is a sought-after skill. Gallup lists deliberativeness as a top strength for leaders with traits like careful, vigilant, and cautiousness as benefits. But, Quartz contributor Suzanne Bates calls us on to ditch being decisive, and embrace uncertainty.
Bates offers three reflection questions to help you pause and honor uncertainty:
- What if the opposite of what I believe was true?
- What would critics tell me about this idea?
- What is behind my belief that I should always know what to do?
Read Bates’s three steps to becoming an uncertain leader here.
THE BOTS ARE BACK
Our podcast season finale: Algorithmic hiring
Meet your new recruiter. They’re tireless, they don’t need to be paid much, and they’ve learned all their company’s biases.
In Quartz’s podcast season finale, Quartz at Work deputy editor Gabriela Riccardi paints a disturbing picture to host Scott Nover of the prejudices that AI software may never be able to overcome.
🎧 Listen right now.
📖 If reading’s more your thing, try the transcript.
QUARTZ AT WORK’S TOP STORIES
👨👧👦 To attract parents back to the workforce, companies are paying cash
🔄 What happens to turnover when colleagues leave?
🤖 All the reasons AI may have rejected your job application
❌ Made a mistake at work? Try this 3-step process to address it
🏢 ExxonMobil is doing away with its “god pod”
YOU GOT THE MEMO
Send questions, comments, and stories of computer recruiters to [email protected]. This edition of The Memo was produced by Gabriela Riccardi and Anna Oakes.