Artificial Intelligence as a Hiring Tool – Fair or Not?!

The process of hiring is getting easier.  Or is it? Some Fortune 500 companies are now using tools that utilize artificial intelligence to weed out job applicants. Keyword scans of resumes have been in place for a while and have been used by many companies to weed out potential candidates.

As companies continue to evolve in their understanding of a newer generation of employees, they are moving away from simply assessing candidates based on their resumes and skills, and more towards making their decisions based on the individuals personality. One of the artificial intelligence tools in play to achieve this is a social media scanner, where they can scan an applicant’s social media accounts to find their underlying personality traits that match up with the type of individuals they are looking for.

Another system is one in which digital interviews are conducted, and the candidates voice, word clusters and micro facial expressions are compared with people who have previously been identified as high performers on the job being applied for.

Unfortunately, the biggest concern is that automated assessments that might have faulty algorithms could do more damage than a biased HR manager or hiring manager. For companies looking to utilize these AI tools, it’s suggested that they are tested to ensure fairness, transparency and accuracy. So many biases are claimed in the hiring process that unfortunately this could be another tool for backing these claims if not thoroughly tested and proven to be a useful option to find the right employees.