When automated software designed to filter job applicants is mistakenly rejecting them — by the millions — as shown in a recent study out of Harvard, it begs the question: Are we learning anything in our race to automation other than we’re still not sure how to effectively automate much after all these years?
In this case, we’re specifically referring to automated resume scanning software and ATS screening. As a recent Verge article highlights and the original HBS report linked below finds, these are used by 75 percent of US employers (rising to 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies) and were adopted in response to a rise in digital job applications from the ‘90s onwards.
Over-reliance on software in the hiring world seems to have created a vicious cycle. Ironically, it also seems to be a problem that is recurring time and again as shown by these headlines found over the past four years.
Automation goes far beyond resume scanning, however. Recruiting automation and AI are embedded in so much of the recruiting process that correcting these issues might well become its own discipline of talent secondary to what we hope is the analysis and repair of the biases (“gaps” in employment, for example) that are being passed forward to our robot recruiting tools long before a real human ever sees a candidate’s application.
Technology makes it easier for people to apply to jobs, but also easier for companies to reject them at their own peril.
Read more from the source: The Verge, Published by: James Vincent
Read the sourced report from Harvard Business School (recommended.)
