Artificial intelligence in hiring

Artificial intelligence has been a fascination of researchers since the term was coined in the mid-1950s.[2] Researchers have identified four main forms of intelligence that AI would need to possess to truly replace humans in the workplace: mechanical, analytical, intuitive, and empathetic.[3] Automation follows a predictable progression in which it will first be able to replace the mechanical tasks, then analytical tasks, then intuitive tasks, and finally empathy based tasks.[3] However, full automation is not the only potential outcome of AI advancements. Humans may instead work alongside machines, enhancing the effectiveness of both. In the hiring context, this means that AI has already replaced many basic human resource tasks in recruitment and screening, while freeing up time for human resource workers to do other more creative tasks that can not yet be automated or do not make fiscal sense to automate.[4] It also means that the type of jobs companies are recruiting and hiring form will continue to shift as the skillsets that are most valuable change.[5]

Human resources has been identified as one of the ten industries most affected by AI.[6] It is increasingly common for companies to use AI to automate aspects of their hiring process. The hospitality, finance, and tech industries in particular have incorporated AI into their hiring processes to significant extents.[7]

Human resources is fundamentally an industry based around making predictions.[8] Human resource specialists must predict which people would make quality candidates for a job, which marketing strategies would get those people to apply, which applicants would make the best employees, what kinds of compensation would get them to accept an offer, what is needed to retain an employee, which employees should be promoted, what a companies staffing needs, among others.[8] AI is particularly adept at prediction because it can analyze huge amounts of data. This enables AI to make insights many humans would miss and find connections between seemingly unrelated data points. This provides value to a company and has made it advantageous to use AI to automate or augment many human resource tasks.[8]

Artificial intelligence in hiring confers many benefits, but it also has some challenges which have concerned experts.[13] AI is only as good as the data it is using. Biases can inadvertently be baked into the data used in AI.[1] Often companies will use data from their employees to decide what people to recruit or hire. This can perpetuate bias and lead to more homogenous workforces. Facebook Ads was an example of a platform that created such controversy for allowing business owners to specify what type of employee they are looking for. For example, job advertisements for nursing and teach could be set such that only women of a specific age group would see the advertisements. Facebook Ads has since then removed this function from its platform, citing the potential problems with the function in perpetuating biases and stereotypes against minorities.

It can also be hard to quantify what makes a good employee.[1] This poses a challenge for training AI to predict which employees will be best. Commonly used metrics like performance reviews can be subjective and have been shown to favor white employees over Black employees and men over women.[9] Another challenge is the limited amount of available data. Employers only collect certain details about candidates during the initial stages of the hiring process. This requires AI to make determinations about candidates with very limited information to go off of. Additionally, many employers do not hire employees frequently and so have limited firm specific data to go off.[1] To combat this, many firms will use algorithms and data from other firms in their industry.[1] AI's reliance on applicant and current employees personal data raises privacy issues. These issues effect both the applicants and current employees, but also may have implications for third parties who are linked through social media to applicants or current employees. For example, a sweep of someone's social media will also show their friends and people they have tagged in photos or posts.[1]

AI makes it easier for companies to search applicants social media accounts. A study conducted by Monash University found that 45% of hiring managers use social media to gain insight on applicants. Seventy percent of those surveyed said they had rejected an applicant because of things discovered on their applicant's social media, yet only 17% of hiring managers saw using social media in the hiring process as a violation of applicants privacy. Using social media in the hiring process is appealing to hiring managers because it offers them a less curated view of applicants lives. The privacy trade-off is significant. Social media profiles often reveal information about applicants that human resource departments are legally not allowed to require applicants to divulge like race, ability status, and sexual orientation.[14]

AI is changing the way work is done. Artificial intelligence along with other technological advances such as improvements in robotics have placed 47% of jobs at risk of being eliminated in the near future.[15] Some classify the shifts in labor brought about by AI as a 4th industrial revolution, which they call Industrial Revolution 4.0.[5] According to some scholars, however, the transformative impact of AI on labor has been overstated. The "no-real-change" theory holds that an IT revolution has already occurred, but that the benefits of implementing new technologies does not outweigh the costs associated with adopting them. This theory claims that the result of the IT revolution is thus much less impactful than had originally been forecasted.[16] Other scholars refute this theory claiming that AI has already led to significant job loss for unskilled labor and that it will eliminate middle skill and high skill jobs in the future. This position is based around the idea that AI is not yet a technology of general use and that any potential 4th industrial revolution has not fully occurred.[16] A third theory holds that the affect of AI and other technological advances is too complicated to yet be understood. This theory is centered around the idea that while AI will likely eliminate jobs in the short term it will also likely increase the demand for other jobs. The question then becomes will the new jobs be accessible to people and will they emerge near when jobs are eliminated.[16]

Artificial intelligence has sped up the hiring process considerably, dramatically reducing costs. For example, Unilever has reviewed over 250,000 applications using AI and reduced its hiring process from 4 months to 4 weeks. This saved the company 50,000 hours of labor.[12] The increased efficiency AI promises has sped up its adoption by human resource departments globally.[12]