I have lost track of the number of people who have told me they have applied for hundreds of jobs, only to be met with rejection after rejection. Often, they said it felt like a human had not even looked at their applications. There are lots of different types of recruitment tools.
Some match candidates to jobs, others grade and screen CVs. Employers use them to save time sifting through applications, but there are growing concerns that these tools could be biased. I want to find out how fair AI recruitment tools being used to help decide our futures really are - and what happens when we click "apply".
A London-based non-profit organisation, People Like Us, is raising awareness of people's legal right to challenge automated decisions when they disagree with the outcome. A survey conducted by Censuswide among 2,000 UK workers who had applied for at least one job in the past 24 months found that 75% were unaware of their right to challenge an automated rejection. Sheeraz Gulsher, CEO of People Like Us, is leading the campaign called Reject the Rejections, which calls on employers to improve transparency and accountability in the use of AI and automated recruitment systems.
He describes the current situation as an "AI war", with candidates "resorting to AI to bolster their applications" while "employers are dealing with huge amounts of applications". Gulsher said: "We can't say for certain that every company is operating its automated or AI systems without bias. That's why we're calling for companies to audit these systems, publish the results and have them independently assessed.
"In our research, we found guidance from the Information Commissioner's Office, external stating that people subject to certain automated decisions have the right to request a human review. We're trying to remind people of that right, as many simply aren't aware of it." The research also found 70% of ethnically diverse jobseekers had altered or concealed information on their CVs, including their country of origin, religion or name, out of fear that recruitment software or AI tools would reject their applications. This compares with 57% of white candidates.
Business consultant Vivi, who lives in Lewisham, was made redundant earlier this year. She says she has applied for so many jobs that she's given up and started her own company. "There's one instance where applications closed on Friday and I got a reply on a Saturday morning basically saying that I should work on my skills and come back in six months.
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