When Amazon’s machine-learning specialists reportedly began building an AI-assisted recruiting program in 2014, a source told Reuters that proponents hoped the tech would become a “holy grail” for hiring, efficiently sifting through applications to identify top candidates.

By 2015, the specialists reportedly determined the AI had a consistent bias in favor of male candidates. Reuters reported that Amazon tried to retrain the model to be more “neutral,” but Amazon could not guarantee the tech would achieve this and dissolved the team developing the programs by early 2017. Amazon did not comment on the tool’s problems to Reuters, but did say it was “never used by Amazon recruiters to evaluate candidates.”

In an attempt to root out such potential biases before companies add AI-powered hiring technology (and any potential legal risks) to their recruiting workflows, some vendors now use audits to vet AI for potential sources of racial or gender discrimination.

New York City will require vendors to obtain annual third-party “bias audits” and share the results with employers who use the tech, or intend to use the tech, to hire NYC residents beginning January 2023. If employers use biased technology in their recruitment process, a company using the platform could, at some point, potentially be on the hook for violating anti-discrimination laws.

EEOC called: It’s urgent. Step right this way to take the call.—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

In our previous story on bias in automated machine-learning hiring platforms, we discussed why employers may want vendors to procure audits of AI-powered hiring tools to ensure they aren’t resulting in unintended bias.

But this seemingly simple solution is deceptively complex: To date, there is no accepted industry standard for what constitutes an AI audit.

Pymetrics, HireVue, and Humanly, three AI-powered HR tech vendors that specialize in streamlining aspects of recruiting, each conduct audits in markedly different ways. Pymetrics contracted a team of computer scientists to test its engineering processes. HireVue hired consultancies to assess bias and validity, and Humanly regularly works with an external vendor to vet its chatbot’s lexicon for potentially problematic language.

All three consider their methods an AI audit.

“There isn’t a vocabulary, there isn’t even a nomenclature that’s common among all this stuff,” Kevin Parker, HireVue’s former CEO, who is now an advisor to the company, told HR Brew.

An audit is an audit is an…audit? Christo Wilson, an associate professor of computer science at Northeastern University, was hired by pymetrics to audit the platform for bias in 2020. Wilson and his team spent three months in 2020 analyzing the machine-learning input datasets, verifying that decisions passed the four-fifths rule (a rule of thumb established by the EEOC for organizations to evaluate employment processes for potential discrimination), assessing pymetrics quality-assurance processes, and putting the AI through its paces in a series of test attacks.

Overall, Wilson told HR Brew that “overall, they passed the audit” (interested parties can read the peer-reviewed results on the pymetrics website), but emphasized that his audit only tested whether the technology produced unbiased choices—he didn’t test the validity of the platform (whether it selected people who would be any good at the job).

“I don’t feel entirely qualified to do that work,” Wilson explained. “Their product has this gamified assessment thing…[that is] drawn from the cognitive science literature. I’m not a cognitive scientist.”

Frida Polli, CEO of pymetrics, told HR Brew that a validation study is currently under review for publication.

HireVue’s audit was, according to Lindsey Zuloaga, HireVue’s chief data scientist, “very different” from pymetrics. Keep reading here. —SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SusannaVogel1 on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

It’s no secret that AI and automation are sweeping through the HR world the way Wordlemania rocked your parents’ social circles.

• According to an April 2021 study of 400 HR and development officials from CompTIA, 81% believe AI will have “a moderate or significantly increased impact on HR in the year ahead,” and most companies reported “piloting or actively using AI in candidate screening, onboarding, competency assessment, and career planning.”
• Fortune Business Insights projects that the global HR technology market will grow from $24.04 billion in 2021 to $35.68 billion in 2028, with companies “more likely to prioritize investments in AI technology” post-Covid.

In December, Kim Rohrer, head of employee experience at global payroll and benefits platform Oyster, sang the praises of broadly incorporating AI, not just in hiring but throughout HR.

“The more automation you can put in place for HR to not have to be manually babysitting people—for lack of a better phrase—the better,” Rohrer told HR Brew.

Candidly, what about candidates? Frustrated job applicant Caron Mitchell recently walked Axios through her failed experience with a timed, four-question “asynchronous video interview” for a job at a tech-training startup. Mitchell said she found the whole process “unnerving and demoralizing.”

“You’re at a tremendous disadvantage as a candidate when it’s a one-way street,” Mitchell told Axios. “I’m used to reading people, and there was nothing there for me to read.”

Jade, a recent college graduate interviewed by Slate, shared Mitchell’s distaste for the format. She told Slate that she resented doing a “song and dance for AI, or a robot, or whatever it is before we even talk to an actual person—if that ever happens.”

Others worry about potential bias in the technology. Kabrina Chang, associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, recalled one student’s perception of AI-powered hiring tools to BU Today.

“In my employment law class, our monitor was a Vietnamese student. When we started talking about AI, he said that ‘where I’m from, when we’re speaking with an authority figure, we are told [to] be still and have a flat affect. If I did that with AI, they would screen me out immediately,’ because it might show that you lack animation, energy, motivation,” Chang recalled.

Yes, you…you in the back: Interviews are often the first impression of a company. Is AI worth the cost and time savings if the candidate experience is, according to Chang’s students, “weird”? Join the discussion here on HR Brew’s LinkedIn page, or reply to this email with your thoughts (and your latest Wordle score).—SV

Stat: There are 1+ million workers employed in cybersecurity in the United States, and an additional 600,000+ cybersecurity jobs in need of filling, according to data from Cyberseek. (via Bloomberg)

Quote: “I’ve completely mentally checked out…Now, I’m just turning my focus to other things and putting myself before work”—Edward, a sales professional in the northeast of England who’s opted to “coast” at work, which means not letting work dominate his day-to-day life (BBC WorkLife)

Read: Hybrid work was supposed to offer a double whammy of flexibility and in-person collaboration, but for many workers, it isn’t quite unfolding that way. Some employees are reporting into the office only to spend the entire day isolated and communicating predominantly with their colleagues on Slack, Zoom, and email. Is this really the best that the combination of in-person and working from home can offer? (Slate)

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