Automated Hiring Software is Mistakenly Rejecting Millions of Viable Job Candidates
AnonTechie writes:
Automated hiring software is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable job candidates:
Automated resume-scanning software is contributing to a "broken" hiring system in the US, says a new report from Harvard Business School [PDF]. Such software is used by employers to filter job applicants, but is mistakenly rejecting millions of viable candidates, say the study's authors. It's contributing to the problem of "hidden workers" - individuals who are able and willing to work, but remain locked out of jobs by structural problems in the labor market.
The study's authors identify a number of factors blocking people from employment, but say automated hiring software is one of the biggest. These programs 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. Technology has made it easier for people to apply for jobs, but also easier for companies to reject them.
[...] Over-reliance on software in the hiring world seems to have created a vicious cycle. Digital technology was supposed to make it easier for companies to find suitable job candidates, but instead it's contributed to a surfeit of applicants. In the early 2010s, the average corporate job posting attracted 120 applicants, says the study, but by the end of the decade this figure had risen to 250 applicants per job. Companies have responded to this deluge by deploying brutally rigid filters in their automated filtering software.
[...] Fixing these problems will require "overhauling many aspects of the hiring system," from where companies look for candidates in the first place to how they deploy software in the process.
What suggestion(s) can experts here provide, to solve this issue? Or, is this yet another case of "If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail."
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