Is Automated Hiring Hindering Corporate Recruitment?

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the growing trend for corporations to digitize their internal processes. This includes the recruitment of new employees. For most work processes digital automation is a benefit, improving efficiency and freeing up staff to use in other areas. However, when it comes to recruitment, automation can be a double-edged sword. 

What is Automated Hiring 

Automated hiring is simply the act of using automated technology to help manage the recruitment process. Automated hiring can take a few forms, but the most common involve the use of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). An ATS is essentially the same as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software but designed specifically for managing the hiring process.  

Organisations can programme ATSs to cross-reference CV submissions against a predetermined set of rules. This allows organisations with a large number of job applicants to filter out any that aren’t fit for the role. ATSs do this by automatically extracting relevant information and keyword searching CV submissions to find applicants that match the set rules. 

More advanced ATSs can use AI, machine learning or algorithmic decision making to aid with recruitment. However, these are more common in the US as UK data protection laws make the use of these tools a lot more complicated legally.  

What are the key problems? 

A recent study from Harvard Business School highlighted the use of automated CV scanning as part of the hiring process is hindering recruitment. There are a number of key problems: 

Rejecting Employment Gaps 

Some systems can automatically reject candidates if they have a gap of 6 months or more on their CV. While this may seem prudent, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why people may a gap in their employment record. Considering the job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic, these gaps are going to be a feature of many people’s CV. Rejecting candidates automatically on the basis of the gap could be hugely detrimental to a firm's recruitment prospects. 

Excessive or Inappropriate Filters  

Due to having such a high number of applicants for vacancies, some companies have implemented excessive filtering to their ATSs. In one example, the author of the report highlighted to the Wall Street Journal that one company was rejecting applicants for a retail assistant position because they hadn’t listed ‘floor-buffing’ as one of their skills. The rejected candidates were otherwise perfectly qualified for the role. 

Perpetuating Bias 

Reliance on automated systems can contribute towards recruiting bias against certain minority demographics. An alarming study found that an automated system used for referring hospital patients to healthcare programmes were much less likely to refer black patients than their white counterparts. This was even though the black patients were often significantly sicker.  

While this is one of the more shocking examples, bias from automated hiring technology has been found to effect women, young people, BAME individuals and disabled people looking for work. This discrimination may be unintentional but is no less damaging to both the individuals and the organisation involved.  

Automated hiring is particularly problematic in the US where 75% of employers use these tools to support their recruitment. Whilst it isn’t as big an issue in the UK yet, the rapid adoption of automated hiring tools means it soon could be.  

A Lack of Recruits 

Considering the huge number of job vacancies, employers need to be conscious of implementing any software that could reduce the number of viable job applicants. If you do already rely on some form of automated hiring, now could be the perfect time to re-evaluate its usefulness in your organisation. 

If you’re struggling to recruit, it could also be a time to expand the way your business thinks about utilising talent. Globally, there has been a boom in the number of freelancers, partly thanks to the pandemic. There are a number of high-profile freelance platforms that employers can tap into and source the perfect workers for any project imaginable. If you’ve successfully adopted remote working into your organisation, there’s no reason that you couldn't effectively utilise freelancers as well.  

What is clear, is that the uncertain labour market isn’t going to resolve itself overnight. Researching all the options available to help recruit and staff your business is the only way that you can ensure business continuity.  

For more information about anything in this article, or, how our screening solutions can help you, get in touch! You can give us a call on 01254 355688 or drop us an email at letstalk@personnelchecks.co.uk