Tuesday, October 10, 2017

The Rise Of AI In The Interview And The Fall Of The Human In HR

So according to this post from eFinancial Careers and this one from Business Insider, digital interview technology such as HireVue will eliminate human bias through the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into evaluation of the video recorded responses to interview questions, and improve the quality of the interviewing and hiring experience for both sides: the hiring company and the candidate.

Elimination of human bias is a LIE.  Don't you see, the human bias will now be BUILT INTO  the system and impossible to identify as the layers and passage of time build on top of it, much less fix.  Top performers in all major US companies' history are mainly white males.  If you are evaluating the facial features and movements, the tone, and the vocabulary based on the "ideal" candidate... who programmed into the AI algorithms the definition of the ideal candidate??  It's not going to be a black, Indian, or Muslim so such people automatically start out as less than ideal.  That is dangerous to have this hidden standard as judgmental as ever but now hidden in this disguise of total impartiality when in fact it is totally impossible to be impartial in a heterogeneous society where the criteria coded into this system has totally unknown unverified elements.  Culture and many other things such as English not being your first language can affect your facial movements and habits, and race or culture can affect your facial structure and your voice... culture can affect your appearance, so can religious beliefs... is someone in turban or an afro going to score as high, all else equal?

Tone of voice is already a problem with basic intelligence such as GPS... I have to make my voice sound closer to a white American at times to get GPS to reconize a word properly, and I pronounce all my letters per the Queen's English so pronunciation isn't the issue.  If the GPS already has racism built in because the people who coded it have a standard of normal or ideal that is based on their own demographic description and perception of normal, how can something that makes no mention of how it is addressing this bias be pushed out there to evaluate everyone by an ideal that we don't know the details of?  AI to evaluate customer activity by the choices they are making in stores and online is completely valid, because then physical description and so on would just be random data points collected along with the main criteria and POSSIBLE categories to give subjective flavor to objective decisions, not become the main decision based on subjective single standard that is a secret to all outside the database programming team.  When you are evaluating consumer activity we know what the norm is and the goal.  And you are always looking for improvement and change to expand to new customers and deeper reach with existing customers, not for the future to fit into the standards of the past and stay within the same depth as the existing.

Interviewing was supposed to bring in diversity... something regressing all the options to some mean is going to either artificially undervalue great candidates who have the skill set but do not fit the ideal programmed into the algorithms, or someone will be artificially programming in quotas based on artificial fit into certain legally approved categories, which is still defeating the already proven point that diversity including of thought is an asset to a business trying to reach diverse markets.  Elements that are not ideal and not even common, such as accents, will become issues according to this algorithms programmed judgments, when for example in real life most Americans love Jamaican accents but an algorithm isn't going to show the pronunciation of words with this accent as ideal since most of the top performers it's basing tone etc on, don't sound at all like that.  So unusual aspects that are either usually disregarded or an asset on the phone or in person now become a disadvantage because of this box digital interview technology is now trying to put everyone in.  Companies that are facing new challenges don't necessarily need top performers like the ones they had in the PAST to take them into a new direction, and such people may actually not be capable of the fresh perspectives or ways of doing things needed, in which case the entire core assumption of this AI algorithm becomes a moot and harmful point.  And that is one of many many ways this thing is going to bite people and there will be no way to identify it as the source of the problem.

Who did they involve in creating and testing and validating this?  And I repeat what is the "ideal" by which all other candidates are being judged?  Show us the ideal face, the ideal movement, the ideal tone, the ideal vocabulary range, the ideal behaviour, etc programmed into this thing?  Judging me by an ideal that I haven't been given the specifications on is ridiculous and an insidious way of turning the Fortune 500 landscape into a Gattaca... with the same potential for horrific unidentified abuse as the foolproof crime prevention system in Minority Report.  Matter of fact the problems I am seeing with its attempt to regress all "chosen ones" to some not-publicly-known mean and how it can exclude people whose differences are potentially valuable assets (especially if a company needs to improve or change direction) is a concept explored in the Divergent movie.  Everyone who is Divergent from HireVue's ideal as programmed by a human with unknown unchecked and therefore unbalanced biases is going to be pushed to the bottom rungs of the rankings by this thing, and the only way they get a chance is if the chosen ones are unavailable, i.e. accepted another job so this one becomes a backfill, or had something drastic happen in their personal lives, or had something drastic on their background checks that made it impossible to hire them, or possibly ran up against a non-compete clause or conflict of interest/nepotism laws by accident.

This is dangerous and incredibly lazy of the HR departments that are using it, I mean you can't even be bothered to get out of bed to interview someone but expect to use up their time and have them get out of bed for you and still dress up fully in their suit, still put in the work, even more work now actually because they can't circle back around to a point or have a natural back and forth to get into a rhythm of any kind with their interviewer...  If I say something great the first time it gets WORSE for me trying to say it again and again, especially as the type of person whose job is to automate anything I have to do again and again, not just keep manually turning it out, so guaranteed the practice time is going to include details that I might forget to mention the next time around trying to get my face to look perfect for the camera and remember not to move either my hand or my body out of acceptable range while thinking of the answers.  You are adding a bunch of hoops to jump through on the candidate's end while the hiring managers and HR turn this into swipe left swipe right type near-zero effort deal like the dating apps.  It's as bad as these canned applications online that obliterate all the personality and effort of your resume.  If you know exactly what you want you should know it when you see it on a resume, and if you are having trouble finding it you need to lower your standards and be willing to train on the job more.  The emotional IQ of HR has been getting more and more repressed of late, or maybe just showing its true colours because a normally friendly and social process is now becoming quite sociopathic and cold with a con front of being better for you when its better for neither.  A corporation is a legal person without a soul.  It does not mean the people who work there have to become, or proliferate systems and applications that turn the people who work there into, that same description.

Keep in mind companies doing this are also completely disrespecting the fact that the interview process is not ONLY about them seeing if the candidate is likely to be a good fit for them, but is also supposed to be for the candidate to see if the company and the department will be a good fit based on how they are being treated during the process!  I refused to fill out applications for any such company with these rigid online applications that don't allow you to attach your resume to basic demographic info such as via Careerbuilder or LinkedIn, because I was turned off professionally and personally by any company still so archaic in its approach and by company recruiters were too lazy to read my resume and do their job.  And I'm considering refusing to do any interviews with companies using this type of AI to get out of doing their jobs and actually interacting with me during the interview process.  The only way such a one-sided judgmental approach would make sense to me is if the position itself will be remote.  If you don't have time to take the time needed to deal with people while trying to hire, and aren't willing to MAKE the time, then maybe a candidate should be wondering what it's going to be like working for such a company and trying to get a hold of the people with the power to authorize needed actions or changes.  

In the days when I actually filled out the rigid lengthy online applications, not a single one of them contacted me for an interview.  All interviews and actual  hires came from positions I was contacted by a recruiter about.  In a rare case a submission unsolicited to a job posting resulted in an interview, but the jobs where the company cared enough about getting the seat filled asap to have a contracting agency do the headhunting and initial weeding, are the ones that move fast enough on hiring to not waste months of your time trying to get the one position.   If they are going to turn this whole job search process into the ADD hyperdating scene many already can't stand in their personal lives, I think setting some standards as to what company and type of job all of these additional hoops are worth jumping through for, is in order.

That said, a Fortune 500 company recently selected me for first round of interviews and sent a digital interview request without even a heads up in advance that this was how their interview process worked... upon researching the company the first thing I see in Google reviews are SEVERAL very recent complaints from its customers that they cannot get a hold of a person at all with this company to resolve problems.  So the same aloof isolation from their potential employees that they are displaying is already being dished out to the customers... a company that doesn't change this will lose customers and their ability to keep my paycheck going along with it.  My concerns are valid and if you cannot be bothered with the people that make your company, I am not sure it makes sense to be bothered with you (if I am doing the job for the job description and not just for the money).  If I am just going to do a job for the money it's better I do one that doesn't require so much front-end investment on my end and so little on theirs.

There is a red flag somewhere in there when a company tries to avoid you as much as possible during the time when they have such a life-changing decision to make.   Companies want more from an employee or contractor than ever before but are giving less and less.  At some point one must reclaim one's professional self-esteem and determine what the timelines and returns on investment must be and what level of brand name the company must be before committing to all these hoops to jump through.  Honestly I think there is an increase in people not having any idea how to relate to people socially and so they are relying on AI and such to handle the burden of interacting with actual people for them.

Just as its risen with social media, the rise of inability to handle extended real-time social interactions that don't involve being stoned or drunk or unable to hear the other person over a din is happening in the large corporate workplaces.  Which is funny considering the emphasis placed on being able to fit with the team.  A team you now apparently won't even be given a summary glimpse into because not even the interviewer will be present for your interview.