The Ethical Dimension of AI in Recruitment: Balancing Technology and Human Judgment

AI has been at the forefront of today’s era of the digital revolution. We see its application in almost all kinds of platforms, and almost all of them are assisting humans in one way or another. One of the key implementations of AI that we have seen so far is its integration with Human resources applications. You may think that it may not be a good option to let AI do the assessment of a human; however, you would be surprised by the potential of an AI-assisted recruitment process. With the help of recruiters, I have been able to reduce the time to hire and close candidate onboarding before the set schedules. So far, it has been a remarkable application that has helped several organization tackle their hiring requirements. However, for some, there might be an ethical issue of AI in recruitment. So, let’s dive deep into this and see the potential of AI in recruitment. 

Also Read: Bridging the Gap: Enhancing Communication Between Interviewers and Hiring Teams with AI Notes

Rapid integration of AI in HR process

There has been a shift towards AI in the current digital landscape. And obviously, the human resource industry has also seen the changes from the front seat. Despite the changes and rapid advancement of the AI interview intelligence platform, we have seen an acceptance of the tool among users. People are willing to try out the tools and see the outcome of recruitment. In some or another, the integration of AI tools has led the organization to reduce the time to hire and accentuate quality hiring. It has also helped organizations create an excellent candidate hiring experience. However, there are still some ethical issues with AI in recruitment. 

Lets look at some of the benefits of AI in recruitment first

Before we delve into the nitty-gritty of ethical issues with AI in recruitment, let’s look at some of the impactful changes that AI has brought to the human resource industry.

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1. Efficiency in application processing

How many applications do you receive when you’re hiring a candidate? 10, 20, or 100, depending on the job profile and the experience criteria. If it is a fresher hiring, then it is chaos; there are just so many candidates to filter out just by looking at their CVs. AI can help you in this process and get you out of a pile of resumes. With a quick integration of AI into the Application tracking system, recruiters can shortlist candidates rapidly and fast-forward the complete hiring process. This simple process helps a lot in saving the time of recruiters, allowing them to focus on many important tasks at hand. 

2. Helping conduct interviews in a structured way

There is a huge gap among recruiters as well; some are skilled, and some are just starting their careers. However, no matter which side of the coin you are, the majority of recruiters tend to rely on their instincts while conducting an interview. This has sort of been the standard process of recruitment, and believe me, this has reduced the quality of hiring. In addition, It has also minimized candidate experience. 

The structured interview is meant to solve this issue by making sure each interview conducted is organized and well thought out. This gives room to the interviewers to explore more about the candidate’s performance and makes it more involved. Thus improving the candidate’s hiring experience. The structured interview also helps in organizing the interview to an extent, making it more friendly and simplistic for interviewers to conduct. 

Also Read: Revolutionizing Recruitment: The Impact of AI-Driven Interview Notes on Candidate Assessment

3. Candidate Score of Performance Analysis

You see, BarRaiser’s unique AI algorithm is not just capable of assisting an interview but can also create a candidate score. A candidate score is a unique benchmarking method of a candidate that is created with the help of several in-house AI algorithms. The method is quite simple; each interview has several hours of data about the candidate’s performance. Our system integrates this data with the interviewer’s feedback and creates a candidate assessment score. This score is a valuable rating that hiring managers can use to finalize the candidate. 

However, here, some may raise an ethical issue with AI in recruitment and assessment scores about a human candidate. Rest assured that these scores are just a rating factor based on several parameters. The hiring managers have full access to review each pointer about the candidate. In addition, they can also go ahead and overthrow these scores and take the final decision.

 4. Training with AI: Interviewer training 

It seems like a joke, isn’t it? How can an AI provide training to a human? However, this is somewhat possible when you have BarRaiser, the best video interview platform. When you have an AI system that is constantly analyzing data of candidates getting interviewed, it is also quite easy to analyze the performance of the interviewers as well. Each data point about the interviewer is consolidated into a report and then shared with the hiring manager. The managers can then provide their valuable feedback and help the interviewer hone their skills. 

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In addition, the interviewer training also helps in reducing biases from the interview. With the help of real-time interviewer feedback and the AI interview notes, it becomes quite helpful to reduce biases while conducting the interview. 

The ethical issues with AI in recruitment

Ethical challenges during the interview are quite a common issue. However, there is a grey area where AI exists. Let’s see it in detail.

1. Potential biases within AI algorithms

See, potential biases within AI algorithms can’t be ignored. It is a challenging situation when an AI is assessing humans on the basis of some predefined algorithms. Surely, there will be some set of rules that define a candidate’s performance, and for some people, it might be terrifying to know. AI is surely good; however, they are solely reliant on pre-defined algorithms, and if there is a ground-level error with the algorithm, then all the assessments are completely biased. So, if we look at it, then the organization needs to make sure that each AI system is well-trained, and has no in-code biases integration. This requires a consistent improvement of algorithms and transparency in the decision-making of the assessment.  

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2. Biases and fairness

If an AI is not well-trained, it can easily create ethical issues in recruitment. The data that is curated for training the AI can also make AI biases on certain parameters. You see, each data point is a figure and stats selected from history, and if you’re not careful, the AI can easily pick historical data with biases around a certain protected class. For that reason, it is highly important to also train AI in understanding biases around the protected class; this way, rather than mitigating biases, AI can tackle those issues. 

3. Human-centric approach

Perhaps the most debatable topic that has been so far, is the human-centric approach towards decision-making and assessment that AI lacks widely. And frankly speaking, no matter what we do, we won’t be able to match a judgment of humans in comparison to an AI. Hence, the future of AI in recruitment heavily relies on leveraging AI, not replacing humans. It is important to remember that AI should be used as a means to simplify and give structure to the hiring process. Hence, any decision-making of the candidate should always remain in a human hand. 

4. Ethical evolution 

AI in recruitment is an ever-evolving tool that has several branches and different areas to advance into. To cater to the ethical issue with AI in recruitment, it is highly important to develop an ethical framework alongside it. Here, different experts can help shape the primary base of the ethical guidelines, such as academic, technical, policymakers, etc.  This will ensure that AI has enough training and information to prioritize fairness, reduce biases, and promote transparency in recruitment. 

Also Read: How To Identify And Cultivate Characteristics Of Agile Mindset In Your Workforce

5. Monitoring and Ethical leadership

For an AI to work as a perfect hiring assistant, policies and ethical guidelines are just one end of the spectrum. The role of leadership is highly important in the development of an AI with ethical boundaries. The leadership has to establish ethical guidelines and be the gatekeeper of the policies and technicalities. In addition, the AI system also needs to be monitored for ethical issues and biases from time to time, and it should be improved on a timely basis. 

At the end

There is a huge ethical consideration with AI in recruitment. However, we can not overlook all the benefits an Interview intelligence tool can bring to a traditional hiring approach. It doesn’t just have some capabilities to improve the hiring experience; it can also speed the hiring process and reduce the time to hire. However, it is highly important for organizations to understand the ethical issues with AI and work around its improvement. It is also important for the people building the AI tool to have a deeper understanding of ethical boundaries and interview biases surrounding a protected class applicant. This will ensure that the future of AI for recruitment is in safe hands and is used with optimum caution. AI is the tool that is going to change the entire digital world; hence, it is highly important to build it in the safest way possible. 

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