Jamie DaSilva
Professor Helms
Critical Theory
May 7 2024
When applying for jobs we typically submit an application, get an email saying we have either moved onto the interview phase of the process or they are sorry to inform you that you are not a good fit for the position. When you move onto the interview phase you either go in person or now have the option to use a platform such as zoom in order to complete the interview virtually with the recruiter for that specific company. This is slowly changing and could possibly be the reason that getting a job has become so difficult for many applicants.
There are many companies straying away from this standard model of having human recruiters look through the many job applications that the company receives and replacing them with an AI algorithm that decides who would be a good fit for the position without having to use a human recruiter.
Over this past summer I had applied to over 30 jobs that stated they were looking for part time summer help. All of these jobs were minimum wage jobs that typically look for high school and college students for extra help. I only ever got to the interview phase for three of these jobs. It had nothing to do with my resume or not having the experience needed to complete these jobs because I had gone to many of the events on the Plymouth State University campus that help you workshop your resume. I was beyond frustrated by the end of the summer because I could not find a single job.
After this past summer was when I had found out that many companies were switching to using AI as a way to speed up the recruitment process and lighten the workload for many job recruiters. This makes me wonder if I did not get many of these jobs due to my resume appealing to the algorithm each company uses to recruit for specific positions.
According to an article titled 6 Companies Successfully Using AI in Their Recruiting Strategies written by Maggie Bleher that I found through linkedin, many companies are using these algorithms “successfully” to sift through the applications. These companies include Electrolux, Cigna, Kuehne+Nagel, Brother International Corporation, Stanford Health Care, and Thermo Fisher Scientific. In this article a representative for Electrolux states “This is the right [technology] for proactive talent pipelining, both inside and outside the company,” (6 Companies Successfully Using AI in Their Recruiting Strategies, Bleher). This shows that the recruiters for companies believe that this AI is the future and is helping them find the workers that they need, but how do we know that this algorithm is actually picking the most qualified candidates out of all the applicants? Is there a way to tell if these are the most qualified applicants if a human is not double checking the algorithm to see if it is working correctly?
Some companies are not only using AI to select applications that appear to be the best fit for certain positions, they are also using AI to conduct their interviews. These interviews are conducted by having the applicant record themself answering interview questions for the position and then sending it to the company for review. In some cases these interview recordings are reviewed by a human representative of the company, but an increasing number of companies are letting AI take complete control of the interview and picking candidates based on the algorithm set in place. Writers Zahira Jaser and Dimitra Petrakaki for Harvard Business Review state “And in the most extreme type of automated video interviews (AVIs), a bot asks a few predefined questions, giving the candidate a short window of time to answer them, and makes a decision about the person right then and there. We define these as AI-led interviews.(Are You Prepared to be Interviewed by AI, Jaser and Petrakaki)” This new form of interview is better for the companies because they are able to save money on labor of recruiters, but not great for the candidates. The interviews led completely by AI are using an specific algorithm that collects all kinds of data from your recording such as “visual (facial expression, eye movement, hand movement), verbal (vocabulary, key words), and vocal (voice tone, pronunciation). (Are You Prepared to be Interviewed by AI, Jaser and Petrakaki)” How is this sort of algorithm going to accurately predict whether someone is going to be an adequate employee if they are simply being compared to past employees? If this algorithm is simply looking at these interviews from a technical standpoint, there is no way of telling if the algorithm is correctly selecting candidates unless someone is double checking the decision after it has been made.
I find myself thinking back to the article There is No Ethical Use of AI written by Matthew Cheney when discussing the topic of AI used to help with job recruitment. In cheney’s article he discussed the implications of AI use specifically when it comes to the morality of using such technology in various settings. Cheney states “ Is a bullshit job still bullshit if a computer tool does most of it? Maybe it is, and maybe that’s actually a good thing, because perhaps if we have no chance of ending bullshit jobs, at least we can offload them to the algorithms” This idea of pushing jobs that we find to be undesirable onto a computer in order to make our lives a little better could be negatively impacting other areas of our lives. The idea that recruiters could possibly be pushing the responsibility of finding new employees onto these algorithms simply because they find it tedious poses serious questions in regards to working for such a company. Why would someone want to work for a company that does not even want to give me the time of day for something as simple as an interview? I feel that many people may be discouraged from working for companies using AI led interviews for the same reason, which may become a problem when looking for candidates when this style of interview becomes more common than it already is. In Cheney’s article he also mentions the environmental implications of an increased use of this type of technology. The more we use technology and increase the power needed to use such technology the more we are damaging the planet. This also sheds light on the moral implications of AI use in other aspects of the lives of humans, but animals and other ecosystems as well. Writers Joseph B. Keller, Manann Donoghoe, and Andre M. Perry further discusses the environmental implications in their article The US Must Balance Climate Justice Challenges in the Era of Artificial Intelligence by stating “Despite their operation in a virtual space, AI and the cloud have considerable tangible effects. They will intensify greenhouse gas emissions, consume increasing amounts of energy, and require larger quantities of natural resources. This emerges, in one form, through rising energy demands” This emphasizes the impacts that AI is going to have on our natural environment outside of the job market. This increase in energy demands is going to further accelerate the process of climate change more than it already has been by our recent technological advances. The planet is already changing for the worse due to technological advances and we are continuing to exacerbate the issues that have become prevalent by further pushing the work we do onto new technology that is going to put further strain on our resources.
AI is considered to be the technology of the future and seems to make the lives of many easier, but it is also making the lives of others more difficult. This begs the question, is AI actually helpful in the grand scheme of things or will it just raise more problems in the future? With this question in mind, I feel that AI is going to cause many areas of our lives to change in more negative ways such as the way we find jobs, as well as the planet as a whole. This technology may be new and exciting, but it has also proven to be extremely harmful already. With future advancements that will surely be made to AI we will have to wait and see if it becomes as useful as people have believed it can be.
Bibliography
Blehar, Maggie. “6 Companies Successfully Using AI in Their Recruiting Strategies.” 6 Examples of Companies Successfully Using an AI Recruiting Platform, 28 Sep. 2023, http://www.phenom.com/blog/examples-companies-using-ai-recruiting-platform.
Cheney, Matthew. “There Is No Ethical Use of AI.” Finite Eyes, 24 Mar. 2024, finiteeyes.net/technology/there-is-no-ethical-use-of-ai/.
Jaser, Zahira, and Dimitra Petrakaki. “Are You Prepared to Be Interviewed by an Ai?” Harvard Business Review, 22 Mar. 2023, hbr.org/2023/02/are-you-prepared-to-be-interviewed-by-an-ai.
Cameron F. Kerry, Joshua P. Meltzer, et al. “The US Must Balance Climate Justice Challenges in the Era of Artificial Intelligence.” Brookings, 20 Feb. 2024, www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-must-balance-climate-justice-challenges-in-the-era-of-artificial-intelligence/#:~:text=Despite%20their%20operation%20in%20a,form%2C%20through%20rising%20energy%20demands.
Sprockets and Springes 