Serious question, can we trust hiring algorithms that we can't audit?

I was talking to a recruiter friend last night over beers, and she dropped something on me that honestly stuck. She said her company uses an AI to screen resumes, but nobody at her firm actually knows how it ranks candidates. It just spits out a list of top 20 people and they move forward with those. She told me she tried to push back on one candidate who got rejected, but the system said no with zero explanation. That hit different because I realized this is happening everywhere right now. We are letting black box software decide who gets a shot at a job, and nobody can look under the hood to see if it's biased. How do we even start demanding transparency from these companies?

3 comments

3 Comments

kimfisher1mo ago

Damn, I used to be one of those people who thought AI hiring was a step forward honestly. I figured if it's a computer it has to be more fair than humans with their unconscious biases. But hearing your recruiter friend's story makes me realize how dumb that was. If the system can just say "nope" with zero explanation and even her pushback gets ignored, that's basically a hiring manager with god complex but zero accountability. We need to start demanding these companies show their work like we would with any other employee making these calls.

vera1951mo ago

Wait, how do you even push back when the system gives zero explanation?

sanchez.mary1mo ago

Yeah, same here. I totally bought the "fair computer" idea until I saw how hollow that promise really is.