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Robotics and AI in recruitment and selection practices

Published on August 31, 2023   27 min

A selection of talks on Management, Leadership & Organisation

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0:00
Hi and welcome to this talk on Robotics and AI in Recruitment and Selection Practices. I am Sladjana Nørskov, associate professor at Aarhus University in Denmark.
0:14
Recruitment and selection have experienced an increasing digitalization in the last few decades offering the opportunity for easier and faster procedures. Methods such as online applications, online psychometric testing, digital interviews, and gamified assessments have been taken up by organizations. In this context, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) have recently attracted attention for their applicability, visibility, and various other effects. AI and robotics allow certain tasks and processes which have typically been done by HR employees to be transferred to a machine. While organizations may have many reasons to consider robots and AI as part of recruitment and selection procedures, the following two reasons seem prominent. Firstly, to increase efficiency via automation, so for instance cost and time reduction or to release resources for other HR tasks and secondly, to increase objectivity of the process because AI and robotics may be able to reduce or eliminate human bias in hiring and thereby increase fairness, diversity, inclusiveness and so on. It is in particular the latter objective that is the focus of this talk.
1:36
Biases are indeed an important hurdle in application selection because they cause discrimination. Here I focus on implicit biases that involve rapid and automatic processing of information which occurs unconsciously and tends to be difficult to control and change. Such biases are challenging not only because of their unconscious nature, but also because they can be a direct contradiction to the consciously held values or beliefs of individuals. Assessment and selection of candidates may be biased due to well-known factors, such as the halo effect, homophily, homo sociality, confirmation bias and so on. In the case of employment interviews, implicit associations and the interviewer may have related to, for instance, physical appearance, obesity, race or gender are also some of the factors known to unintentionally influenced the way applicants are perceived and evaluated. Research has in fact documented that interviewers' affective processes & their subjective impressions during job interviews actually prevail over applicants' qualifications & skills. Such treatment of applicants may not only have ethical and social consequences discarding the most qualified candidates based on traits that are unrelated to the job position, it may also have among other things reputational and financial repercussions for the hiring organization.

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