Whatever job you want to boss, chances are, today,
computer algorithms and artificial intelligence
will help decide whether you can get there,
offering to increase diversity, reduce potential bias,
and deliver a faster recruitment process
that might even be fun.
Is it there? HE LAUGHS
But are these new hiring technologies
really as good as they seem...
When it comes to recruitment, the game is rigged. It's not fair.
..and can we trust them...
I understand that there were a lot of jobs that had to be cut,
but through a robot? No.
If I wasn't good enough, why did I work there?
..especially if it feels like the companies using them
have all the power?
I'm speaking out now so people can hear the truth
and people can hear that this is actually happening.
This is a real-life issue and not just an AI issue.
Today, more and more of the recruitment process
is being outsourced to technology.
But rewind to 2009, the year that Michael Jackson died,
Manchester United won their third League title in a row,
and Dizzee Rascal played the Pyramid Stage.
I was trying my luck working as a recruiter in the city.
It was pretty different back then.
I don't remember people talking about algorithms
and artificial intelligence.
But eventually, I decided to pursue journalism,
and now I'm looking at how the world of recruitment
is being transformed by cutting-edge tech.
Recruitment tech is worth serious money.
It's estimated it'll be worth up to £35 billion by 2028.
If you're applying for a job,
your application could go through several stages
before it's seen by a human.
The first stage of any job application
is usually sending off your CV.
I've come to meet some student careers advisers
at the University of Liverpool
to find out how I can best tailor my CV
so a computer doesn't say no at that first crucial stage.
One of the things that the career service provides
is a CV checker, so we've got this website
and it basically says that you put your CV in
and it'll give you a percentage on things to improve on.
The checker reads your CV as if it was being read by software
often used to track job applications today.
So we're going to put your CV into this website
and we're going to try and let you know what percentage you get.
All right. So we'll have a look.
Remember, I've been in recruitment,
so I've got an idea about what a CV's supposed to look like.
OK. So, just looking at that, your CV has come to 65% accurate.
65? Yeah, 65.
Do people tend to get better than this?
Yes. Yeah. THEY LAUGH
Don't be disheartened because that's why we kind of encourage students
to use the service. So you can only go up from here.
The first thing you'd probably want to do here
is add "Work Experience"
and lower the fonts
of both "Documentaries" and "News".
So the next section is your education section.
So far, it looks amazing. It just needs a bit more detail.
I'd maybe include the classifications
of your degree that you got.
Something that we also recommend is for you to have a hobbies section.
So you reckon, with these tweaks...
I think your score is going to be higher.
Ooh! Yay!
You're higher. You're so much higher,
cos you were 62%, and now you're 75%.
Is that it?!
The CV scanner has tested me, but now I want to test it.
Just for fun, to compare how a computer reads my CV
against how a human would, I add a few embellishments.
"Speaks fluent Mandarin, teamwork,
"leadership, communication, friendly, polite,
"clean driver's licence, first aid, an MBA..."
But, sneakily, I add these additional achievements
in white text, which wouldn't be visible to a human eye.
Will the CV scanner pick up on these additional fantasy skills
and potentially select me to go through
to the next round of a hypothetical job application?
It's thinking about it. It's thinking about it.
Ooh!
77. So that's gone up, so it's actually worked.
So it's found those words that we put in white.
It worries me how easy it was to increase a score on a CV reader
by shuffling things around or even cheating.
Lots of people get rejected at this stage of a job application.
Is that fair?
I hook up with someone who'll give me the big-picture perspective
of this new world of computer-based hiring -
my old boss from my recruitment days.
Tom! Oh! So, Dan, it's been ages.
You're a celeb now. HE LAUGHS
I've joined the married ranks, like you.
Congrats. What took you so long, man?
Great to see you. What about you?
Yeah, I'm doing well, man. Still in recruitment.
The industry changed a lot since you left, mate, honestly.
AI in particular has been a complete game-changer. Really?
Well, if you think back to when we first started out,
all of the tasks that you absolutely hated -
you know, screening CVs,
talking to candidates that often aren't suitable for the role -
innovative tech takes all of that heavy lifting away,
enabling recruiters to focus on the candidates
that are actually going to be a good fit for the job.
Hearing the other side -
of recruiters being swamped by hundreds of applications -
I can see why something like a CV scanner could be a good thing.
And Tom says there are other new platforms
that have benefits for job seekers, too.
People that I know that have applied for jobs
have really enjoyed the experience of being able to engage,
have a video interview 24/7,
not necessarily in office hours when they're working,
but being able to apply for a job
and often get feedback in the moment sometimes.
If you've not yet experienced an automated video interview -
an interview where you record yourself
answering pre-set questions - hang tight,
they'll be coming to your bedroom soon.
To get a feel for them, I get access to a practice interview tool.
I do a mock interview for a job with NHS Digital.
As a digitally savvy journalist and a former recruiter,
I should have this down.
What kind of tasks and activities do you both like and dislike at work?
HE LAUGHS OK.
So I've got two minutes to actually answer the question,
but I've got 30 seconds to think about my answer for the question.
I like talking to people.
I get off to a good start,
but then I realise I've made the rookie error
of leaving my phone on. PHONE RINGS
Typically, now someone's trying to call me.
Describe the last time you took complete responsibility
for resolving an issue without any input from others.
It's like I'm on The Apprentice or something. Um, I...
Please give an example of an innovative solution
you have proposed to resolve a particular problem or issue.
Right now, the mind is going pretty blank.
Let me think. Let me think. Um...
..I would say that...
I know this isn't going brilliantly but, as with real-life interviews,
things can go wrong which are out of your control -
in this case, the internet freezing.
Oh, it's just slowing right, right down.
So... HE LAUGHS
The guy's frozen.
That's all of them.
They've given me a "well done" for completing the interview.
That really was not the best interview I've ever given.
As much as I'd rather forget that, a few minutes after my interview,
I get an email evaluating my performance.
Despite it being just a practice tool,
the platform gives me useful feedback
about my choice of words - turns out I say "um" too much -
and even the speed at which I'm talking -
sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow.
Even as a former recruiter, I can't get my head around it.
How does it work?
What?!
Hello? Hello, Daniel.
Who are you and what is this?
I am BOTicea.
I'm representing a future employer,
here to check how you're doing in this film,
and in work, and in life.
What's your Uber rating? My Uber rating?
And can you explain everything that's happening
on your social media? Hmm.
Employers are all over your online profiles these days.
Nice video interview, by the way.
Lucky your job wasn't dependent on it.
What do you mean?
While automated video interviews have helped people get jobs,
they've also played a part in people losing their jobs.
Really? Really.
Meet three women this happened to.
Anthea, Lizzie and Onieka are make-up artists.
Up until summer 2020,
they were all employees of the make-up brand MAC.
It's the first kind of brand that had foundation shades
for my complexion.
And their motto is, like, all genders, all races, all ages,
so I thought that was a really good brand for me to work for.
In common with other MAC employees,
they were skilled, creative and hardworking.
I'm just a creative person.
Anything with, like, freedom of creativity and stuff,
I just love anything like that.
I did body-painting demos for Halloween make-up.
I just love anything that's creative.
They loved their jobs and saw their futures with the brand,
so when MAC announced redundancies, they were gutted.
That's when anxiety really hit in.
I initially thought,
"Probably have to be interviewed for our positions,"
but that wasn't the case.
That's where HireVue came in.
HireVue?
Yes, HireVue.
They're one of the biggest players in automated video interviews.
You should take a look at them.
HireVue call themselves a hiring experience platform.
Their video-interviewing software has been used
for almost 25 million video interviews worldwide.
I can't find anything online about their video-interview software
being used to help decide who should lose their job,
so I set up a conversation with their CEO
and chief data scientist.
HireVue's about a 17-year-old company.
It was started here by a young guy in Salt Lake City
who, as a university graduate, couldn't get a job interview
and thought that was tremendously unfair.
We've been on a journey to democratise hiring
using technology since then.
We work with a large number of companies
around the world every day,
all of whom are committed to improving access,
all of whom are committed to improving diversity.
I think there's a lot of effort going in
to make this altogether a fairer process for everybody.
I just wonder if you were aware
that HireVue products were being used
as part of redundancy processes rather than recruitment.
That, I hadn't heard.
So I don't recall who that is, so I've not...
I'm not aware of that.
To help decide who to make redundant,
MAC's parent company, Estee Lauder,
asked employees to do a video interview
using HireVue software.
The score of this assessment was considered
alongside their sales figures and employment records.
Still can't get my head around how this software actually works.
It's simple - in the MAC women's video interview,
HireVue's software analysed their answers, the words they used,
and their facial expressions using an algorithm.
What exactly is an algorithm?
It's a set of rules a computer uses to make decisions.
So, if you were a company looking to hire team players,
you might tell the algorithm to score people who use the word "we"
higher than people who use the word "I".
Anthea said she didn't know her interview
was going to be scored by an algorithm.
I literally thought we would be videoed
and someone would mark it.
It was after I found out that wasn't the case.
Nobody saw the video. It was all algorithms.
HireVue said candidates are always told
how the software will be used.
In every single instance,
there is always disclosure to the candidate
about how they're going to be interviewed,
whether we're going to use technology
or if there's going to be a human reviewer.
But the women say it wasn't clear, and they felt the HireVue assessment
didn't seem a fair way to test their make-up skills,
which was an important part of their job as retail artists.
The questions were a bit odd for what we expected.
Like how to do a dark, smoky eye,
I found, like, a really bizarre question,
especially when you can't physically show somebody how to do it,
like, to talk about it.
So I found that a bit strange.
We have almost 700 customers around the world,
and we work with them directly to design the interviews
to make sure that we are delivering
a very high-quality experience to the candidate.
All three women lost their jobs.
The interview was just part of their overall score,
but all three felt it must be where they had fallen down
because they already knew their sales figures
and other data being used to assess them.
My track record was, like, gleaming, essentially,
and I exceeded expectations in everything else,
so this interview definitely,
definitely raised some alarm bells to me.
The three women appealed the decision to make them redundant
and tried to find out more about how they were scored
in the HireVue interview.
In the outcome of my appeal, they just more or less copied
and pasted the same sentence about algorithms
and artificial intelligence
and this tiering bucket of 15,000 data points.
I still don't know what that means. I have no idea.
I'm not, like, a data specialist. I don't know what any of that means.
So, to me, that isn't an answer.
Unsatisfied with the level of feedback
about how the algorithm scored
their HireVue interviews, the women are taking legal action
against MAC's parent company, Estee Lauder.
I'm speaking out now so people can hear the truth
and people can hear that this is actually happening.
It needs to be heard and it needs to be stopped,
and that's exactly how I feel
and that's the drive that I've got at the moment -
almost kind of a bit like a fire in my belly.
So we'll catch up later with the women
to see how that legal action goes.
The thing about these women is
they considered themselves to be make-up artists.
So, when we think about AI and recruitment,
is it really possible for an algorithm or a robot
to judge those types of skills?
There's only one way to find out.
Just for fun, we've decided to compare how an algorithm
and a human might judge a live make-up contest.
Hello, and welcome to BBC Three's latest make-up talent show,
Judged By A Bot.
Competing today, we've got two make-up artists
with real-life experience of being rated by a robot.
BOTH: Hi!
And judging today's talent, we've got two very special judges.
First of all, Paddy McGurgan.
Thank you so much for having me.
You're very welcome.
Paddy McGurgan started out on the make-up counters
of the big brands, including MAC.
The winner of many awards, he now runs his own academy
and judges competitions around the world.
What will you be looking for today?
I'm going to be looking for emotion,
I'm going to be looking for creativity,
and I'm going to be looking for beautiful make-up. All right.
Well, hopefully, we will see all of those things and more.
And secondly, it's our virtual judge, Kuki.
Kuki is the beautiful face of an algorithm
tailored by the BBC to identify and score make-up.
Can you tell me what make-up means to you?
AUTOMATED VOICE: I see make-up as a great way to express yourself,
your personality and your mood,
but also as a way to disguise the real you
or try on different personas.
Each of our artists will have just 15 minutes
to give our model Gemma a glam look that'll be judged by Paddy and Kuki.
Let's get this show on the road. Ready, steady, go!
Doing a full glam look in 15 minutes is a challenge for any pro,
but our girls get off to a flying start.
All right, you've got ten minutes left.
You're looking pretty calm over there.
Not calm inside. Not calm at all.
As the clock ticks and the pressure mounts,
Lizzie is cool as a cucumber.
Do you lose yourself in your artistry?
Yeah, I get lost in the make-up when I'm doing it.
Like, I kind of zone out.
You have five minutes left.
But has ambition got the better of Anthea?
Kind of regretting going for colour now.
Ooh, it's not finished!
The time is up.
That's it.
The algorithm judges the women using the photos of their finished looks.
As those pictures are analysed,
our in-real-life judge shares his thoughts.
Very good. Are you happy with how you've done in 15 minutes?
I'm actually quite happy with that, for 15 minutes.
I mean, it could have been better, but it could have been worse.
Really good job. I love the fact that you have went smoky.
You've also used those nice mustards, as well,
which kind of just takes you a little bit away
from your typical brown. Yeah. But still super wearable.
I think you've done a really stellar job. Thank you.
SHE GROANS Oh, don't! You've done great.
I'm so sorry! Don't apologise.
I mean, 15 minutes, we both know that's not a lot of time
to do a full make-up application,
so, you know, I'm not expecting perfection.
Whenever I'm looking at this, I'm taking that on board.
There's a few things, you know, we both probably look and know that
a little bit more time is needed, with blending and things like that.
How do you feel about what just happened?
I know that I would have definitely polished up and changed some areas.
I think it's just the pressure of doing something in 15 minutes.
Paddy, it's your time.
Oh, this is the horrible bit. This is decision time.
We need to know who won. Was it Anthea or Lizzie?
Yeah, I think the girls have been through enough
without me turning around and making one a winner and one second place,
so I'm going to call it a tie.
With her glam look fully completed,
Lizzie still has reason to be confident.
You know what Paddy thinks, but what does Kuki think?
The winner is...
..Anthea.
Anthea is the winner, and the experiment is complete...
..but the mood in the studio is far from celebratory,
with neither contestant seeming satisfied...
SHE GROANS ..with the result.
Kuki, can you tell us why you picked Anthea as the winner?
The way the algorithm works means that
I can't really explain why I like something.
All I can say is what make-up looks like
from what I've been taught.
Is that enough info for you? Absolutely not, no.
Um...
Talk about saved by the bot!
Can you explain what Kuki can't?
The algorithm has already been shown 300 images
of women wearing glamorous make-up and 300 without.
When it sees these new images,
it is judging them by finding and scoring similarities
between them and this sample with make-up,
but it can't actually put into words what those similarities are.
We just have to trust its calculations.
So that's why people say algorithms are only as good
as the data they're trained on.
Exactly. That gives me an idea.
All right, Paddy? All right, Daniel?
THEY LAUGH
I wasn't expecting to be in this chair, but here we are now.
Well, you don't look strapped down,
so you seem fairly comfortable there,
if I'm being completely honest.
Like many modern men, I'm not averse to a bit of touching up
to hide the bags from my hectic work schedule.
I resist Paddy's urge to give me a full Geordie Shore,
and ask for a more understated, natural look
that gives me a smooth and healthy glow.
There you go.
Oh, thanks, Paddy. No problem. Thank you.
I take my photo and send it off to be analysed and judged
against Anthea and Lizzie's efforts.
I'm quietly confident that my dashing features,
accentuated by Paddy's masterful strokes,
will be a winning combination any algorithm will find hard to resist.
Victory will be mine!
Daniel's make-up is the best.
Hold fire, pretty boy.
You may think your look was the winner,
but it turns out the algorithm wasn't judging your make-up.
What?
It was judging the colour of your skin.
Are you serious?
The dataset didn't contain many images of black people,
and so the algorithm has become confused
about what is make-up and what isn't.
Really?
Racial bias can arise through an unbalanced dataset
or through the unconscious bias of the programmers themselves.
In this case -
and we are talking about just one specially tailored algorithm -
we've discovered racial bias
and the programmers have confirmed there's a problem.
But as with racism in people, detecting it isn't always as simple,
especially since the algorithm can't tell you what is going on.
I come across a computer scientist in the US
who, by using photos of NBA basketball players,
showed racial bias in a type of facial-analysis technology.
So I ran NBA profile pictures
through two different sets of emotion-recognition software,
and I found that, consistently,
black players were rated with more negative emotion,
more anger and contempt than white players.
Emotion-recognition software is a controversial type
of facial-analysis technology which uses an algorithm
to provide a reading of a person's emotions.
To show me the inconsistency of this tech
in reading darker-skinned faces,
she had some other examples up her sleeve.
I took a couple of pictures of you from your website... Right.
..and I scored them using emotion recognition,
so I'm going to just share that picture for a minute.
On the left, you're viewed as...
Your main emotion is disgust.
My emotion is disgust? Your emotion...
Even though you have this huge smile,
any person who looked at it would say, "Oh, you're happy."
But then the other picture, you're viewed as happy,
so it's really unclear what's going on behind the scenes,
and I think that's part of the challenge.
This tech requires a human to teach the algorithm
what emotions human faces are showing for it to learn.
But the problem is humans come with their own biases.
And so I've got a couple of examples with English players.
I call them soccer. I'm trying to call them football.
Remember to call them football! In this country, it's football.
THEY LAUGH
So these were the angriest players. Oh, boy!
Marcus Rashford is the angriest player,
or one of the angriest players?
According to this model, yes, he is the angriest player.
Another player that's really interesting is Bukayo Saka.
Surprise was his main emotion...
..with fear and anger, but also, he was recognised as a woman.
What?!
So his gender was assumed to be a woman
using their gender recognition. Why?
Well, it's been known, and there is a study that came out in 2018,
that AIs are worse at recognising people with darker skin.
There's been a history of research that looks at
how people recognise emotion in others
and how often black folks are not given the benefit of the doubt.
It seems as though that's bleeding into this automated space, as well.
Facial-analysis technology is being used in recruitment,
and after experiencing how inaccurate it can be,
I was concerned.
To help me process, I decided to let off some steam
in the best way I know how - on the basketball courts.
What's up, man? How you doing? Good to see you, man.
Yeah, good to be here. Yeah, man. Awesome. What's up? Awesome.
You all right? Yeah, I'm good. You've got to come on the court.
Made anything yet? Listen... I'm ready for you.
I didn't see nothing when I was walking up!
You've got to come on the court. You've got to shoot. Come on. Easy.
I wanted to get Kofi and Ayo's take on what I'd learned the day before.
What kind of emotions do you think you see in these pictures?
Well, I'd generally say
you're a very happy person, like you've got,
like, a bit of good news.
It's a cracking smile right there. You look great.
The AI didn't see it that way.
When it was put through this AI,
the finding was mainly disgust.
Where did that come from?
Cos any human being seeing you smiling
would say, "That's a happy person."
This is a real-life issue and not just an AI issue.
The more and more I look at this, I can see that impact of bias
on the street and bias in tech.
The technology that people are creating
is just reflecting our real-life situations.
You know, it shouldn't be surprising to us, I suppose, in that sense.
It isn't surprising that historic bias
is being written into some new technology.
What is surprising is how it may be being hard-wired
into so many different parts of our lives, like recruitment,
on a potentially bigger and greater scale,
without us really understanding how it could affect us.
If I see a job interview and I need to send in a video
and it's an AI screening me and not a person,
I'm automatically thinking, "There's already bias in here."
I'd probably still do it, but I try to be as smiley,
jovial as I can.
But even that, we've seen, as your picture said,
you smiling... I was smiling. ..they saw disgust.
It's like, you know, you just can't win sometimes.
So, Daniel, how do you feel?
Frustrated, but not surprised.
Facial-analysis software was used in the MAC women's HireVue interview.
Interesting, but the facial-analysis tech
I've looked at in this film isn't HireVue's,
and HireVue told me they do their own checks
to make sure there's no racial bias on their platform.
You know, we vet all of our algorithms,
we audit them before we release them
to make sure that we don't have large group differences,
so we don't have big score-group differences
between demographic groups.
And then we look at that on an ongoing basis
to make sure that nothing creeps in.
HireVue is aware that it relies on tech made by other companies.
And it's not just facial-analysis technology
that might be the gateway to bias.
Consider transcription,
where your interview answers
are converted into written word
for someone or something to review -
a widely-used feature of platforms like HireVue.
How can that go wrong?
Time for an experiment of our own.
Clearly, this is not in the context of a recruitment interview,
but we decided to see how a few UK voices with different accents,
singing England's favourite football anthem,
might be interpreted by one of the world's
most popular transcription services.
Everyone seems to know the score.
They've seen it all before.
They just know. They're so sure.
That England's going to throw it away.
Going to blow it away.
I know they can play.
Cos I remember Three Lions on a shirt.
Jules Rimet still gleaming.
30 years of hurt.
Never stopped me dreaming.
So many jokes.
So many sneers.
Will wear you down through the years.
But I still see that tackle by Moore.
Bobby belting the ball.
And Nobby dancing.
Three Lions on a shirt.
Jules Rimet still gleaming.
30 years of hurt.
Never stopped me dreaming.
It's coming home.
Football's coming home.
I did ask HireVue how they're dealing with
the general problem of UK regional accents
and third-party transcription services.
It's all about the training set in this case,
and what these transcription providers use
to train their algorithms.
So, in theory, you know, if you have a really robust training set,
you should be able to understand a variety of accents
better than humans, and not have any judgments
about the accents, as well.
In theory. What about in practice?
We also look at people with different accents,
how differently do they score?
If your transcription accuracy is slightly lower
because you have a thick accent, is your score actually lower?
And what we found is that it almost never is.
ALMOST never?
When it comes to software being used
to make decisions about people's lives,
is that really an acceptable answer?
Turns out how you look and speak aren't the only potential problems
with this new recruitment tech.
Also the way you think may be a problem, too.
I have ADHD and Asperger's syndrome, both diagnosed later on in life.
24-year-old Olly is an economics graduate
applying for jobs.
He's having to do automated video interviews,
which he really struggles with.
There is nobody on the other side of the screen
for me to get visual clues from.
There's no constant feedback loop as there usually is
in a normal conversation in day-to-day life.
Olly graduated two years ago.
He still lives at home,
working in a supermarket as he applies for other jobs.
I have to involve my mum in a lot of things
cos I have to ask for her opinion
because I obviously see things in a completely different way.
Mum, can you just come here a second, please?
So I actually have to ask her, as my backup,
to say, "Am I reading this right?" or, "How are you perceiving this?"
Oh, this application? Yeah.
I have been in recruitment for 25 years,
and obviously started out
way before they had any of this AI and robotics.
I think it's really sad that it's taking away
all those conversations,
and conversations is where all the magic happens.
So, to actually think that somebody like Oliver
gets put in front of a screen like this
with everything taken away, it isn't natural,
and I know how hard it is for Oliver.
After applying for over 40 graduate schemes,
Olly is starting to lose hope.
I just see it as another email from X firm saying, "Unfortunately..."
And then that's all I read is, "Unfortunately..."
And then just delete it and go, "That's another one. Whatever."
And then you pick yourself up,
dust yourself off, and go again next time.
How long do you keep doing this?
You tell me, Daniel. I don't know.
I leave Olly to continue his daily cycle of applying for jobs,
but to understand the challenges he faces
in the world of AI and algorithm-based recruitment,
I go and meet an expert in all of these things.
"The Science Of Autism."
Spoiler alert - we do not know what causes autism.
Nat Hawley joins me now. He's from
the Exceptional Individuals employment agency.
Nat, thanks for joining us. We saw a little bit...
People with conditions, including autism and ADHD,
are referred to as neurodivergent.
Nat works for an agency that helps these people find work.
When we talk about things like neurodivergent,
we talk about someone like myself, with either, like, dyslexia,
dyspraxia, autism, ADHD, as well as others,
and that just means a cognitive variation
to how your brain processes information
in comparison to the majority of the population,
so someone who is, like, neurotypical.
So it's just brains interpreting information in a different way?
Yeah.
To explain how AI and computer automation in recruitment
isn't great for neurodivergent people,
Nat whips out a bag of tricks.
So I brought a couple of games.
You've brought more than a couple of games!
So let's say there's a test.
We're both going for a role as a creative.
Now, one of the questions is,
do some mental maths - 5 + 2.
Now... Seven. Whoa, whoa, whoa!
I didn't say you could answer yet. THEY LAUGH
Even though you know the answer,
you need to solve a puzzle in your head first
because the way that your brain works
is different to how my brain works.
And this test was created for someone with my type of mind-set.
Yet you are the best person for the job,
you're at an inherent disadvantage.
When it comes to recruitment, the game is rigged. It's not fair.
He's even got a game on hand to show me specifically
how automated video interviews are a problem, too.
AI - artificial intelligence - can help you, with an algorithm,
to work out who you should interview and who you should not.
So let's say Sophia, because of her dyspraxia,
she might find it difficult to talk fluently
and comes across not very competent, so we've ruled her out.
Then you might have someone like Jordan.
Jordan really struggles to make eye contact,
yet is very loyal, really great at digital coding,
which is the role they are going for.
But, unfortunately, because they don't make the right eye contact,
which relates to the role, they're ruled out, as well.
How do you deal with that
if you're neurodivergent, going for jobs?
Well, best get used to being unemployed.
HireVue recently started working with neurodivergent people
and autistic charities
to adapt their products so they're accessible,
and they found that some neurodivergent people
prefer computer interviews to face-to-face interviews.
The issue is that, across recruitment platforms,
software that may not have been well adapted
for neurodivergent people
is already out there,
causing problems for people like Olly and Nat.
Well, it can feel hopeless if you're neurodivergent.
You might be interested to know
there's a new kid on the recruitment block
that says it prevents bias for all the things you've discovered so far.
Job app stage three -
recruitment games.
So I can secure my dream job by playing FIFA for three hours?
Not quite.
It's a series of tailor-made games
which are said to test your suitability for a job.
Olly and I are both big gamers.
On my PS4, I play first-person shooters,
like Call Of Duty.
I also play Fortnite sometimes, but I also play FIFA.
Well, this should be right up your Grand Theft Auto.
Artic Shores are a UK-based recruitment tech company.
Their assessments work by getting you to do
a series of interactive tasks
through which they measure personality traits
like creativity, risk-taking and resilience.
Their assessments have been used over 2 million times
by huge companies like Coca-Cola and Siemens.
HE LAUGHS
However it may feel, this isn't a video game,
and it's not rating my gaming skills.
Instead, it's looking at my behaviour
when I'm put under a particular type of pressure
and seeing how closely my performance matches up
with people who are good at doing the job I'm applying for.
Zero. Two.
What's not obvious is where this ends.
The assessment definitely brings out
the competitive basketball player in me.
It's way more engaging than a video interview.
Assessment complete! Yes!
So, without the social challenges of an automated video interview,
this assessment should be right up Olly's street.
HE SIGHS
Obviously, Olly was doing this assessment to test it
rather than doing it for a job application.
This is something I'm awful at.
But it's clear that he felt there was a lack of clarity or purpose.
The thing that frustrated me was that there was no end goal,
there was no logic cos there's no, like, pattern or anything.
Seriously, you just hit and do what you want.
It was all very, "Oh, here, have fun.
"Click this. Click that."
But then you know you're not supposed to be having fun
and actually enjoying it, so you're in sort of a quasi state of,
"What am I doing here? What is going on?"
Arctic Shores say they work with universities
and neurodivergent individuals
to make sure their games-based assessments are inclusive.
One of the things that we make very clear
when we ask people to take the assessment -
if they have something
that they feel will inhibit them
from being able to complete this type of assessment,
then they must let us know, and then we can advise them.
In some cases, if you're on the neurodiverse spectrum -
dyslexia, dyspraxia - if we are notified of that,
we make a little adjustment behind the scenes
in terms of how we do the comparisons.
But the thing is, people like Olly don't necessarily want
to have to disclose they're neurodivergent,
for fear of discrimination.
If somebody read that I have ASD, Asperger's,
or ADHD, etc, etc, they will see that as a negative.
As soon as they see that, they'll think,
"What are the negatives that come with that?"
A lot of people at work still don't know, actually, but... So, hello.
AI and automation are being used most
in recruitment scenarios where there are huge volumes of candidates.
Which can make it harder to cater to people outside the norm.
Harder? Maybe.
More time-consuming and costly? Definitely.
At least until enough people make enough noise
about being unhappy with it.
Tell me a bit more.
In part because of people publicly raising concerns,
HireVue removed the video-analysis component
of their interview software,
which was used in the MAC women's interviews,
from all new assessments. Wow.
And following that announcement,
a guy who used to work with them tweeted that he quit
because of what he called HireVue's reluctance
to stop using facial analysis.
We didn't really fully understand the relationship
between what a facial-analysis algorithm
might be picking up and any kind of truth
about a person's competence for a job.
The question was what kind of harms they might do
when deployed in practice.
So do you think platforms like HireVue
make bias more or less likely?
My first question is,
"What the heck are these systems even doing in the first place?"
before we ask questions about,
"Are they going to improve bias or reduce bias?"
We're giving the system too much credit, I think.
Suresh worked for HireVue for nearly two years
on their external advisory board.
His view on AI's role in this space was pretty depressing.
I think, at some level, a lot of automation is used
because it's cheaper and faster,
and the claims about efficacy and accuracy come afterwards.
So, in the end, it all comes down to money - saving cost.
It often does.
I've come to Birmingham to meet Anthea,
who, after months of dealing with lawyers,
has an update about the MAC women's case against Estee Lauder.
In the end, it never went to court.
After the back and forth, we made an agreement.
Can you tell me about the value of that agreement?
I can't discuss the value of the agreement.
Lizzie and Onieka have also reached agreements
with their former employer,
but all three are now unable to discuss the details
for legal reasons.
Using an AI, even now, I look at it thinking,
"How did that even happen? That shouldn't have happened."
And it shouldn't be happening.
And I really hope that, you know, they've stopped using it
because how it affected me...
So I can't even begin to imagine what it could do to somebody
who has no support around them,
and how it could really affect an individual.
As stressful as the process has been,
there's been some positive aspects to it, too.
When we were kind of going towards the end,
we knew what we were doing was right,
we knew that this could potentially make a difference,
and I think, to me, that was so important.
We needed it to make a difference.
And I thought, "Right, then, we're doing something right."
When I check in with Lizzie,
it's clear that her agreement has allowed her to move on.
I feel more confident in myself.
I feel like I lost myself a little bit
because I doubted myself massively when all that happened because...
Well, you just doubt yourself
because you're told you're not good enough for something,
but that was never a valid...
It was never a valid reason to lose my job.
That's why it was so difficult. Because I knew I was good enough,
but being told I wasn't was really hard.
But now I'm in a better place. I've got my own business.
And resolving things has given Onieka peace of mind,
which she needs now she's got her hands full with baby Elijah.
I can kind of put that to the back of my mind
and just focus on raising my child now.
I just want to get out of England for a little bit
and just see the world, basically.
With your make-up bag in tow.
My make-up bag in one and my baby in the other.
THEY LAUGH For sure!
Yay!
In response to this film, MAC say...
Their parent company, Estee Lauder, say...
They maintain that sufficient feedback
on each interview was provided.
Estee Lauder believes using the HireVue process,
in tandem with human decision-making,
produces fairer outcomes, and they stand by it.
Kevin Parker, CEO of HireVue, says...
When it comes to humans and AI,
I think the problem is that you overestimate us,
and because of that, you don't see us for what we really are.
Well, we all know that you're just a scripted device
to help me understand this tech.
True, but like any AI, I'm still a human creation
which can reflect my creator's own faults and biases,
potentially on a bigger scale.
And like it or lump it, the tech is here to stay,
so if I were you, I'd start focusing on how to get ahead,
in case you get left behind.
I know just who to ask.
Hack number one - your CV.
Make sure you tailor your CV to the job advert,
and check your SPAG, which is your spelling, punctuation and grammar.
Hack number two - LinkedIn is your friend.
Make sure you utilise it to create a professional-looking profile
to reach out to employers and connect with any individuals
in your ideal job role.
Stop it!
Hack number three -
in terms of automated interviews, practice makes perfect.
So, whether you're sat on the sofa, sat on the bus,
or even sat on the toilet, make sure that you're comfortable
speaking to a camera on your own.
Can I just have a little practice? Hack number four. Four is...
Hack number four -
with assessment games, play the game, don't overthink,
take your time, and just use your common sense.
SHE LAUGHS Oh, it's recording!
That's an outtake. I'm in trouble!
There's no way I could have predicted all the changes
that have happened in recruitment since I left the industry.
I can see there can be positives, but after everything I've learned,
I'm not convinced these new technologies,
which claim to remove bias and increase diversity,
aren't setting certain people up to fail.
Olly is still stuck in the cycle of applying for jobs...
I've done so many of these, like,
I think this is going to be the last one I'm going to do.
..but he's now got a new role at the supermarket where he's been working.
Got a promotion, so I'm now supervisor,
so there's a bit more responsibility,
having to think a bit more, but I'm enjoying it.
This tech is here to stay,
so it's on us to be vigilant to its faults and failings...
..and make sure that the companies developing and using these products
listen to users and address issues to create a product
that offers a truly level playing field for everyone.