an AI resume screener had been trained on CVs of employees already at the firm, giving people extra marks if they listed “baseball” or “basketball” – hobbies that were linked to more successful staff, often men. Those who mentioned “softball” – typically women – were downgraded.
Marginalised groups often “fall through the cracks, because they have different hobbies, they went to different schools”
You consider applicants who show up to a bank/office type job interview in sweatpants and a T-shirt with a skeleton making a rude gesture?
Please tell me the country where declining to offer that candidate a job would be illegal.
There is also the question/prep element. Something like, “tell me about a time you used x tool” or “what would you do if faced with y challenge”. No longer than 30s needed to respond, but very obvious when someone has been generous on their resume.
Once again, this video recording tool is an option that I think makes sense for jobs where it relates to the required skills. Don’t videoconference? Work from home? Never have to interact with customers or other external parties? Probably not the tool I would use in hiring.
Australia. It’s not clearly illegal but it’s dangerous territory. Candidates have a general right to be treated as equals and you need to reject someone for reasons that are relevant to the job position.
Something that can easily be changed, like a shirt, might not be OK. ANZ bank (a massive bank with several hundred billion dollars in assets they manage), for example, requires customer facing staff to wear a branded uniform but back at the office? You can wear whatever you want. When they changed their dress code years ago to no-longer require a suit/tie the CEO deliberately wore ugly clothes for a while to set an example.
Obviously no candidates are expected to turn up to an interview in their uniform - they don’t have a uniform yet. And if someone can wear a Marilyn Manson shirt in the office, then why not also at the interview?
The bank I’m with is even more relaxed - even customer facing staff can wear anything they want. Sure, if it’s offensive they’ll be told to wear something else, but that’s a conversation I’d be having with the candidate rather than a reason to reject their application. I might reject them if I don’t like their response.
You’re focusing on the dress part. There’s still the actual questions and overall sense of calm and comfort a person has in communicating on video, a skill that directly maps to this specific job.
I can’t imagine a front-of-house bank teller would need to have these skills. Maybe a question like, “tell me about a time a customer was unhappy and how you handled the situation?”. In which case, I imagine some people would like the chance to think about it at their leisure and record once or twice, and rewatch it before submitting to make sure they’re happy with it.
Being recorded and interacting with someone in person are hugely different. Even
First of all, a person would give nonverbal feedback.
Secondly, there is all manner of body language that could be used for emphasis that doesn’t make sense doing to a camera.
In the case of a single bank teller position with a dozen applicants, you’re right, a prerecorded video probably isn’t the most effective tool.
Imagine a company like Ally in the US, or idk, Commonwealth is the first one that comes to mind in Australia, hiring for a new video chat support function. 50 positions to fill with 1,000 applicants. Wouldn’t this tool maybe, possibly make a bit of sense? It directly maps to skills relevant to the position, and helps both candidates and hiring panels more efficiently work through the process without scheduling 1,000 x 30-minute interviews. Anyone who is uncomfortable being on video should consider one of the many non-video positions instead, like a traditional in-house bank teller position or a chat/phone support function with no video element.
I’ll give you another scenario. I have colleagues who recruit at university career fairs and professional org conferences and there has been a dramatic speedup in the process since I went through college grad and looking for a job 10-15 years ago. Candidates now expect interviews and answers same day or next. Any one company is limited in the number of people they can physically send to the fair. So in order to process the number of interested candidates in the timeframe they expect, we’ve relied on videoconf interviews with more hiring managers not physically present; candidates at the career fair booth jump on a tablet provided by the company and they go through a rapid 10 minute interview. As you can imagine, this can be a bit chaotic and high stress, so we’ve started giving the option for students to submit resumes a week or more in advance and the option for students to prerecord video of themselves answering set interview questions. The day of, they’re already in the system with an evaluation started, we can efficiently route them to the right person in the booth to talk about the types of jobs they’re interested in, and get them moving towards a potential offer that much quicker. I don’t have hard numbers, but anecdotally, there has been no shortage of students choosing to use the optional prerecorded video tool and almost all are using the optional resume presubmission instead of carrying paper copies around like I did.
See elsewhere in the thread for another scenario where this tool might be used effectively, high volume of international students applying for post grad positions when in-person interviews are not an option and scheduling live phone or video conference calls are difficult across time zones.
I’ll say it one more time so the folks in the back can hear. This is one tool to be used optionally for certain types of jobs and I think makes the most sense when there is a high volume of applicants and/or complex scheduling logistics. People also need to recognize that just like AI processing resumes, it’s already out there in use and it’s unlikely to go away anytime soon.