How Companies Are Hiring And Reportedly Firing With AI

In a 2023 Capterra survey of 300 human resources leaders, 98% of surveyed HR executives said they … [+] will employ software and algorithms to reduce labor costs.

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Companies are using artificial intelligence to determine who to hire and fire. It is simultaneously being deployed in various ways to improve recruitment and retention. This includes résumé screenings, candidate matching, interview schedules, probability analysis, performance evaluations and layoff decisions.

AI screens résumés and identifies the most qualified candidates for a job, matches candidates with job openings based on their skills, experience and preferences, schedules interviews and reduces the time it takes to fill open positions.

With predictive analytics, AI determines which employees are most likely to leave a company. Employers can use this insight to course-correct and have transparent conversations about how they can alleviate the risk of voluntary turnover. It also evaluates employee performance and identifies areas for improvement.

Most concerningly, some companies are using AI to make layoff decisions, leveraging the data to determine the workers who are the poor performers. In a 2023 Capterra survey of 300 human resources leaders, 98% of surveyed HR executives said they plan to employ software and algorithms to reduce labor costs.

Recruiting And Hiring With AI

The role of recruiters is to find the best, most suitable applicants for the job efficiently, which is not easy. Search professionals must allocate many hours to sourcing qualified people for the position. This involves elaborate Boolean searches, sending dozens of emails, texting and calling prospective candidates.

AI-powered recruiting tools offer advantages over traditional recruiting methods, including analyzing large amounts of data, automating the recruitment process, reducing bias, helping companies find and hire passive candidates who may not be actively looking for a job and improving employee retention.

Phenom is an HR technology platform that provides a personalized hiring process with its AI-driven chatbot. During an initial text-based conversation, the Phenom Bot asks candidates questions to match them with ideal jobs and narrow down the talent pool. If an individual is deemed a potential match, Phenom’s chatbot takes scheduling tasks off the plates of recruiters by offering available time slots to the candidate.

LinkedIn, the go-to site for job seekers and networking, plans to leverage generative AI technology with its insights of more than 950 million professionals, 63 million companies and 40,000 skills on the platform.

Over the next year, LinkedIn will roll out Recruiter 2024 to enable recruiters and talent acquisition professionals to find on-target candidates for their jobs faster.

The feature will offer a clean interface with a rectangular box in which recruiters and talent leaders can use natural language to express their hiring goals in their own words. For example, a hiring professional would write, “I’m searching for a software engineer with 10 years of experience,” then add specific skills, background and experiences pertinent to the role. AI combined with LinkedIn’s massive data can produce the candidates the employer desperately seeks.

Getting Fired By AI

In 2019, the Verge reported that Amazon used an AI system to monitor and automatically fire hundreds of fulfillment center workers for failing to meet productivity quotas.

A signed letter by Amazon’s attorney disclosed, “Amazon’s system tracks the rate of each individual associate’s productivity and automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors.”

At the time of the reporting, a company spokesperson contested the cold firings:

“It is absolutely not true that employees are terminated through an automatic system. We would never dismiss an employee without first ensuring that they had received our fullest support, including dedicated coaching to help them improve and additional training. Since we’re a company that continues to grow, it’s our business objective to ensure long-term career development opportunities for our employees. Similar to many companies, we have performance expectations regardless of whether they are corporate or fulfillment center employees. We support people who do not perform to the levels expected of them with dedicated coaching to help them improve and be successful in their career at Amazon.”

According to the Washington Post, former employees at Google began to wonder if AI played a role in the 12,000 job cuts the company made this year, since HR uses technology to analyze employee data that recommends who to interview, hire and retain.

In a Discord post, an ex-Googler theorized the company may have used a “mindless algorithm carefully designed to not violate any laws.” However, Google denied this claim and said there was “no algorithm involved” in its layoff selection.

This month, an Amsterdam court ruled that Uber had failed to comply with the European Union’s algorithmic transparency requirements, which prohibits using AI or similar technology from being the sole decision-maker on actions that have “legal or other significant effects” on people. Two drivers in the U.K. and one from Portugal sought legal action against the rideshare company for their alleged “robo-firings.”

Uber was required to provide transparency in how it used automation to make decisions to workers affected by them, but the company argued that in doing so, it’d be compromising trade secrets.

In an emailed statement to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson said:

“At the time when these drivers’ accounts were flagged, they were reviewed by our Trust and Safety Teams, who are specially trained to spot the types of behavior that could potentially impact rider safety. The Court confirmed that the review process was carried out by our human teams, which is standard practice when our systems spot potentially fraudulent behavior.”