A study from academics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has found that AI hiring has the potential to create great strides in inclusive recruitment.
According to The Inclusion Initiative (TII) at LSE, Artificial Intelligence (AI) hiring is equal to or better than human hiring. Nonetheless, the general public is still sceptical about the automation of recruitment.
The study included a systematic review of the implications that consider the effectiveness of AI in the hiring process. The findings illustrate that AI hiring improves efficiency in hiring by being faster, increasing the fill-rate for open positions, and recommending candidates with a greater likelihood of being hired after an interview. The research also found that while AI had limited abilities in predicting employee outcomes after being hired, it was a substantial improvement over humans. The authors also assessed whether AI could decrease biased decision-making and improve the diversity of selected candidates. Overall, AI hiring still resulted in more diverse outcomes than human hiring.
Finally, the experts looked at how candidates and recruiters are reacting to AI hiring. Their analysis revealed overwhelmingly negative responses to AI hiring. The upshot: people trust AI hiring less than human hiring.
Paris Will, Lead Corporate Research Advisor at the Inclusion Initiative, London School of Economics, said: “Collectively, these findings lead to a gap between how AI is performing and how it is perceived. While AI hiring practices on average showed an improvement over human methods, people are reacting negatively to it. This is significant for the adoption of AI hiring methods and may be holding back better hiring techniques from being implemented.”
“The media typically portrays AI hiring negatively and emphasises how AI can discriminate against candidates and disadvantage them,” commented Dr Dario Krpan, Assistant Professor in Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. “Our analysis, however, shows that even if AI is not perfect, it is fairer and more effective than human recruiters. Rather than focusing on AI in isolation, it is important to compare it to the alternative hiring practices to understand the value it brings to the recruitment process.”
Dr Grace Lordan, Associate Professor and Founding director of The Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics added: “There is evidence that current hiring processes are plagued by cronyism and bias. It is time that human’s hand over the hiring process to machines who do not have these tendencies. Biases embedded in algorithms can be mitigated somewhat with more care from those writing them, and compliance folk, who do not have skin in the hiring process can monitor the process to abate any concerns on fairness. Let’s progress AI in recruitment AND workplace inclusivity at the same time. ”
