The Perils of Algorithmic Hiring and Title VII
in operation 5 are also proscribed by statute . The problem is algorithmic hiring practices demonstratively work , and if a practice produces proven business results , it may be impossible for a court challenge against it to succeed .
Algorithmic hiring starts when an employer decides to collect information from their most successful employees and use that to find similar applicants . However , if they failed to select a diverse pool of employees to emulate , employers run the very real risk of opening their business to a disparate impact claim . 6 Vague qualities can open a business to a potential lawsuit . For instance , employers may fear local traffic conditions may frequently cause employees to be late for work , and respond by excluding applicants who live more than a certain distance from the workplace . 7 In one case , this variable was responsible for the removal of almost all African-American applicants . The African-American applicants lived in a nearby suburb and were completely excluded from the final applicant pool . This problem was only noticed when the algorithm programmers themselves were testing to data to find out how the final results were created . This one variable alone completely culled African Americans from the applicant pool . Had an applicant had access to this data , whether or not a potential employer would be liable for failing to notice would ultimately depend on the courts . 8
When a hiring algorithm can take into account hundreds if not thousands of seemingly unrelated variables , the employer or employment bears the ultimate responsibility for ensuring a nondiscriminatory outcome . If an unscrupulous employer is actively seeking a discriminatory outcome , it can easily can they hide behind these same variables . The benefits of hiring algorithms can be massive , both in reducing hiring costs and minimizing turnover costs . Algorithmic hiring programs offer targeted searches , but do not make employees aware of
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