The Perils of Algorithmic Hiring and Title VII
Studies have shown that a properly designed analysis of potential employee metadata outperforms human decisions by at least 25 %. 52 This effect holds with any situation provided a large number of candidates and across all levels of hiring , including front line , middle management , and upper management . 53
Unfortunately , there are some downsides to algorithmic hiring practices that carry serious legal complications . In order to create the hiring algorithms , companies rely on their existing worker pool as well as qualities of the ‘ ideal worker ’ provided by management . 54 If an employer ’ s worker pool has already been tainted by previously discriminatory hiring practices , they are likely to inadvertently continue to engage in discriminatory hiring practices . 55 A workplace composed of a significant number of a single sex , or a significant number of a single race , may skew their results toward those groups . 56 Algorithms may end up targeting minorities due to facially neutral parameters that can lead to disparate impacts . These disparate impacts may take significant time to be revealed , meaning that either accidental or intentional racism in the programming can have wide ranging and far reaching consequences .
Reputable companies that provide the services of designing the algorithms for algorithmic hiring are aware of the potential legal consequences of violating the law and do take steps to locate and correct any unintentional side effects of their data points . If a particular variable is found to be excluding an abnormally large amount of a single group , it can be refined or discarded . However , even the most innocuous of variables can end up having a disparate impact . For instance , one company noticed that by excluding potentially employees who lived more than a certain distance from the workplace
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