As more employers turn to artificial intelligence tools to evaluate candidates, more paper trails of candidate interactions — good and bad — will proliferate than hiring managers might expect, per an analysis published Tuesday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm.
Conversations that employers usually would expect to disappear after a meeting ends are instead recorded, stored and seen by other company systems, John Challenger, CEO of the company, said in a statement.
“A whole host of issues can be introduced by using recording and transcription services in external-facing meetings,” Challenger said. “A job seeker’s mistake could be recorded permanently. An interviewer’s insensitive — or even illegal — question could also be captured.”
The current most popular web conferencing platforms, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, all offer transcription services and AI summaries, the report said, and recruiting platforms tend to include tools that can produce interview notes, fill out scorecards and craft follow-up questions. While HR teams tend not to rely on AI to make final decisions, other reports have shown, many still rely on the outputs that form those decisions in the first place.
“A hiring manager may read an AI-generated summary without watching the interview,” Challenger said. “That summary can become the initial evaluation of the candidate, even when the software is described as a notetaker. And sometimes those notetakers make mistakes.”
The use of AI notetakers, in particular, has prompted legal counsel to raise the alarm regarding compliance with recording consent laws and laws around workplace monitoring, among other potential pitfalls.
And these problems could be widespread. Just over 90% of HR managers surveyed earlier this year by Paylocity said they actively use AI somewhere in their recruitment process, with the rest saying they plan to implement it within the next 18 months. Notably, the vast majority surveyed also said they trusted AI to assess applicants “regardless of background.”
However, 4 in 5 leaders surveyed also said they were “actively managing at least one issue” with their AI tools, Paylocity said.
Bias is one of those potential issues, Challenger’s report said, which can be exacerbated by AI-generated summaries that could easily omit context and nuance of conversations.
“Recording changes how candidates behave and how hiring teams interpret interviews,” Challenger said. “Organizations need to consider its effect on candor, fairness, and trust.”
