HR departments with some of the biggest corporations in America have added a new sci-fi wrinkle to their hiring gambits. A.I. Artificial Intelligence has now become one of the latest and most powerful tools used to process potential employees. If you want to work for one of the bigger concerns in the United States today, be prepared for a mind-bending interview process where your cell phone camera or laptop computers are used by potential employers to analyze your vocabulary, voice modulations, and even facial moment — all to analyze and rank them with other applicants vying for the same job you are angling for. If your score on these and other cyber benchmarks falls below a certain predetermined level, you won’t be offered the job — not matter what. A.I. and algorithms now have more say in hiring policies across the board than government mandates. And if that doesn’t make you lose sleep at night, it should.
A company called HireVue is now offering a complete HR package that promises to match interviewees with job compatibility using algorithms and Artificial Intelligence, so that companies can actually bypass personal interview if they wish. The hours and money saved by this, says HireVue, can give a company that competitive edge it needs to move to the front of the pack. Is it also an invasion of privacy? That is a question that Congress is not yet even thinking about looking into.
