Skip to Content News Archives Economy Energy Oil & Gas Renewables Electric Vehicles Mining Commodities Agriculture Real Estate Mortgages Mortgage Rates Finance Banking Insurance Fintech Cryptocurrency Work Wealth Smart Money Wealth Management Investor Personal Finance Family Finance Retirement Taxes High Net Worth FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials More Innovation Information Technology FP500 Podcasts Small Business Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Financial Post Store Obituaries Place a Notice Advertising Advertising With Us Advertising Solutions Postmedia Ad Manager Sponsorship Requests Classifieds Place a Classifieds ad Working Profile Settings My Subscriptions My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ News Economy Energy Mining Real Estate Finance Work Wealth Investor FP Comment Executive Women Puzzmo Newsletters Financial Times Business Essentials HomeWorkHoward Levitt: Why AI may be (re)humanizing the hiring processAI was supposed to eliminate much of the tedious work of recruitment. Instead, it may make the human parts more importantLast updated 5 minutes ago AI can rank 10,000 resumés. It cannot take responsibility for the person you hire, warns Howard Levitt. Photo by Adobe StockThe resumé used to be a document. It is becoming a performance.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman, and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Exclusive articles from Barbara Shecter, Joe O'Connor, Gabriel Friedman and others.Daily content from Financial Times, the world's leading global business publication.Unlimited online access to read articles from Financial Post, National Post and 15 news sites across Canada with one account.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorArtificial intelligence can now take an ordinary employment history and turn it into an impeccably structured account of accomplishments, leadership and strategic thinking. It can tailor the language to a particular employer, optimize it for candidate-tracking software and prepare the applicant for almost any predictable interview question.The employer then feeds that resumé into its own software to decide whether the prospective employee is worth meeting. We have created a peculiar system in which one computer helps an applicant persuade another computer that the candidate is exceptional.FP Work touches on HR strategy, labour economics, office culture, technology and more.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Work will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againAnd employers should be worried. Not simply because AI can make mistakes, but because employers may conflate fluency with competence.Ontario has responded with a new rule that came into force Jan. 1. Companies that have 25 or more employees and use AI to screen, assess or select applicants for publicly advertised positions must disclose that fact in the job posting.That is sensible. An applicant should know when technology is being used to decide whether they get through the door.But what does the law not address?It does not require the employer to explain how the system reaches its conclusions. It does not require disclosure of the criteria being applied. It does not require proof that the system produces accurate results.And the applicant does not have to announce that their beautifully written resumé was produced by ChatGPT.The law regulates one side of an increasingly technological contest while saying little about the other.That is where things get interesting. Consider what AI recruitment systems are often being asked to do: find candidates who are similar to the people the company has historically hired. That sounds reasonable, until you ask a more uncomfortable question:What if the companies historical hiring decisions were not producing the employees the company now needs?An algorithm trained on yesterday’s hiring decisions can turn yesterday’s preferences into tomorrow’s screening criteria. A company that historically hired mostly younger employees may, without intending to, build a system that regards the career histories of older applicants as less attractive. That is illegal.A company whose successful employees followed conventional career paths may disadvantage candidates who took career breaks, changed industries or acquired experience outside the traditional route. That does not automatically establish discrimination. But it creates a legal question that an employer cannot answer by saying the computer was objective.Human rights legislation prohibits discrimination in employment on grounds including age and disability. It also addresses apparently neutral requirements that have discriminatory effects. Illegal discrimination does not require discriminatory intent. An employer can sincerely believe its hiring process is neutral and still have a human rights problem. Technology may simply make the problem harder to detect.Suppose an employer uses an automated video interview that evaluates speech, facial expression, response time or other behavioural characteristics. An applicant with a disability may communicate differently, take longer to respond or have facial movements that the system regards as unusual. The candidate may therefore score poorly despite being perfectly capable of doing the job.Once the employer knows that a disability affects the assessment, the duty of accommodation arises.And HR departments should remember an important principle: Treating everyone identically is not treating everyone equally.If every applicant must complete the same assessment, that does not end the human rights analysis. More likely, it compounds the difficulty.The employer may have to find another way of assessing a qualified applicant. “Our recruiting company doesn’t offer another option” is not an answer. The employer chose the system. It remains responsible for the hiring process.Employers are accustomed to buying software without knowing exactly how it works. That is manageable when the software schedules interviews or organizes resumés. It is different when the software decides who gets an interview.Before adopting an AI recruitment system, an employer should be able to answer some basic questions.What exactly is being measured?What information is being used?What assumptions are built into the assessment?Has the system been tested for adverse effects on protected groups?Can a human override the result?What happens when an applicant challenges it?An employer does not need to become an AI engineer. But it should understand enough about the product to defend the decision it makes with it.There is another development employers should know about.Applicants are not simply using AI to polish their resumés. They are also gaming the system, attempting to manipulate the software screening them.Researchers have documented prompt-injection techniques in which hidden instructions are placed in resumés so that an AI system reading the document receives instructions that are invisible or meaningless to the human recruiter. They are designed to put the applicant at the front of the line. These methods will evolve further.The point is that employers may no longer be evaluating a document created simply to communicate information. They may be evaluating a document designed to influence the software evaluating it. That is a very different resumé.The solution is surprisingly old fashioned.Verify. If the degree matters, check it. If the professional designation matters, confirm it. If the candidate says they managed 200 employees, ask what that actually involved. If they claim to have increased sales by 40 per cent, ask how they calculated it. If they say they solved a major operational problem, make them explain what they did, what went wrong and what they would do differently now.And ask their references questions that cannot be answered from the resumé.The resumé should increasingly be treated as an opening statement, not evidence.For decades, employers tried to make recruitment more efficient by extracting more information from resumés.AI may have made the opposite approach necessary. Employers should extract less from the resumé and verify more outside it.Modern recruitment technology can generate far more than a record of what an applicant actually said. It can produce rankings, scores, assessments and inferences about personality, suitability or future performance.That raises privacy and accountability questions, particularly when an employer cannot explain where an assessment came from or what information produced it.The federal Privacy Commissioner has already identified concerns surrounding automated decision-making, including transparency, accountability and discriminatory effects. Employers should know what their recruitment provider collects, what it retains, where it goes and whether it is being used for anything beyond the immediate hiring purpose.The great irony is that AI may make hiring more human.It was supposed to eliminate much of the tedious work of recruitment. Instead, it may make the human parts more important. Talking to candidates. Testing what they actually know. Examining what they have actually done. Calling the person who actually supervised them.And making a judgment about whether the evidence supports the story.The danger is not that artificial intelligence will take over hiring. It is that employers will allow it to make important judgments without understanding what those judgments mean.AI can rank 10,000 resumés. It cannot take responsibility for the person you hire. That remains the employer’s job. And if the resumé has become a performance, employers should stop treating it as proof.The smartest hiring decision may begin when the resumé is put aside.Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt LLP, leading his teams of labour lawyers in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Howard has appeared in more Supreme Court employment law cases and provincial appeals than any lawyer in Canadian history. A bestselling author, he discusses current workplace issues on the podcast, At Work with Howard Levitt. 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