How AI Truly Implements Diversity in Recruiting

By Aida Fazylova

Diversity in recruitment has been a hot topic in the HR industry for quite some time. The conversation is continuing to get progressive, finding strong employees amongst all races, sexual orientations, religions, ages and (dis)abilities. Talent can and does come in all forms, but we as recruiters and humans tend to miss amazing candidates due to our own biases.

Whether it is subconscious or not, people are flawed in their ability to choose new employees to fill positions. Any decisions based on prejudice are eliminated when the decision is in the hands of AI. Here are some ways AI helps optimize diverse recruiting efforts.

Removing Biased Language with Job Descriptions

There are many ways to dilute the presence of bias in the recruitment process. One of which starts in the job description. Multiple studies have deduced the concept of gendered wording in job advertisements. The idea being that words such as “dominant” and “competitive” are masculine-coded and tend to deter female applicants. Removing the bias from these descriptions can take time and prove rather tedious for a human copywriter. But having an AI rewrite your job description sans any gender bias can be accomplished quickly.

Removing Bias from Applicant Screening

As the AI combs through applicant demographic information, the intelligence can be programmed to defer from using this info to inform their decisions on the applicant. Removing this type of data can help develop a less biased recruiting strategy for the sake of increasing the diversity in your workforce. On the opposite end of the spectrum, AI sometimes can also learn to include some bias dependent on the history of your company’s recruitment. Or if you have a history of hiring candidates from a specific university that you hold in high regard, AI tends to rank these people higher. Because of this, it is important to keep humans in the equation to realize these biases and remove it from the AI’s decisions. It is important to realize your own biases in your history and adjusting the process to avoid worst-case scenario situations such as a $1.7 million settlement.

Validating True Qualification

AI has a strong advantage over human recruiting efforts in its use of data. Not even mentioning the physical/mental fatigue and unconscious bias of human recruiting that AI avoids, it also can confirm a candidate’s skills based on concrete data points. Often humans see matching qualifications from a job description and a presented resume and form a logical preference for this candidate. But without anything to contest the candidates self-description, there is an inherent risk in over-qualifying a candidate. AI has zero bias and has all of the data to ensure the candidate truly is who they say they are.

Having a Chat

Chatbots are the ultimate means of increasing diversity recruiting and averting the unconscious and conscious bias of the human mind. Chatbots can help by subbing in for the human in collecting the data in a way that a resume never could. Often applicants are unsure of what information is truly necessary for each job and there are certainly some companies that aren’t always aware of everything they need either. Having a conversation with an applicant can help solve these issues while sifting through the data provided as efficiently as possible. Chatbots are the cumulation of the benefits listed above and more.

XOR is fortunate to have the AI technologies to satisfy all of these concerns. Any solutions that you or your company need to find are here. It’s easy to find out you need more help, but it can be hard to act on that need. We have a love for chatbots and know exactly how its use as a tool that can truly humanize your recruiting strategy.

 

About Aida:

Aida is the CEO and Founder of XOR.ai and a former recruiter. She started XOR to help recruiters focus on the hiring and strategic planning that comes with being a recruiter. Aida previously worked in IT recruitment and project management for over six years.

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