Question

As it becomes more common for employers to utilize predictive analytics in hiring - often with a goal of hiring the "best" candidate while reducing bias - what benefits and/or concerns can you identify? What do you think about some of these practices? What are some examples of less technological practices that can reduce bias?

Answer 1

Solution:

The predictive analytics is increasing its applications in Human Resource departments by making the data mining of the applications for a particular job role and matching them with the job description. The higher the match of the applicants higher is the chances of that person landing a final interview. This allows the hiring professionals a good base from which they can create a pool of candidates which will help them in conducting the hiring process efficiently. This also makes sure that the candidate pool involves only those people who are relevant thus reducing redundancy and improving the efficiency. The opportunity cost of time invested in hiring also becomes lower. Hence, the technological applications in hiring are on the rise and helping the organizations meet the right talent.

However, there are certain aspects which result in a backfoot situation for using predictive analytics in the hiring of individuals. The predictive analytics makes the use of information which is declared by the user either in their resume or their professional networking websites. This means the data which is used by predictive analytics is the user-declared data which can also be fake. Thus, the authenticity of the data that is provided by the applicant in their resume is not identified by predictive analytics and this makes a big loophole for the process of predictive analytics in HR. Hence, the issues of finding applicants who have made their resume keeping in mind the way predictive analytics is done will result in them exploiting these loopholes.

The most widely used way to reduce bias while hiring is to look at references. The references within the organization will allow a better indication of the authenticity of the applicant and the organizations can rely on the references of the internal employees which can be considered of value. Also, the references which are outbound will be the ones that can be used to validate the candidature of the applicants. Hence, these are some of the ways in which the less technological ways can result in reducing the hiring bias.