My brother has just finished a masters programme and is starting to apply for jobs, he's coming up against a lot of these.
He's smart, motivated, very hard working, and has the necessary credentials on his CV, but when talking to him he's quite monotone and low energy. Because of this, he's failing these automated video interviews as he looks like he's not a "team player" or "personable".
While interviewing practice is becoming more aware of bias against things like this, the training data for these "AI" systems are going to be based on those interviews conducted in the past, often with questionable outcomes. The software is sold as helping "remove bias", but it instead pulls interview bias forwards in more extreme ways to the CV-review stage, preventing candidates from ever getting in front of a human.
While multiple humans on a hiring team may overcome some of their biases working together, a single piece of software trained to look for stereotypes will exacerbate those biases.
I had never heard of these video interview analysis methods prior to this thread.
I think it’s at the very least way too early to rely on this and at the worst just... terrible.
AST’s are already notoriously bad and this is just a whole new level of just plain bad. Time is precious, sure, but so are human relationships if time means anything.
It’s like nuance was completely disregarded in the pursuit of corporate contracts.
They do sound terrible and I hope to never encounter one, but my brother made a good point: the NHS get something like 12k applications per week, they have an average of 25k job openings each month. They apparently can't deal with that manually, which does make some sense.
I personally think they _should_ handle it manually, and if the system breaks we should fix it in another way because this way sucks, but I'm not sure what that would be. More consultancies or temp agencies? Not sure that's a better option.
If a company isn’t willing or able to commit the appropriate resources to hiring, they should reduce their number of open positions, not look to technology to solve a self-created problem.
Assuming they don’t have the resources to give people a proper interview and vet a candidate, can you imagine the situation once those that do pass actually encounter on the job? I’d never work at a place that makes such kinds of decisions and it’s a good signal that the culture at the top of the company is completely broken.
Any company using one of these AI systems to combat attrition or justify growth is for sure a dumpster fire.
I agree. The AI hype helps with drinking their koolaids and let's hope this will cease soon. I'm not saying that there aren't good problems to solve with AI, but adopting it so readily on people while it is not working properly and while it is amounts to experimenting on people which is a terrible thing to do. I'm not for the AI winter but for the the end of AI hype.
> the NHS get something like 12k applications per week, they have an average of 25k job openings each month
That’s just a couple of applications per job. How can the line managers possibly not have time to review just a couple of applications per person they’re apparently going to be leading?
Which NHS organisations in the UK are using automated video interviews?
I've done interviewing for a couple of NHS organisations, from band 6 positions all the way to very senior leadership, and automated interviews were not used and would not have been used by these organisations.
> the NHS get something like 12k applications per week,
It's not really "The NHS". It's a bunch of different companies. They each have their own corporate structure and boards of directors. They have their own HR teams that advertise and recruit to positions.
There were (in 2017) 207 clinical commissioning groups, 135 acute non-specialist trusts (including 84 foundation trusts), 17 acute specialist trusts (including 16 foundation trusts), 54 mental health trusts (including 42 foundation trusts), 35 community providers (11 NHS trusts, 6 foundation trusts, 17 social enterprises and 1 limited company), 10 ambulance trusts (including 5 foundation trusts), and 7,454 GP practices.
The largest is probably Barts Health NHS Trust, which employs about 15,000 people. The smallest is probably Weston Area Health NHS Trust which I think employs about 1,700 people.
You nailed it. Having encountered some of those kinds of agencies before—the other bad option seems better.
It just seems like we need to incentivize ourselves in the better direction all the incentives currently seem to lie in (at least what is coming to look like) the wrong places.
The answer is simple, but you're not gonna like it.
1) Set minimum qualifications
2) For everyone who passes step one, run a lottery
3) That's it
Most interview processes are about as good as a coin flip at determining if a candidate is a good fit. People are biased (especially people who think they're objective, which describes a lotnof hring managers), and so are the systems built on our decision-making. So, apply similar logic as to the kind that supports index fund investment: cut "people" out of the decision-making, and make the process faster and cheaper by relying on a simple set of objective criteria and the way risk distributes across a population.
This is where things will go south for most big organizations anyway. They don't know what they need, or they can't specify what they need, and often this part is done by someone other than the team that actually needs people. So you find jobs where the requirements are 3 years of experience with C# and at least BSc in comp sci while the team needs someone to work on embedded C & Ada and they couldn't give a shit about BSc (or any other degree for that matter), just that you can do the job.
Right, so then the question is if the other processes currently in place serve as mitigating factors to the inadequacy those qualifications present to the selection system's efficacy. I'd argue that they don't, in which case you're spending a lot more time and money for the same results.
If they do, then would fixing the qualification issue be less expensive than interviewing et al.? Again, assuming that you have a choice of similar outcomes at different price points.
I actually think these are a marvelous idea. Because if you ever encounter a company using one of these, you know for certain you don't want to ever work for them, as they don't value you even to just give you a normal interview, instead opting for an impersonal faulty machine.
Imagine the horror if you actually started working for them! If their hiring is this bad, their working conditions must be even worse! So it's pretty kind of them to reveal their true nature in such an easy to identify way. ;-)
Would it be correct to say your brother is also not the type to network with others easily?
An automated system is the last-line in hiring; recommendations -- internal and external -- are the first-line. If one finds themselves in a position where they're manually submitting cold resumes, it's almost always more productive to start networking into the companies you want to work at, and getting the recommendation firsthand, turning your resume into a hot one.
> recommendations -- internal and external -- are the first-line
I'm afraid this is a very tech-centric view. Outside of a few specific industries or the very top levels, this is essentially unheard of.
My brother's educational background is biomedical sciences so he's looking for essentially lab work doing analysis for a hospital, drug company, or similar. There are a fair few jobs doing it, but they are relatively low level, have no "community", no real way to facilitate referrals.
In tech it's easy to "network into companies" because companies are so open with their hiring – they hold events, they sponsor conferences that are priced so that people can pay their own entry, and there are community events where you can meet people from them. This is very far from the norm, until you get to the golf clubs where you can mingle with other execs.
No, this is how it works in almost every industry. Even if that's how they try and force hires into the pipeline, if you're simply accepting that instead of circumventing it, you're success rate must be abysmal.
I don't work in tech. But I've got about a 60% lifetime success rate (Job offers to applications). 100% once I got to the interview stage. And that's in a variety of industries: EMS, academic research, the energy industry, and civil/environmental engineering.
I swear nobody has any hustle anymore. I've never bothered to make a LinkedIn or go to "networking" or "hiring" events. They're a waste of time. If you're really out of your existing network (you're probably already doing something seriously wrong if that's the case), you'd be better off figuring out where you want to work and then waiting at a nearby lunch spot for an obvious group of employees to come in around lunchtime (or after work drinks) and start chatting them up. (I actually landed a job doing that.) Or better yet, find a CrossFit gym some of them go to. Sweat and bleed and bond with someone a bit before you leverage them as a recommendation. There's a million ways into an organization if you want it badly enough. If nothing else you can get super good intelligence on how to craft your application to be desireable.
Do your research, know your shit, know exactly what they're looking for before you ever turn in an application. Become that person to the core. Get any new certifications you need to be that person. Make every document you turn in to apply for the position fit that profile. Make every searchable piece of information about you on the internet align with that profile. Know the way they conduct interviews before you get there, and practice and rehearse the questions and flow of your responses in broad ways. Leverage your contacts in the organization to get information about each of the interviewers and how they think and approach interviews.
> you'd be better off figuring out where you want to work and then waiting at a nearby lunch spot for an obvious group of employees to come in around lunchtime (or after work drinks) and start chatting them up
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're either a US citizen, or at least base this advice on the US.
I have only known 1, possibly 2 people who can make this sort of thing work here in the UK, people just don't do this.
Plus, CrossFit isn't really a thing here except in trendy bits of London. For many of these places there isn't a "lunch spot", people take their lunch in to their building in a business park where there's no lunch options or options for socialising.
Overall, while you don't work in tech, I think you're probably privileged enough to work in an industry that works pretty similarly. Most of your advice would be pretty good for me, but almost none of it would work for someone at the beginning of their career, aiming for a large company with out of town offices – a fairly typical starting point for many graduates.
Yeah, I am American, and I definitely understand there's certain informalities available to us here culturally.
I think the key for new graduates is to have been thinking about getting a job for the last 4-5 years. Don't start looking and preparing when you graduate, you're already behind.
I kept a job I started as a teen as a lifeguard for like 6 or 7 years even though there were much better opportunities available to me financially because I knew the stability was one of the best things I could bring to the table. Resume building.
But in addition to that, I started networking long before I left school. It's essential. Despite the fact that culture may differ in other countries, I don't think that fundamentally changes my advice. The tactics may differ, but the strategy is the same because human nature is the same.
> There are a fair few jobs doing it, but they are relatively low level, have no "community", no real way to facilitate referrals
I’m only tangentially exposed to the biomedical field but I’m fairly sure this isn’t broadly true. I’m a member of a single cell RNA sequencing slack group whose members host a meetup twice a month. Most members work in wetlabs and many conduct research into the effects of various drugs on cancer.
The groups are probably harder to find (than programming meetups) but I doubt there are none of them.
>but when talking to him he's quite monotone and low energy. Because of this, he's failing these automated video interviews as he looks like he's not a "team player" or "personable".
i'm looking forward for the day when my AI "clone" - a very personable, cheerleader level bubbly and energetic deep-fake based of my face/voice - will charm away the dry pedantic HR AI on the other side of the screen.
I'm amazed the lawsuits aren't already locked-and-loaded.
All you need to do is acquire the software, feed in a video clip of a male/female or white/black applicant saying the same things (maybe use deepfakes to ensure consistency in delivery), and if the score is one iota different, you've got the developer, at best, having to try to explain away a lot of ugly black-box logic, and at worst, a cut-and-dry discrimination case.
A human screener is probably somewhat biased too, but he's at least trained to provide a legally acceptable excuse for his choices.
Who has the liability if the algorithm is found to be illegally biased? I assume it would be based on the contract (or perhaps there are other laws relating to having a service rendered illegally), but I wonder which way it goes
He's smart, motivated, very hard working, and has the necessary credentials on his CV, but when talking to him he's quite monotone and low energy. Because of this, he's failing these automated video interviews as he looks like he's not a "team player" or "personable".
While interviewing practice is becoming more aware of bias against things like this, the training data for these "AI" systems are going to be based on those interviews conducted in the past, often with questionable outcomes. The software is sold as helping "remove bias", but it instead pulls interview bias forwards in more extreme ways to the CV-review stage, preventing candidates from ever getting in front of a human.
While multiple humans on a hiring team may overcome some of their biases working together, a single piece of software trained to look for stereotypes will exacerbate those biases.