"Finding the Magic Sauce": Exploring Perspectives of Recruiters and Job Seekers on Recruitment Bias and Automated Tools

TL;DR

This study explores recruiters' and job seekers' perspectives on recruitment bias and automation, highlighting shared concerns and differing priorities to inform better design of automated hiring tools.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth qualitative comparison of recruiter and job seeker perceptions, revealing key concerns and needs to guide the development of fairer automated recruitment systems.

Findings

Both groups emphasize clarifying job requirements and viewing candidates holistically.

Recruiters are more aware of cognitive bias and want more interview support.

Job seekers prioritize healthy candidate-company relationships.

Abstract

Automated recruitment tools are proliferating. While having the promise of improving efficiency, various risks, including bias, challenges the potential of these tools. An in-depth understanding of the perceived risk factors and needs from the perspective of both recruiters and job seekers is needed. We address this through an interview study in the high-tech industry to compare and contrast the concerns of these two roles. We found that the importance of clarifying position requirements and assessing candidates as "whole individuals" are commonly discussed by both recruiters and job seekers. In contrast, while recruiters tended to be more aware of cognitive bias and desired more tool support during interviews, job seekers voiced more desire towards a healthy candidate-company relationship. Additionally, both roles considered the uncertainty of the current technology capability and reduced human contact as concerns for using automated tools. Based on these results, we provided design implications for automated recruitment tools and related decision-support technologies.