HireVue: Artificial Intelligence + Hiring

Ethical artificial intelligence (AI) usage has the ability to provide powerful data that supports smarter hiring decisions—serving as human decision support instead of a decision maker. There are various solutions on the market that employ AI including automation, conversational AI, assessments and more. In addition, solutions range from easy deployment with low impact to more sophisticated deployment with higher ROI. 

For example, a chatbot is simple to incorporate on a careers website and keeps the process moving quickly for both parties, offering the ease of convenience for candidates. Solutions like assessments driven by AI frequently require a more complex deployment with an ATS integration and provide powerful data by assessing skills, work styles, and personalities to determine fit for a role.

It is absolutely true that if care is not taken, AI algorithms can mimic human bias. Both HireVue data and algorithms are audited to check for bias and mitigate accordingly. There’s an entire field of research around algorithmic fairness, but it’s a complex topic—no one definition of “fairness” actually exists. However, in the hiring space we benefit from decades of work on pre-hire assessments in I/O Psychology. Computers allow us to formalize fairness/bias requirements that we define in an automatic way. Rather than simply incentivizing an algorithm to predict an outcome (in this case, a job-related competency), we simultaneously penalize it for having significant demographic group differences in the outcome.Read HireVue’s industry-first AI Explainability Statement to learn about the methodology for mitigating bias in algorithms. 

AI has sparked both curiosity and concern among hiring teams and candidates alike. Break down the myths circulating around AI in hiring, and navigate the evolving landscape of hiring with confidence and efficacy.

Myth: There are tricks to “game” my AI interview.

Fact: Due to the capabilities of modern natural language processing (NLP) systems and the robustness of our training data, there are no magic keywords to trick the system—it’s much more nuanced than that. There are no secrets to trick interviews, assessments, or a chatbot. Additionally, the best thing candidates can do to perform well on a recorded interview is to reference standard interview tips and tricks. Practice your responses to standard questions about your past experience, challenges, and how you’ve overcome them, and what makes you valuable as an employee.

Myth: AI decides who gets the job.

Fact: Although AI may play an important role in evaluating candidates, humans make the final hiring decision. Our algorithms are built to bolster human decision-making in a structured and consistent way that combats human biases.

Myth: AI replaces a face-to-face interview.

Fact:AI-assisted recorded interviews occur rather early in the hiring funnel–at what is typically the resume review or phone screen part of the process. Face-to-face interviews come later.

Myth: AI is a black box and we don’t know what it’s doing.

Fact: There is an entire field of study dedicated to AI explainability. Because increasingly complex systems can be increasingly opaque, this is extremely important work. In a famous example, researchers built a model to predict whether a picture was of a wolf or a husky. The model was extremely accurate at differentiating the two, but when one uses an explainability method that highlights the most important parts of the image it was using to make the prediction, it determined it was the snow in the background of the image. In the training data, wolves were much more likely to be photographed in the snow. Similar methods can be applied to language and can help us understand how models are working and verify that they are paying attention to the data that matters. 

Myth: AI is always learning and changing in uncontrollable ways, so you can’t trust the results.

Fact: While AI algorithms can certainly be learning “online,” that is not the standard in hiring assessments. HireVue models are trained and tested in the “lab” then locked for deployment. It wouldn’t make sense to use a different algorithm day-to-day when evaluating candidates for a role. And with the spreading use of Generative AI, it’s worth noting that these algorithms should be deterministic, meaning the same input should produce the same output every time. 

Myth: AI is going to make recruiters obsolete.

Fact: The World Economic Forum predicts 85 million jobs globally will be replaced by AI by 2025, but AI can potentially create 95 million new roles. As a comparison, throughout the eighties and nineties, ATMs didn’t eliminate bank tellers but rather increased productivity and allowed time for more strategic tasks. This puts an additional focus on hiring for skills and agility. The role of the recruiter is certainly changing as technology permeates the hiring space (e.g. LinkedIn). New tools have changed the role so that recruiters can use their time to focus on fewer more promising candidates rather than mundane tasks that do not require human ingenuity (like back-to-back phone screens or scheduling interviews) and often suffer due to human biases. 

Myth: AI will not treat those with disabilities fairly.

Fact: At HireVue, we provide many accommodations for candidates with disabilities including but not limited to allowing retakes, removing timers, and, where applicable, explaining before an interview that AI will be used in its assessment. HireVue also works closely with Integrate Autism Employment Advisors to understand how candidates on the autism spectrum interact and perform with AI hiring assessments. Research has shown that interview processes with appropriate wording, structure, transparency, and adequate preparation time are highly beneficial to these candidates. Our own peer-reviewed research with Integrate Autism shows that game-based assessments are a particularly effective way to discover this untapped talent resource.

Myth: AI is unregulated. 

Fact: AI has created entirely new areas that spur nuanced conversations about how to regulate certain technologies (social media recommendation systems, who owns content produced by generative AI, etc.). However, even though AI is being introduced into many different areas of our lives, existing laws still apply. Particularly in the US, laws against discrimination in hiring have been in place for decades, and AI does not give anyone a free pass to break them. There are well-established best practices and statistical methods for bias testing that are standard in the IO Psychologist toolbox.

Myth: AI on my video uses face scanning technology which judges me on behaviors and attributes I cannot control.

Fact: Facial recognition isn’t used nor is any video used to evaluate your answer. Hirevue video assessments only evaluate your language—specifically how you can talk about your experiences and past actions pertaining to competencies that are crucial to the particular role you are interested in, e.g. team orientation or adaptability.

HireVue is committed to the science, research, and regulation of ethical AI. Access HireVue industry’s first AI Explainability Statement, Ethical Principles, audits, whitepapers, and other resources.

• HireVue AI Explainability Statement
• HireVue AI Ethical Principles
• ORCAA Algorithmic Audit
• Landers IO Psychology Audit
• HireVue Whitepapers
• HireVue and the NYC law on AEDT & AI regulation
• Webinar | AI in Hiring: the Fact, the Fiction, and the Fundamentals