Miguel Afonso Caetano"The target of the suit is a screening company, Eightfold AI, that sells its technology as a tool for employers to save time and money. Using sources like LinkedIn, Eightfold has created a data set that it says encompasses more than “1 million job titles, 1 million skills, and the profiles of more than 1 billion people working in every job, profession, industry, and geography.”
When candidates apply for a job, Eightfold’s software evaluates their skills and the employers’ needs, then scores the applicants on a scale of one to five.
Job seekers say the screening tool can become an algorithmic gatekeeper, blocking candidates from advancing to a human hiring manager and giving them no feedback on their scores or how the rating was generated. If the tool is making mistakes, candidates have no way to correct them.
“I think I deserve to know what’s being collected about me and shared with employers,” Erin Kistler, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in an interview. “And they’re not giving me any feedback, so I can’t address the issues.”
Ms. Kistler has a degree in computer science and decades of experience in the technology industry. Out of the thousands of jobs she has sought in the past year, which she has meticulously tracked, only 0.3 percent of her applications have progressed to a follow-up or interview. Several of her applications were routed through Eightfold’s software system.
A representative for Eightfold, based in Santa Clara, Calif., did not respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit, filed against Eightfold in Contra Costa County Superior Court in California, is an early attempt at what employers and their lawyers expect will be a wave of challenges to the use of A.I. in hiring."
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Christopher Keevil