Artificial Intelligence and the changing face of job interviews – The Wall Street Journal

Most job hunters and hiring managers would agree: An interview isn’t the ideal way to find the best person for the job.

Published on:

10 Jan 2020, 7:31 am

Unilever is one of the world's biggest corporations that is using Artificial Intelligence for recruiting, and has claimed that it is saving money by replacing humans. And AI is not only used to assess resumés; graduates' facial expressions, word choice and body language were also analysed and measured against traits that are considered to predict job success. South Africa's loadshedding led to a challenging AI video interview for somebody I know. He was a student on holiday far from proper internet during the Christmas holiday season and rented a conference room at a hotel for the interview. Not only was no human involved, it was hard to know where to look and to act naturally staring at your own image on the screen; loadshedding also added to his challenges. The hotel was on generation power and to save energy, installed a system whereby you had to move to keep the lights on. So, between answering the questions; he used his preparation time for a quick run around the desk to get the lights to stay on and by the last question was quite out of breath. Dishevelled, incoherent and breathing deeply was clearly not the traits the AI system valued as he did not get the job. Using Artificial Intelligence is becoming more common all over the world, but studies overseas have shown that many citizens are not really comfortable with that especially when they do not know they are being assessed by Artificial Intelligence. Hilke Schellmann peers into the future in the Wall Street Journal on where all this is likely to lead to. – Linda van Tilburg