The Problem with Hiring Algorithms

In 2004, when a "webcam" was relatively unheard-of tech, Mark Newman knew that it would be the future of hiring. One of the first things the 20-year old did, after getting his degree in international business, was to co-found HireVue, a company offering a digital interviewing platform. While Newman lived at his parents' house, in Salt Lake City, the company, in its first five years, made just $100,000 in revenue. HireVue later received some outside capital, expanded and, in 2012, boasted some 200 clients--including Nike, Starbucks, and Walmart--which would pay HireVue, depending on project volume, between $5,000 and $1 million. Recently, HireVue, which was bought earlier this year by the Carlyle Group, has become the source of some alarm, or at least trepidation, for its foray into the application of artificial intelligence in the hiring process. No longer does the company merely offer clients an "asynchronous" interviewing service, a way for hiring managers to screen thousands of applicants quickly by reviewing their video interview --HireVue can now give companies the option of letting machine-learning algorithms choose the "best" candidates for them, based on, among other things, applicants' tone, facial expressions, and sentence construction.