13d ago

Question about how long it took me to spot the bias in a hiring tool my cousin's company uses

That is such a gut punch to read, and honestly good on you for actually sitting down and doing the work instead of just trusting the number like everyone else did. Three weeks of digging through old resumes is no joke, and the fact that 29 out of 40 auto rejects had gaps, with most being women, is not a coincidence, that is the tool doing exactly what it was built to do, just quietly. As for who's responsible, I'd say both, but the company using it carries more of the blame since they're the ones making the actual hiring decisions, and "the software told us to" stopped being a real excuse a long time ago. The thing that gets me is nobody questioned it because it said "job fit," which is just a fancy label that hides whatever rule the system is really using. Your cousin is lucky she had you to pull the curtain back, because most places never even look.