I just had a deeply alarming 45 minute sync with our Talent Acquisition team regarding their new Al-driven resume screening tool.
They reported that the software's reduced our time-to-hire by 60% over the last month.
I asked them to walk me through the specific algorithmic parameters they established for filtering out unqualified applicants.
The HR manager smiled and said they just told the Al to optimize for digital natives with high runway potential and a youthful energy.
I stopped typing and asked her to run a demographic report on every single candidate the software's rejected since September.
The data showed a 100% rejection rate for any applicant who graduated college before the year 2010.
I explained that automating age discrimination doesn't make it suddenly legal, it just makes it highly scalable and incredibly easy to prove in court.
She seemed genuinely confused and argued that the Al made the decision, not her, so we're insulated from liability.
I had to explain that the EEOC doesn't currently accept the robot defense for federal civil rights violations.
I'm currently drafting a memo to halt all hiring until we manually review 4,000 resumes.