The moment I realized my AI resume filter was screening out good people

Last year I was managing job postings for a mid-size company outside Chicago. We used an AI tool that scanned resumes for keywords and I thought it was saving us time. Then our best hire in 5 years slipped through because she used 'led' instead of 'managed' on her resume. That's when it hit me that I was letting a machine decide who got a fair shot based on word choice. Has anyone else seen a hiring AI botch things that obvious?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivan_murphy801mo ago

Buddy of mine runs a small IT shop and they tried one of those keyword scanners. He told me they nearly passed on a developer who ended up being their best coder because she wrote "built" instead of "developed" in her project descriptions. They only caught it cause the receptionist printed the resume out and thought it looked good, totally by accident. After that he just started reading every resume himself, said it's a pain but way better than missing talent over something dumb like that. Machines just don't get how people actually write stuff.

umar491mo ago

Tell your buddy to try reading resumes out of order sometimes... flip through the pile backwards or something. Forces your brain to actually look at the words instead of just skimming.

davidkim1mo ago

Man, I remember reading somewhere that some HR people actually do the "backwards stack" thing on purpose. Apparently it works because your brain gets lazy after the first few. I also saw a study that said recruiters spend like 6 seconds on a resume average, which is insane. Flipping the order is a simple hack but probably actually helps you slow down and catch stuff you'd normally miss.