Employers are guilty of squandering a vast pool of talent with their blind reliance on AI for recruitment - Andrew Vine

There will be many parents in Yorkshire who agree wholeheartedly with the Prime Minister that young people are getting a very rough deal when trying to find a job. Andy Burnham is absolutely right when he says virtual interviews are diminishing the chances of the young, because the technology doesn’t allow them to show their personality or enthusiasm.

“How does a young person shine in that situation?”, asked the Prime Minister when interviewed for a podcast, and it is a question that many of his fellow parents must be asking themselves as they worry about their sons and daughters.

He’s put his finger on one of the greatest obstacles facing everyone trying to get started on a career – the inexorable rise of faceless and impersonal recruitment processes that depend on artificial intelligence and interviews via a computer screen.

For countless young people, this summer ought to be a time of excitement when they are embarking on their first jobs after graduating from university or leaving school.

Instead, for many it is a dispiriting round of making countless applications in formats dictated by AI, then seeing them rejected by that same AI without any human input.

This unwelcome revolution in the way people are being recruited is partly to blame for the massive numbers of young people classed as NEETS, not in employment, education or training, more than a million of them aged between 16 and 25.

And matters are getting worse. A survey of employers found 89 per cent intending to increase the use of AI in recruitment, throwing up even more barriers at a point when the former Cabinet minister, Alan Milburn, concluded in his review of youth unemployment that the chances of finding a first job are shrinking.

It isn’t that these young people are unwilling to work. On the contrary, they are desperate to get their lives moving, and to take the first steps towards building a rewarding and satisfying career.

But they aren’t getting the chance, because an insurmountable wall faces them in the form of employers who have effectively automated their hiring procedures.

I recently listened to a BBC Radio 4 programme in which this issue was explored, and my heart went out to the half a dozen recent graduates interviewed.

All were highly intelligent, personable and articulate with good degrees they had obviously worked hard for. In any objective judgement, each would be an asset to an organisation that employed them – keen to get on and make their mark.

Yet none had even reached the interview stage despite applying for scores of jobs. After hours of sweating over completing an application and finessing the CV to go with it, they were getting automated rejections within minutes of emailing them in to prospective employers.

“Robotic” and “brutal” were among the descriptions these young people had for this nightmarish process, and with each rejection a little more of their self-confidence and optimism for the future was chipped away.

Inevitably, they turned online in search of guidance and soon found one answer to why applications were being rejected out of hand. They were not using the correct buzzwords that AI recognised, which determined whether or not their applications would proceed to the next stage.

This is utter madness, skewing the recruitment process so badly that the result is bound to be good candidates being summarily rejected while less talented people get through because they happen to use the right jargon.

Stripping human judgement out of any recruitment process makes no sense and ultimately harms the organisations trying to find the right people for jobs.

Over the course of my career, I’ve been on both sides of the interview table – desperate to impress and sell myself for a job I really wanted, and much later responsible for assessing whether the person in front of me was the best for the vacancy.

A whole range of issues needs to be explored. How will they fit in with their colleagues? Are they a team player? Can they work well on their own initiative, or will they require a lot of guidance?

These are matters that cannot possibly be assessed by AI, or over a video call. You need to be in the room with someone to take a proper measure of their character and abilities.

Employers are guilty of squandering a vast pool of talent with this blind reliance on AI. Worse, they are destroying the dreams and life chances of a generation of young people at risk of ending up on the scrapheap because nobody will give them the opportunity to impress.