an AI resume screener had been trained on CVs of employees already at the firm, giving people extra marks if they listed “baseball” or “basketball” – hobbies that were linked to more successful staff, often men. Those who mentioned “softball” – typically women – were downgraded.
Marginalised groups often “fall through the cracks, because they have different hobbies, they went to different schools”
They won’t, though. Because these are cost-saving tools for multi-nationals with enormous capital footprints.
McDonalds isn’t going anywhere, no matter how bad their hiring practices get. The only real risk they run is in their poor ability to bring people on quickly resulting in storefronts more vulnerable to unionization or other labor actions. But this is a business that’s been vertically integrated for decades and subsists on enormous direct and indirect subsidies from every layer of government. They’ll keep being fine unless the political conditions in this country change significantly.
I disagree. Screwing up your hiring process is a Darwin Award level mistake for a company. McDonalds is very very good at hiring people and a big part of that is their willingness to hire people who aren’t good enough and then giving those people the training they need to succeed at work.
Choosing not to hire someone because they like baseball is insane and there’s no way that would fly at McDonalds.
Its only a screw-up if it upsets your investors. And it does not seem like the McDonalds EBITDA has suffered over the past few years.
The AI tool - according to the article - is using baseball and softball as a proxy for determining whether the applicant is a man or a woman, and biasing its selection accordingly. That’s not insane. Its just prejudiced in a manner that evades our comically ill-enforced nondiscrimination enforcement codes.
McDonald’s actually did suffer in some regard recently. Execs have admitted they need to lower prices or they’ll lose business.
I think the thing is, companies always go too far eventually. At some point, they cross the line and have to walk it back. We’ll probably see the same thing here. Recruiters will use more and more AI until someone crosses the line, and then there’ll be a rapid retreat.
Hiring shitty employees is not a cost-saving measure.
Something tells me McDonald’s hiring process is not too important.
For low skill jobs, it absolutely is. Many of these employers will deliberately screen out “overqualified” applicants because they don’t want employees with the potential for better job prospects elsewhere.
Prison labor has become an increasingly common form of low wage service work, precisely because these workers have no leverage to negotiate salary or hours.