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Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

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Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#51
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the only way. They want you to think it is. Don't let them break you.

ha that's a hoot. What a horrible injustice for an HR team to try and bring some diversity to a company that mostly hired white males. If white males weren't so busy looking for drinking buddies under the guise of a "culture fit" for the last 2 decades this wouldn't be a thing. Diversity stats for our industry are a boondoggle, most of the diversity is concentrated in a few large companies, and it takes the bare mini…

You are just a racist and sexist. The problem is you, not other people.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#52
post #2

> The model had learned through historical hiring data that men were more likely to be hired, and therefore rated male resumes higher than female resumes. A lot of machine learning sounds like the computers are just cargo-culting. But this concrete example is spectacularly so.

I think the key insight is that the humans the AI replaces were probably also cargo culting. They'd just get a bit more defensive if you suggested that.

Have you ever tried to tell an ML engineer that their model is biased (or even worse sexist). I think the defensiveness is about equal.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We happily take anyone qualified and I get my bonus. But as mentioned, percentage of female employees is a KPI and it makes my boss looks good and it makes the CEO happy in all hands meetings.

My properties ensure that I won't face quotas that would be a barrier for emplyoment (well maybe my gender, I'm male), so, I'm just curious, so what if there's one position to fill, the male candidate scores 60%, and the female one scores 58% (using my hypothetical ranking system which actually works and is fair, etc, etc), so just slightly lower. Would your company pick the female candidate in this case? I guess ans…

People need to realize is actual support for diversity means internalizing there is a benefit.

So if you actually believe there is a benefit to having a team of men and women (I do), then it's not "wrong" to let that guide you to the woman when any score above a 50% indicates someone who will be able to actually do the work.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have quotas we need to fill. Hiring a white male is basically a nonstarter without prostrating yourself before HR

>Hiring a white male is basically a nonstarter without prostrating yourself before HR I struggle to believe what I'm reading. I'm just curious what people of future will think about this.

In most companies hiring anyone requires some form of prostration to HR, so a little extra work to hire a white male is not going to slow anyone down.

A friend of mine works in a large organization in which the head passed down a rule that only women would be hired for positions 'unless' the only available qualified candidate happened to be male.

Can you guess what happened? It hasn't increased the relative number of women hired but now everyone thinks the men are extra special.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one gender really did provide more 'value once hired', would it be reasonable for the AI to favour them?

the AI is just a product of it's inputs, how it's used, and whether it violates discrimination laws, are totally up to the users.

Sort of, but we have to be careful not the wash the hands of people all too willing to discard responsibility. It's correct to say "it's just statistics on data" but it also provides cover to the processes that use it. "How can you be against hiring the best person for the job" the argument goes, completely ignoring that the "best" isn't scientifically defined, and includes the same sexist biases we were trying to get rid of.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#56
post #14
post #11

Automation should be removed from the hiring process.

But to which level? Basic automation, i.e. sorting by proficency is not really done better by a human than machine. The problem doesn't lie in automation but how we apply it. Don't blame the tool, blame the user. I think there is a lot of room for removing overautomation and creating transparency. Though just outright abandoning automation would hurt even more since human routines are even harder to evaluate/ make tr…

How do you "sort by proficency"?

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ha that's a hoot. What a horrible injustice for an HR team to try and bring some diversity to a company that mostly hired white males. If white males weren't so busy looking for drinking buddies under the guise of a "culture fit" for the last 2 decades this wouldn't be a thing. Diversity stats for our industry are a boondoggle, most of the diversity is concentrated in a few large companies, and it takes the bare mini…

You are just a racist and sexist. The problem is you, not other people.

I'm racist and sexist (against myself) for accurately pointing out the trend where a white male dominated industry normalized drinking in the office and how that affected their definition of "culture"?

https://tech.co/news/tech-workplace-drinking-culture-2019-02

Or are you just insecure about your own biases.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#58

In my native language every verb has a masculine or feminine ending depending on the subject's gender. I'm also sure a woman has a far better chance of being hired into tech than a man with the same qualifications.

To be fair, getting hired in tech is still pretty easy in most cases and countries. My country puts way too much weight on formal qualification, but in the current economy you find work nearly everywhere.

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#59
post #8
post #3

Reading the conclusion of the article (not the paper), it sounds like the difference in writing between genders seem to be too strong for current techniques to work.

I wonder what happens if you work with someone of the opposite sex to prepare your resume.

Yes! Or use the AI to identify the gender indicating words of the opposite gender that are synonyms of words you've used and swap those in - might be a start (although deeper things like sentence structure could still influence the classification)

Re: Job Applicant Resumes Are Effectively Impossible to De-Gender

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hiring a white male is basically a nonstarter without prostrating yourself before HR I struggle to believe what I'm reading. I'm just curious what people of future will think about this.

In most companies hiring anyone requires some form of prostration to HR, so a little extra work to hire a white male is not going to slow anyone down. A friend of mine works in a large organization in which the head passed down a rule that only women would be hired for positions 'unless' the only available qualified candidate happened to be male. Can you guess what happened? It hasn't increased the relative number of…

The thing kinda is, that it's not only male/female thing, but race's also involved.

Biases biases and biases.

I think we should try to reach equal opportunity by providing access to edu, mentors maybe, an ability to prove themselves, not this kind of "discrimination".

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