How AI in Recruitment and Hiring Can Cause Illegal Discrimination

Artificial intelligence is transforming the hiring process, with AI tools now used in nearly every stage: résumé screening, video interview analysis, skills assessments and even personality scoring. Employers might turn to these technologies to save themselves the tedium of sifting through, analyzing and comparing applications. However, AI systems learn from historical hiring data, which often reflects biases. Far from eliminating discrimination, these systems can replicate and amplify existing inequities.

AI-driven recruiting can produce discriminatory outcomes due to such elements as the following:

• Biased training data — If an algorithm is trained on historical decisions that favored certain groups, it might preferentially select those same groups going forward. For example, a résumé screener trained on data from a historically male workforce may downgrade résumés signaling gender through women’s college affiliations or certain volunteer activities. 
• Automated “personality” or “culture fit” filters — These might reward conformity to a narrow template and disproportionately screening out women, people of color, individuals with disabilities and religious minorities. 
• Proxy variables for protected traits — Even if recruiters don’t intentionally include racial, ethnic or socioeconomic traits, variables like ZIP codes might act as proxies, with exclusionary effects.
• Discriminatory scoring in video interviews — Some tools analyze facial expressions, tone or speech patterns. These criteria could disadvantage people with disabilities, neurodivergent individuals, non-native English speakers or older applicants. 

Each of these mechanisms can create an unlawful disparate impact, even when employers intended no discrimination.

The issue of AI-drive discrimination holds special weight in New Jersey. The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD) is among the strongest civil rights laws in the nation. State regulators have clearly stated that AI-driven discrimination is covered by the NJLAD. Job applicants and employees seeking promotions can challenge tools that disproportionately exclude protected groups or lack a genuine business necessity, especially when less discriminatory alternatives exist. This applies regardless of whether the exclusion was intentional or simply the product of technology.

Employees should be alert to several red flags of unlawful AI-driven discrimination, such as: 

• Automatic rejection following an AI-analyzed video interview 
• Résumé screening without any human input 
• Assessments that don’t seem relevant to actual job duties 
• Consistent hiring of similar applicants despite a diverse pool
• Vague explanations such as “the algorithm determined you were not a match.”

If you suspect you are a victim of such discrimination, take action. Save job postings, emails and assessment results; document inconsistencies in hiring outcomes; note a lack of human contact during the process; and consult a New Jersey employment discrimination attorney. 

The law firm of Deutsch Atkins & Kleinfeldt, P.C. in Hackensack has wide experience helping New Jersey workers enforce their rights against illegal discrimination. Call us at 551-245-8894 or contact us online to schedule an attorney consultation.