Job hunters sue popular AI hiring firm saying it uses computer to rank their applications
Two job hunters applied class action lawsuit against one artificial intelligence-powered recruiting platform claims company infringed consumer protection laws By secretly awarding scores to applicants without their knowledge or consent.
The complaint was filed in California’s Contra Costa County Superior Court and accuses the company Eightfold of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the state’s Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act by ranking job applicants without their knowledge and the option to dispute.
Plaintiffs Erin Kistler and Sruti Bhaumik allege Eightfold in the filing. collects users’ personal data – to evaluate candidates on the platform – including information obtained from social media shares, location data, internet activities and website cookies, decrypt reports.
The lawsuit alleges that Eightfold used the data to compile “Match Scores,” which give an applicant a ranking from 0 to 5 based on their “likelihood of success.” He also claims that due to the scoring system, lower-ranked candidates “were rejected without even a human being looking at their applications.”
According to Kistler and Bhaumik, users are not told about this ranking system and have no opportunity to challenge their rankings.
Eightfold, an AI-powered recruiting platform, has been sued in a class action lawsuit alleging the company collected job seekers’ personal data and then used that data to rank them without their knowledge, consent or means to object to the ranking (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
David Seligman, Executive Director of Towards Justice and one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, wrote in a post about
The plaintiffs are seeking both actual and statutory damages of between $100 and $1,000 per violation under federal law and $10,000 per violation under California law.
Kistler is a computer science graduate with nearly 20 years of experience in product management and was unable to land a single interview after using the platform to apply for senior positions at PayPal.
Bhaumik is also a project manager and was automatically rejected from jobs at Microsoft just two days after applying through the Eightfold platform.
Nearly two-thirds of large companies use AI technology like Eightfold to screen candidates, and up to 38 percent use AI software to rank and match candidates, according to the lawsuit.
The application claims that Eightfold’s LLM draws on “more than 1 million job titles, 1 million skills, and profiles of more than 1 billion people working in every job and profession.” [and] It then performs “extractions” without the applicants’ knowledge or consent to create profiles that it thinks reflect the applicants’ “preferences, characteristics, aptitudes, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, talents, and abilities.”
Independent Requested comment from Eightfold.
