Foundation: Career Search

The questions, and your answers to [interview questions], are designed to evaluate several aspects of a jobseeker's personality and intelligence, such as your risk tolerance and how quickly you respond to situations.

Or as Pymetrics puts it, "to fairly and accurately measure cognitive and emotional attributes in only 25 minutes".

Its AI software is now used in the initial recruitment processes of a number of multinational companies, such as McDonald's, bank JP Morgan, accountancy firm PWC, and food group Kraft Heinz. An interview with a human recruiter then follows if you pass.

Its AI system records videos of job applicants answering interview questions via their laptop's webcam and microphone.

The audio of this is then converted into text, and an AI algorithm analyzes it for keywords, such as the use of "I" instead of "we" in response to questions about teamwork. The recruiting company can then choose to let HireVue's system reject candidates without having a human double-check, or have the candidate moved on for a video interview with an actual recruiter.

HireVue says that by September 2019 it had conducted a total of 12 million interviews, of which 20% were via the AI software. The remaining 80% were with a human interviewer on the other end of a video screen. The overall figure has now risen to 19 million, with the same percentage split.

"A resume can only give information about someone's hard skills, but research and common sense tells us that it's also soft skills that contribute to job success…"

(Murad, n.d., para 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 20)

HireVue said its system dissects the tiniest details of candidates’ responses — their facial expressions, their eye contact and perceived “enthusiasm” — and compiles reports companies can use in deciding whom to hire or disregard.

Job candidates aren’t told their score or what little things they got wrong, and they can’t ask the machine what they could do better. Human hiring managers can use other factors, beyond the HireVue score, to decide which candidates pass the first-round test.

Nathan Mondragon, HireVue’s chief industrial-organizational psychologist, told The Post the standard 30-minute HireVue assessment includes half a dozen questions but can yield up to 500,000 data points, all of which become ingredients in the person’s calculated score.

The employer decides the written questions, which HireVue’s system then shows the candidate while recording and analyzing their responses. The AI assesses how a person’s face moves to determine, for instance, how excited someone seems about a certain work task or how they would behave around angry customers. Those “Facial Action Units,” Mondragon said, can make up 29 percent of a person’s score; the words they say and the “audio features” of their voice, like their tone, make up the rest.

After a new candidate takes the HireVue test, the system generates a report card on their “competencies and behaviors,” including their “willingness to learn,” “conscientiousness & responsibility” and “personal stability,” the latter of which is defined by how well they can cope with “irritable customers or co-workers.”

(Harwell, 2019, para. 17, 18, 22, 23, 27)