Could artificial intelligence (AI) remove bias from the hiring process? A team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University hope to find out.
With a one-year, $250,000 grant from Walmart, the team aims to address critical challenges in the current landscape of what is known in human resources as learning and employment records (LERs).
LERs are essentially digital resumes with verified records of people’s skills, educational experiences and work histories.
“The current systems for learning and employment records are overly complex and disconnected, making it hard for people to show all their skills to employers in a clear and trustworthy way,” said Youngjin Yoo, co-principal investigator in the research, associate dean of research and the Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Professor in Entrepreneurship at CWRU’s Weatherhead School of Management.
Yoo noted that the current hiring process using AI often suffers from bias due to the lack of valid and reliable data that signals people’s true skills and competencies, resulting in poor hiring outcomes and skill mismatches.
Researchers hypothesize that streamlined AI could offer a solution by improving the hiring process and fine-tuning the matching of skills to job requirements.
However, integrating AI into the LER ecosystem introduces challenges—including privacy, fairness, transparency and verifiability. Centralized LER systems often raise concerns about data privacy and security, and individuals typically lack ownership and control over their personal data, said Erman Ayday, associate professor of computer science at the Case School of Engineering, who, along with Yoo, is spearheading the research.
To address these issues, the team proposes developing a decentralized, privacy-preserving data architecture leveraging AI, Ayday said.
“Walmart is excited to support this groundbreaking research,” said Sean Murphy, director of retail opportunity at Walmart. “We believe that improving the hiring process with AI can lead to better outcomes for both employers and jobseekers, creating a more equitable job market. People often think AI is a threat to their jobs. The project will show that, in fact, AI can help people find better jobs.”
“This collaboration is a significant step toward revolutionizing how we manage and verify employment records,” said Morgan Frank, assistant professor in the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems at the University of Pittsburgh, one of the research collaborators—along with the Digital Credential Consortium (DCC) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“By leveraging privacy-preserving AI to enrich the data contained in digital credentials, we can improve their usefulness for the labor market,” added DCC Director Kerri Lemoie.
The research will focus on several key issues:
- Designing a decentralized data system that allows people to control their personal data while safely sharing their learning and work records.
- Using AI to understand skills and abilities from things like transcripts and job descriptions.
- Creating privacy-friendly methods to use AI for matching skills with jobs without sacrificing personal data privacy.
“The goal is to create a more equitable, efficient and privacy-preserving infrastructure for LERs,” Yoo said. “This will empower individuals to showcase their skills, enable employers to make more informed hiring decisions and foster a more dynamic education and workforce ecosystem.”
For more information, please contact Colin McEwen at colin.mcewen@case.edu.