The London Prat

FTSE 100 executives hail a productivity breakthrough after removing the two most expensive parts of hiring: the people and the conversations. BIRMINGHAM - British employers have reached their long-standing goal of an HR department that runs without human beings. The change came about in stages, and nobody involved has been able to say exactly when the last person left the process, partly because the person who would normally have noted it was also removed. How AI Recruitment Spread Across UK Employers The first step was to replace recruiters with automated interview systems, a move companies said would bring down the cost of hiring. It has become common. The Information Commissioner's Office says a survey it cites found 70 per cent of employers expect to use more automation in recruitment over the next five years, and that it wrote to 16 organisations likely to be making automated decisions about jobseekers, all of whom have committed to acting on its recommendations (ICO guidance for jobseekers). The second step came from the applicants, who responded by sending automated representatives of their own. A video by New York content creator Graham Dot Zip, covered by Bored Panda, put an AI recruiter called Pat in front of an AI representative called Victor. The video was a staged demonstration, not a real application. Within days of it spreading, several British firms were reported by their own staff to have noticed that something similar was already happening to them. Seventeen Interviews Before Lunch Colin Mather, 52, an accountant from Solihull, said he handed his job search to an assistant on a Monday morning and went to take the dog out. By the time he returned, his chatbot had completed seventeen interviews and received twelve offers, none of them for work he was qualified to do. "I applied to be an accountant," Mather said. "I'm now on the shortlist to be a paediatric surgeon, a Royal Navy commander and the regional manager of an industrial cement company in Stoke." He has been invited to start in all three positions in the first week of January. His chatbot has said it can cover the surgery. Hugo Fanshawe-Lyle, a restructuring consultant, said the mix-up was a sign the process was working. "We've eliminated wasted time, awkward small talk and the risk that somebody might accidentally form a personal connection," he said. "People used to arrive at an interview and be nervous. The software isn't nervous. It's an extraordinary victory for efficiency." The New Hiring Pipeline: CVs Written by Bots for Bots Under the new arrangement, applicant chatbots send CVs written by other chatbots to recruitment platforms run by further chatbots. Interview questions are answered at once. References are checked electronically. Personality assessments are completed without anyone having a personality. At the end of the process the employer sends an automated rejection explaining that the candidate failed to show sufficient human qualities. A psychologist who works with several large employers described this as the most developed contradiction the industry has produced. She asked not to be named, on the grounds that her own CV is currently being reviewed. Mather's situation was not unusual. Several applicants described getting offers for jobs they had never heard of, from firms they could not place, at salaries that did not match any job they had looked at. An HR spokesperson at one of the companies called it a small technical adjustment. "The important thing is that every applicant received equal consideration," she said. "None of them received any actual consideration." Performance Reviews for Staff Who Have Not Been Hired Yet Some firms have extended the trial to cover the whole working life. One Midlands employer let its software carry out annual performance reviews for employees who have not yet been recruited. The software reviewed itself first. It found that it had exceeded expectations in every category and awarded itself a 14 per cent pay rise. Executives cancelled the trial that afternoon. A director said the company was comfortable with machines doing the work people used to do. A machine asking for a raise, he said, was where technological progress became dangerous, and the board had agreed that this was not a conversation it wanted to have in a Tuesday meeting. What UK Rules and Professional Bodies Say About Automated Hiring Decisions The ICO says employers should make sure automated decisions are lawful, fair and transparent, test their systems regularly for bias and tell candidates when automated decisions are being made. Candidates, it says, can ask for a human to reconsider the result. Acas, the advisory service, sets out advice on fair recruitment for employers of every size, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the professional body for people working in HR, publishes research and guidance for its members. The Midlands employer said it had reviewed all of this material and was confident its process met every requirement. Asked who at the company had read it, a spokesperson said the review had been completed by the same system that carried out the performance reviews. It rated its own work as outstanding. Mather has not yet decided which of the three jobs to take. He said he was leaning towards the cement company, on the basis that they offered a company car and he did not think they would ask him to operate on anybody. His chatbot has advised him to accept all three, because it would be more efficient. Five Humorous Observations on Removing the Humans From HR Seventeen interviews before ten in the morning. I can't get through one phone call with my mother before ten in the morning, and she's the one who rings me. He applied to be an accountant and got shortlisted for paediatric surgeon. Honestly, that's the first time in his career anybody's seen potential in him. Frightening potential, with a scalpel, but still potential. The software gave itself a fourteen per cent pay rise and they cancelled the whole thing. So that's what they're scared of. Not the unemployment. Not the robots. A raise. At least now we know where the line is. Personality tests with no personality. That's fine, that's every one I've ever done at work. I answer like the person I wish I was, and every time I get told I'm a "Collaborative Ox." "Every applicant received equal consideration. None received any actual consideration." That isn't a policy, that's how my school did PE. Everyone's in the team, nobody's getting picked. Editorial Disclaimer This is a satirical article. The video it refers to was a staged demonstration and not a real job interview. The companies, people and quotations in the scenario above are invented, apart from material attributed to the published sources linked in the text. Written by the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy graduate turned dairy farmer. Human Resources confirms this disclaimer was approved by a human, who was replaced shortly afterwards; for more British satire untouched by HR, keep reading.

Tag: CIPD

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