Getting a Job

In the United States, one of the most important questions for people as they come into adulthood is how can I get a job? What goes on the resume? How can I make sure to get the position I want with the pay I want? With time, the job-seeking process has changed. At first, it was all about who you knew to get your foot in the door at your preferred-workplace, and some places or positions still operate like this. Now, there are also mathematical models that can sort through resumes much quicker than any person, which will save employees who are doing the hiring time and save the company money. The hiring managers will describe specific traits or skills that they want in an employee, insert those words or phrases into the machine, and then all the resumes will be graded based on how good of a fit the resume is to the hiring managers descriptions. This process seems simply and very fair at face value, but unfortunately, as with most things, humans can misuse and abuse it.

Cathy O’Neil discusses this more in chapter 6 of her book, but situations have arose in which candidates were unfairly weeded out due to the models. Specifically, there is an example in the book that claims that he could not find a job due to his mental illness and how that mental illness was perceived in the mathematical hiring models. It is very common for businesses wanting “a certain type of person” to work at their business, especially when customer service is involved. So, the businesses will hire a company to give what is essentially a personality test to find the “type of person” that they want. Unfortunately for an incredibly intelligent man named Kyle Behm who was introverted and had a poor mental health and was constantly being rejected due to the test. These kinds of tests raise huge red flags for the ethics in the use of these models to hire people.