Robots are SPYING on social media to assess job candidates – and could stop you getting hired
Some of the world's biggest companies are using AI to figure out your personality traits long before you interview for an opening
ROBOTS spying on your social media profiles could stop you from getting your dream job.
Recruitment AI used by companies to pick out applicants scans your posts for signs you might not be right for the role.
Known as DeepSense, the tool assesses your personality based on your online activity – even if you haven't applied for the role and don't know you're being assessed.
The language you use, your photos, how often you post and more is merged into a data profile that tells recruiters your interests, teamwork skills, how extroverted or introverted you are, and even your emotional stability.
If the tool thinks you're right for the job, it sends you a message asking if you would like to apply.
DeepSense's engineers say it is merely an upgrade on the old method used by recruiters: Scanning your profiles for inappropriate photos and comments.
Amarpreet Kalkat, CEO of the San Francisco and India-based company, says its leans on "psycholinguistics" to analyse job candidates.
The field links the language you use to what motivates you, what you believe and your fundamental needs.
"The language you use [on social media] plays a pretty key role for us to determine your personality," Kalkat told the .
"Nothing's perfect, but it is an improvement on today's recruiters, who on average look at your application for six seconds."
Companies looking to recruit through the software first tell it what position they are hiring for, such as "marketing director".
They then plug in the personality traits they are looking for: Someone who is goal-oriented, extroverted and emotionally stable, for example.
The firm's AI then scans the Twitter and LinkedIn profiles of thousands of people and creates a "personality profile" for each of them.
It then picks out anyone who matches the company's ideal candidate traits, and those people are later invited to apply.
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The company says its software is accurate around 75-80% of the time, slightly below the 82% achieved by a questionnaire-based online personality test.
Two of America's 500 biggest businesses, including one of the country's top five consultancy firms, already use DeepSense for recruitment, Kalkat said.
The entrepreneur admitted it will take time for people to get used to the idea of robots constantly scanning their social media profiles.
He said: "It's still experimental for a lot of people. We don't adapt to things very well as people, it takes time."
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Tech companies have previously come under fire for using AI to analyse job candidates.
In October, Amazon was forced to scrap a recruiting AI that taught itself to prefer men over women.
Just a month earlier, it emerged that Facebook's algorithms prevented women from seeing certain job adverts.
Beyond the world of recruitment, a 2016 study that algorithms used in the US to predict future offending rates among convicts was biased against African Americans.
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