HireVue facial analysis

Incidents and issues 🔥

• January 2021. HireVue announced that it had 'proactively' stopped using facial analysis in new assessments on the grounds that it's own internal research had 'demonstrated that recent advances in natural language processing had significantly increased the predictive power of language', meaning visual analysis 'no longer significantly added value to assessments.' In a response to WIRED, John Davisson, EPIC senior counsel, said 'I am surprised they are dropping this, as it was a keystone feature of the product they were marketing.' 'That is the source of a lot of concerns around biometric data collection, as well as these bold claims about being able to measure psychological traits, emotional intelligence, social attitudes, and things like that.'

• November 2019. US privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a legal complaint (pdf) alleging HireVue's use of facial technologies and biometric data 'constitute unfair and deceptive trade practices' and that it produces results that are 'biased, unprovable, and not replicable'. It alleged HireVue's hiring algorithms are more likely to be biased by default, in contrast to it's marketing claims, that it's models fail to meet international standards on AI-based decision making, and that the company fails to give candidates access to their assessment scores or the training data, factors, logic, or techniques used to generate each algorithmic assessment. The complaint also set out that HireVue's claims that it 'does not use facial recognition technology' is misleading as it collects and analyses 'facial expressions' and 'facial movements' to measure job candidates’ 'cognitive ability,' 'emotional intelligence,' and 'social aptitudes.' Futhermore, EPIC accused HireVue of engaging in the 'intrusive collection and secret analysis of biometric data', thereby causing 'substantial privacy harms' to job candidates, that it’s assessment system causes 'substantial financial harms 'to job candidates, and that it's facial recognition software could be racially biased or improperly used to identify sexual orientation.