The COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation of 2022 forced employers across the country to reflect on how best to attract and retain skilled workers. Now many employers are increasingly open to adopting new recruitment strategies that meet their needs and ensure a diverse pool of job candidates. Machine learning technology can advance these goals: it can assist with talent matching and mitigate biases in hiring, which have been shown to negatively affect women, people of color, and older workers.

A research team led by AdeptID and Grads of Life will test the use of predictive models that use artificial intelligence bias-mitigation technology to identify overlooked talent within employers’ applicant pools. This experimental study will track differences in hiring decisions between intervention and control groups and observe outcomes by company characteristics and job type. The results could point to best practices and useful directions for further developing and using machine learning to create equitable and inclusive hiring practices.