Robot Recruiting: The Impact of AI Evaluators on Justice, Trust and Company Perceptions

Abstract

Organizations are increasingly utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate job candidates. While much is known about how job candidates perceive companies based on human-to-human interaction in the personnel selection process, little is known about how the use of AI to evaluate candidates affects company perceptions. In a field study (N=179), we find that candidates perceive companies more negatively when they use AI evaluators compared to human evaluators. This result is partially explained by decreased perceptions of fairness and trustworthiness on behalf of the candidates. In Study 2 we conducted a field experiment (N = 307) replicating these findings. Our research demonstrates that while it may be more efficient for companies to use AIs to evaluate candidates this approach may come at a significant cost to companies.