Websites, candidate contacts and AI – a roundup of key issues in recruitment

April 5th, 2024 | Company News

Protecting candidates from recruitment website fraud

The world of recruitment is as prone to risk and fraud as any other, but recruitment website design is the latest area in which recruitment agencies are finding themselves on the back foot. Fraudsters are using recruitment platforms, and even designing their own websites, to create online vacancies to obtain personal information from candidates. While the best recruitment websites are hard to fake, there’s no doubt that the scammers are skilled in creating fake sites. Action Fraud is reporting a rise in recruitment scams, with people being exploited either through false adverts on reputable job websites or through follow up messages sent on Whatsapp to persuade people to hand over personal details such as passport information and bank details. While the Recruitment and Employment Confederation has reiterated that its members would never ask candidates for payment to obtain work, it’s up to recruiters to ensure that their website for recruitment is secure and contains clear information about what they will, and won’t ask candidates in their search for employment.

Recruitment agency fined for illegal spamming

In February, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined a business called Join The Triboo Limited £130,000 for sending spam emails to candidates between August 2019 and August 2020. During that period around 440,000 people were sent an average of 244 emails each. It is illegal to send direct marketing without obtaining the individual’s consent, and this company didn’t obtain consent before bombarding people with spam after they visited one of the companies five job search websites. The best recruitment crm can be relied on to inform and support candidates, staying in touch and, as part of web based recruitment software, simplifying the onboarding experience for successful individuals. As this case shows, unscrupulous operators can also use CRM to send spam.

AI – help or hindrance to recruiters?

Finally, AI is coming under scrutiny for potential hiring bias. At the end of 2023, IBM surveyed move than 8,000 IT professionals and discovered that 42% were already using AI and a further 40% were considering using the technology to recruit. However, some candidates are finding that they don’t meet the criteria used by AI screening, despite being well qualified for the job in question. In 2021, one company removed its facial analysis function after complaints that it discriminated against certain types of people. In a clear example of AI irrationality, a researcher received a high interview ranking, despite speaking German in response to questions in English, but received a poor ranking for her genuine credentials. Hilke Schellman claims that while a biased individual can harm many people if they’re in a position to influence hiring, their impact is still fairly limited.  An algorithm, with a similar bias, could harm hundreds of thousands of applicants. Recruiting software still needs to be guided by human input, not rushed to market, Schellman suggests.