One topic dominates the blogs and industry publications this month – diversity<\/p>\n
Over in the USA, the advertising industry is battling with its engagement with the #MeToo movement. It\u2019s not just the problem of an obvious lack of women and people of colour in senior positions in advertising – with the PR problems this brings. It\u2019s also that this can cause some notable backfires in major advertising campaigns, for example Pepsi\u2019s appalling campaign that used Kendall Jenner as a \u2018peace maker\u2019 at a Black Lives Matter rally\u2026 by offering a police officer a can of soft drink. Described as \u2018trivialising\u2019, \u2018tone deaf\u2019 \u2018dangerously complacent\u2019 the ad was quickly pulled and cost the PepsiCo president Brad Jakeman his job.<\/p>\n
More diverse companies means more diverse recruiting and agencies that don\u2019t keep pace by both influencing their clients and being influenced by them, are going to find they are in a diminishing recruitment pool. Recruiting software needs to be sensitive to overall diversity, in an organisation and as wide as in a sector or industry, if it is to genuinely benefit the recruitment agencies that use it.<\/p>\n
Widely reported is the news that Amazon has bailed on an artificial intelligence recruitment tool being built in-house, because it demonstrated inherent bias against female candidates. After running the tool for a year, Amazon discovered that it had been \u2018trained\u2019 using largely male resumes so that it ended up downgrading women. This highlights the imprints of using recruitment agency software UK wide or internationally, that has been designed without inherent bias.<\/p>\n