How AI Recruitment Technology is Positively Impacting Career Inequality

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) is a top priority for HR leaders across every industry. 90% of Fortune 500 companies have launched DE&I groups to encourage positive change in the recruitment process, which is the first step to addressing career inequality.

Women represent one of the world’s largest untapped labour markets, with 66 million fewer women economically active than men. However, recruitment processes with blind applications see hiring chances increase by up to 46% for women. Utilising technology to address career inequality with AI-powered candidate verification, pre-screening, and real-time matching can boost global GDP by up to $12 trillion in 2025 by addressing gender parity alone.

It’s a win-win for companies and candidates alike, with organisations that take a proactive approach to diversity, equality & inclusion being 35% more likely to outperform their competitors. By leveraging recruitment technology, including AI-powered screening processes, companies can remove unconscious bias and address career inequality to find their ideal candidate.

Why Addressing Career Inequality Matters in Recruitment

The world is becoming more diverse, but the candidates we see making career progression do not always reflect this. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) have become a top priority for companies across every industry.

Research from McKinsey shows that companies that address career inequality can attract top talent and outperform companies with lower diversity levels. There’s a clear correlation between diversity and improved business performance.

48% of Gen Z are racial or ethnic minorities, with companies needing to address concerns around unconscious bias to address career inequality before it impacts this generation as they begin applying for entry-level jobs.

Research by the Social Mobility Commission shows multiple industries fail to recruit young candidates from less advantaged backgrounds as their recruitment focuses on a small talent pool from elite universities.

DE&I in recruitment includes promoting candidates with a disability. Across age groups, candidates with disabilities are less likely to be employed than those without disabilities.

Everyone wants to see career inequality addressed. It’s a win-win for companies, from improving employee retention to boosting profits. 57% of employees want their company to be more proactive in increasing diversity.

AI recruitment technology can positively impact career progression by removing unconscious bias and other factors that can discriminate against candidates based on gender, age, ethnicity, physical ability, and neurodiversity.

How AI Technology Makes Recruitment More Equitable

Our mission at Osavus is to empower our community with AI-driven technology that provides equitable access to career opportunities. We’re streamlining recruitment with advanced data analytics and pre-screening tools to provide insights to both sides of the recruitment process.

AI-Powered Pre-Screening Reduces Unconscious Bias

Research shows that 79% of HR professionals believe unconscious bias exists in recruitment and succession planning. Unconscious biases are social stereotypes formed by individuals of certain groups outside their own awareness. There are three types of unconscious bias: affinity bias, confirmation bias, and gender bias.

Unconscious bias is at the core of career inequality, leading to discrimination in the workplace, loss of talent, and lack of innovation. It’s almost impossible to eliminate unconscious bias without technology being used at the earliest stage of recruitment.

Osavus exists to help level the playing field to empower companies of every size to identify and cultivate winning talent. We reduce bias through AI-powered pre-screening to provide more diverse candidate shortlists for interview stages.

Pre-screening with AI technology can eliminate unconscious bias that discriminates against candidates based on name, age, and academic background. For example, candidates with names of Asian origin are 28% less likely to progress to the interview stage than candidates with the same qualifications, suggesting unconscious bias amongst recruiters.

Utilising pre-screening to reduce unconscious bias can also support candidates returning to work after a career break. A survey of one thousand stay-at-home mothers by Indeed found that 73% had experienced bias in the hiring process when trying to return to work.

Better Skills Utilisation Through Candidate Matching

There’s a growing trend of careers stalling from limited income-earning opportunities when skills and candidates become mismatched with their current roles.

This trend isn’t just in technical fields like STEM. The skills gap exists with soft skills, including teamwork and communication. A LinkedIn global job survey found that 37% of respondents said their current job role did not fully utilise their skills or challenge them to progress. Under-utilised employees are more likely to have less access to training opportunities and skills development, continuing the cycle of career inequality.

AI tools, including candidate verification and real-time matching, remove conscious bias and identify hidden talent amongst applications that may otherwise be ignored. Better skills utilisation ensures candidates and companies find the right match in each other for positive recruitment outcomes.

A 2022 Job Seeker Nation Report found that 30% of employees quit within the first 90 days, making AI-supported candidate matching crucial for employee retention.

Reducing Recruitment Timelines

Only 30% of companies complete the recruitment process within 30 days. Companies of every size have found that higher applicant numbers for job vacancies have drastically increased hiring timelines and recruitment costs, making it more difficult to standardise the process.

The average recruiter spends 30 hours per week on the administrative tasks involved in recruiting, including sourcing candidates, screening applications, and scheduling interviews. Machine learning technology and AI-powered screening tools can streamline recruitment processes and evaluate candidate performance.

Longer recruitment timelines negatively impact DE&I efforts as they fail to keep candidates engaged, with 57% losing interest and 39% of candidates saying a 7-14 day wait time to hear back from recruiters is too long.

Identify Areas for Improvement in Recruiting

Companies prioritising DE&I to address career inequality can utilise AI-powered recruitment tools to monitor progress and identify areas for improvement. Osavus’ AI-driven analytics provide recruitment insights and data trends to enable your company to navigate the hiring industry and make better-informed recruitment choices.

Leverage AI Recruitment Tools with Osavus

We’re leveraging technology to create positive change, unlocking the potential within our community to achieve their goals, irrespective of their starting points. Osavus is reimagining human-centric, data-driven recruitment. Secure early access to Osavus’ AI-powered analytics, algorithms, and pre-screening tools by joining our waitlist for early access.