Lab Meeting 06.03.2018 - Maude Lavanchy. IMD Lausanne

The use of algorithms to make hiring decisions have been on the rise. There has been little empirical work to understand how potential candidates view the use of these algorithms. In three studies on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we show that people have an aversion to the use of algorithms in hiring. This effect persists regardless of whether the outcome is favorable to them or not. We find that the belief that algorithms will not be able to see how unique they are as a candidate leads to this aversion. Although the use of algorithms may have benefits for organizations such removal of bias, our results highlight the potential costs of using them.