Job applicants sue Eightfold AI, saying its hiring scores should fall under FCRA

A group of job applicants filed a lawsuit in Contra Costa County Superior Court in California against Eightfold AI, arguing that the company’s A.I. screening tool should be treated like a consumer reporting agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and that applicants must be told what data and scores are being used.

The suit, brought by law firms Outten & Golden and Towards Justice with help from former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawyers, says Eightfold’s software evaluates candidates by comparing their skills to employers’ needs and scores applicants on a one-to-five scale.

Eightfold markets a dataset drawn from sources such as LinkedIn that it says includes more than “1 million job titles, 1 million skills, and the profiles of more than 1 billion people.” Plaintiffs say the system can block candidates from reaching human hiring managers and provides no feedback on scores or how ratings were generated.

One plaintiff, Erin Kistler, who has a computer science degree and decades of technology experience, said only 0.3 percent of the thousands of jobs she applied to in the past year advanced to a follow-up or interview and that several of her applications were routed through Eightfold.

Key Topics

Business, Eightfold Ai, Fcra, Erin Kistler, Outten & Golden, Towards Justice