Hiring at India's Big Four outsourcers stalls, as AI seemingly makes an impact
www.theregister.com

... India's big four outsourcers " HCL, Infosys, TCS and Wipro " have essentially stopped hiring, perhaps coinciding with their increased use of AI to power their practices.

The four companies have all announced quarterly results in the last ten days and appear to be in decent health. HCL reported $3.8 billion revenue, up 7.4 percent year over year. Infosys pulled in $5.1 billion, up 1.7 percent year over year. TCS revenue of $7.5 billion represented a three percent increase. Wipro's $2.6 billion revenue represented a 5.5 percent year over year improvement.

India's top tech companies often hire more than 10,000 people a quarter, a rate of recruitment that more-than offsets attrition and sees their headcounts rise substantially. Wipro increased its payroll by 6,500 people last quarter and Infosys hired 5,000 more -- muted growth by their standards -- while TCS and HCL went backward by 11,000 and 261 people respectively.

Over the last year, the four companies added just 3,910 staff, an unusually slow rate of hiring.

Perhaps coincidentally, all four companies told investors they're using more AI to deliver services for clients, either by adopting the technology to streamline their own work or by adding it to the tools they deliver to customers. I ...

AI is screening your resume. Here's how to make it past the bots
www.npr.org

... Applying for a job has never been easier"or more inhuman.

In a few clicks, you can upload your resume to any job board. But that convenience means more people are applying to each posted job.

"We see a lot of companies ... close the application after 24 hours because they already got hundreds and thousands of resumes," journalist Hilke Schellmann told NPR's Manoush Zomorodi. "Hiring managers are overwhelmed and they want a solution," Schellmann said.

To navigate the deluge, employers are turning to artificial intelligence"algorithms that scan resumes, rank candidates, and even analyze video interviews. Schellmann, author of The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted & Fired & Why We Need To Fight Back Now, spent years investigating these systems and their failures.

The Unpredictable Bias in "Smart" Hiring

AI promises to remove human bias, but often amplifies it. Some tools claimed to assess confidence, enthusiasm, or teamwork via facial expressions and tone of voice.

At an HR-tech demo in 2018, Schellmann saw a system predicting job success from facial cues. "Who knew facial expressions in an interview were predictive of success in the job?" she said.

But a computer vision and facial expression psychologist that Schellmann talked to was baffled. "They're like, no, this is just correlation. These are just signals that we can now record and analyze. They thought this was pure rubbish, and could actually cause bias and discrimination." ...