Sapia.ai’s AI greatly narrows the gender disparity in workplaces traditionally dominated by males.

First research into the effects of AI on recruitment finds it overwhelmingly reduces bias inherent in the process.

Making AI part of your recruitment process can help your company close the gender gap. The discovery was recently made in the first field experimental study assessing the impact of AI tools on recruiting women for roles in industries that are traditionally male dominated. Scientists from Monash University and the University of Gothenburg found two ways Sapia.ai can increase the diversity of your hires.[1] First, telling candidates you’ll be using AI to assess them encourages more women to apply. Second, using AI to score applications makes human evaluators much less biased against women.

The effects of AI on job candidates

The researchers posted a real-life job for a web designer and invited over 700 people to apply. The candidates answered questions through Sapia.ai’s Smart InterviewerTM, an AI-powered automated chat that allows companies to interview anyone interested in a job. The researchers randomly told some candidates their application would be assessed by AI and some that it would be assessed by a human
evaluator.

Thirty percent more women applied when they knew AI would assess their application. The researchers also found this increase did not come at the cost of a reduction in the overall number or quality of applications

The effects of AI on job assessors

Next, the researchers gave a group of 500 people in tech the job of evaluating the applications. Some
were told the applicants’ AI score, some were not. Also, some were given names of applicants from
which to infer gender, while the others were not. The results of this second phase of the experiment demonstrated an overwhelming bias against women in the group that were given the applicant’s gender. When gender was withheld, the evaluators chose an equal number of men to women. When evaluators knew both the gender and the AI score of the applicants, they would again choose an equal number of men and women.

Sapia.ai’s AI lets you see the potential in everyone

The results of the research showed that you can substantially remove bias from your recruitment process
and encourage applications from those that otherwise may not have applied. The result also demonstrated an overall 36% closure of the gender gap when using AI in the recruitment process. In short, Sapia.ai helps you remove bias, reduce the gender gap, and see the potential in everyone.

[1] Avery, M., Leibbrandt, A., Vecci, J., Does Artificial Intelligence Help or Hurt Gender Diversity? Evidence from Two Field Experiments on Recruitment in Tech (March 2023)

Download the PDF