When big data gets it wrong
Do you get emails from LinkedIn telling you about job openings? The subject lines read like this: “Karen: Adobe, salesforce.com and Groupe Insearch are looking for candidates like you.”
I get them regularly and usually just delete them. But yesterday, for whatever reason, I clicked on the latest one to read it.
And I was offended.
As I scanned the first two job listings, I could see why an algorithm might match them to me. Sr. Software Engineer? Sure; I have a computer science degree. Accessibility Engineer? That one’s more of a stretch, but I guess the match was because the Accessibility Group was part of my department when I was a vice president at Adobe Systems.
But then I got to the next two listings. Executive Assistant roles. WTF?
I’ve been a vice president at a publicly traded software company. I’ve been a CEO at an early stage startup. And now I’m the founder of my consulting practice. Why the heck would an algorithm match me with Executive Assistant positions?
We can chalk this up to a bad algorithm, yet that’s not enough. There’s a bigger issue here: the subtle message that this algorithm is sending to women everywhere.
The social science research tells us that women tend to doubt themselves more than men, and that to succeed, confidence matters just as much as competence.
By sending job listings to women who are clearly overqualified for them, LinkedIn is reinforcing the confidence gap. While I can easily shrug off the suggestion to apply to Exec Assistant roles, I wonder about the woman who has been a software architect and gets a recommendation to apply for a more junior role. Or a woman who has a couple of years of experience as a software engineer receiving a recommendation for a data entry clerk. Or any woman who might be coming back to the workforce after a leave of absence, and being shown positions clearly below their capabilities.
It’s an unintended message, but destructive nonetheless.
LinkedIn, please fix your algorithms. Stop reinforcing the confidence gap.
— Karen Catlin
© 2015 by Karen Catlin. All rights reserved.
