My thoughts on creating a bias free America one resume at a time.
My motivation for creating this blog post on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday came from wanting to pay homage to Dr. King and the civil rights movement of the 60's while discussing my own personal journey towards eliminating racial bias in the twenty-first century with Opus AI.
Today we celebrate the life and contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: a remarkable human being who forever changed the course of history with his wisdom, empathy and genuine ability to love in the face of hate and oppression. Dr. King envisioned and worked towards a society where color, race, and faith weren’t things that divided us but instead were unique celebratory human attributes, that together made us stronger. By constantly strengthening his resolve of peace and empathy, Dr. King not only moved America forward, he also moved the human race forward.
While much has changed socially, culturally, and technologically since the civil rights movement of the 1960's, in many ways discrimination and racial bias has taken on a new, more potent strain. Technology has made our world truly borderless and yet still there exists bias in hiring, business, entertainment, sports, you name it: there’s room for bias; conscious or unconscious.
Why this matters to me?
As an African American male, I am keenly aware of racial bias and the severe price Dr. King and other courageous souls paid for us to be accepted in modern day society. Hence, paying it forward for future generations isn’t optional. On the contrary, it’s a requirement for our survival. My personal journey along the path of making a difference began with a call. The call came sometime in the spring of 2017 from Loren Davie. Loren was my former boss at Brooklyn’s creative powerhouse Huge where we created Pepsi Refresh and won the Bronze Cyber Lion award for the Best Digitally Driven Integrated Campaign. Working with Loren, I gained a lot of respect for him not only as a programmer but as a individual. As fate would have it Loren and I kept in touch and throughout the years we talked different tech stacks, business ideas, software design, go to market strategies and start-up funding. Our initial conversation about Opus AI went something like this:
Loren : Hey, I have a new startup called Opus AI, which I created as a means of helping job seekers, who would otherwise get overlooked because of their race or gender, get more opportunities. Essentially, the technology redacts the identity of the candidate and so the person making the decision to advance or pass on the candidate, cannot see their gender, race, age, ethnicity or other demographic information. The decision maker’s decision is based on the candidate’s qualifications alone (Blind Candidate Screening).
Me: Oh that sounds interesting. Tell me more.
Loren. : Well, there’s an AI component to it which does something really interesting and brings a fresh perspective to the marketplace.
Me: Wait, is it written in Python?
Loren : (Chuckles). Of course, it is.
A short while after (Python notwithstanding) I came on board as an official Advisor. Besides an opportunity to work with Artificial Intelligence and a chance to work with Loren again, my decision to join Opus AI was my own small step towards helping our society see beyond race, demographics, and gender. For too long, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Mixed Race, Women and anyone else who didn’t fit a certain mold were denied good opportunities in the marketplace. Opportunities for which they were qualified to perform. Additionally, candidates who had the work experience but lacked a college degree or industry connections were denied even an interview. It goes without saying but, today, more than ever, we as a society must look beyond all the things that divide us with this current administration. It’s incumbent upon us as hiring managers in a country of immigrants, a country built on the backbone of slavery, and a country of incredible talent to all create a more diverse and inclusive workforce.
The difference Blind Candidate Screening can make.
In our recently published White paper on Blind Candidate Screening (available on whitepaper.opusai.co), we point to research which proves that Blind Candidate Screening is, in fact, effective and actually yields better results. One study in particular by the American Economic Association found that resumes for candidates with African American-sounding names received 50% fewer callbacks than resumes with Caucasian-sounding names, even when the quality of the resume was taken into account.
For many years, a core requirement of my role as the Head of Tech involved recruiting the best engineering talent for agencies such as HUGE, JWT and Method. I’ll be the first to tell you, hiring is a full-time job within itself. You start by creating a Job Description then turn your recruiters loose and prepare for the deluge of resumes coming your way. Unless you’ve been a programmer and understand what makes a good programmer, it’s difficult for an average recruiter to source quality technical candidates based on their resume alone. This is where our technology has a huge advantage in that it can assess soft skills and make inferences based on our AI.
I’ve always been a fan of challenger brands and that we definitely are. Our space has Enterprise Software players with hundreds of thousands to spend on customer acquisition and growth. They have dedicated sales teams and troves of Engineers. However, we have a purpose and along with that purpose comes our responsibility to ensure that our technology helps to remove bias from the hiring process. Our key performance indicators aren’t based on the number of deals we can close in a quarter. Instead, they’re calculated at a higher, more meaningful level: the number of people we can help to get that opportunity they wouldn’t normally have gotten. So, today, on this day of significance, let’s not forget the lessons of the past, and our responsibility as a society to continue practicing empathy, peace, and courage in the face of adversity. Let’s change the world, one resume at a time.
Thank you and learn more at opusai.co
Lawrence
