Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

by Cathy O'Neil

It’s important, for example, to sprinkle the résumé liberally with words the specific j...

This could include positions (sales manager, chief financial officer, software architect), languages (Mandarin, Java), or hon...

Those with the latest information learn what machines appreciate and ...

Images, for example, are useless. Most résumé scanners don’...

And fancy fonts do nothing but confuse the machines, says...

She’s the cofounder of Resunate.​com, a job a...

The safe ones, she says, are plain vanilla fonts, like ...

And forget about symbols such...

They only confuse things, preventing the automatic systems from correctly p...

The result of these programs, much as with college admissions, is that those with the money and resources to prepa...

Those who don’t take these steps may never know that they’re sending their ré...

It’s one more example in which the wealthy and informed get the edge and the poor are...

So far in this chapter, we’ve been looking at models that filter out job candidates.

For most companies, those WMDs are designed to cut administrative costs and to reduce the risk of bad hires (or ones that might require more training).

The objective of the filters, in short, is...

HR departments, of course, are also eager to save money through the hir...

One of the biggest expenses for a company is workforce turnover, c...

Replacing a worker earning $50,000 a year costs a company about $10,000, or 20 percent of that worker’s yearly pay, according ...

Replacing a high-level employee can cost multiples of that—as much as...

Naturally, many hiring models attempt to calculate the likelihood that each job can...

The churn model took into account some of the metrics you might expect, including the average time people stuck around on previous jobs.

But they also found some intriguing correlations.

People the system classified as “creative types” tended to stay longer at the job, while those who scored high on “inquisitiveness” were more likely to set their ...

While churn analysis focuses on the candidates most likely to fail, the more strategically vital job for HR departments is to locate future stars, the people whose intelligence, inventiveness, and drive can change the course of an entire enterprise.

In the higher echelons of the economy, companies are on the hunt for employees who think creatively and work well in teams.

So the modelers’ challenge is to pinpoint, in the vast world of Big Data, the bits of information that correlate wi...

Résumés alone certainly do...

Most of the items listed there—the prestigious university, the awards, even the skills—are crude p...

résumés are full of puffery and sometimes even lies.

With a quick search through LinkedIn or Facebook, a system can look further afield, identifying some of a candidate’s friends and colleagues.

Extending far beyond a prospect’s alma mater or résumé, Gild sorts through millions of job sites, analyzing what it calls each person’s “social data.”

The company develops profiles of job candidates for its customers, mostly tech companies, keeping them up to date as the candidates add new skills.

But Gild’s model attempts to quantify and also qualify each worker’s “social capital.”

How integral is this person to the community

The model could attempt to gauge Pedro’s passion (which probably gets a high score) and his level of engagement with others.

It would also evaluate the skill and social importance of his contacts.

Those with larger followings would co...

Still, it’s important to note that these hiring and “onboarding” models are ever-evolving.

The world of data continues to expand, with each of us producing ever-growing streams of updates about our lives.

All of this data will feed our potential employers, giving th...

Will those insights be tested, or simply used to justify the status quo an...

The goal, of course, is to spend as little money as possible, which means keeping staffing at the bare minimum while making sure that reinforcements are on hand for the busy times.

Under the inefficient status quo, workers had not only predictable hours but also a certain amount of downtime.

You could argue that they benefited from inefficiency: some were able to read on the job, even study.

Now, with software choreographing the work, every minu...

And these minutes will come whenever the program demands it, even if it means clopenin...

This chaotic life affects children deeply.

According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, an advocacy group,

“Young children and adolescents of parents working unpredictable schedules or outside standard daytime working hours are more likely to have infe...

The parents might blame themselves for having a child who acts ou...