Technology-mediated distortions: a review on the biases and misperceptions in employment interviews via computer, telephone and AI

Biases in job interviews threaten the objective evaluation of applicants. Similar and different biases exist also in mediated job interviews, where the communication between applicant and interviewer passes through a techno-logical software or hardware. This review synthetises the literature investigat-ing biases in job interviews conducted through telephone, videoconference, asynchronous videos or avatars. Moreover, this review reports perceptions ap-plicants and interviewers had of such modalities. Overall, applicants received lower ratings in mediated interviews compared to face-to-face ones. In fact, lack of nonverbal cues, bad audio/video quality, lags and non-neutral interview lo-cations hinder interviewers in performing objective assessments of applicants. Moreover, the appearance of avatars is another source of bias, as the charac-teristics of avatars merge with or override those of applicants. Regarding per-ceptions, interviewers and applicants expressed mainly negative perceptions. In particular, applicants were particularly concerned about privacy and fair-ness, with the latter being lower for mediated interviews. Furthermore, avatars accentuate biases of face-to-face interviews and can appear “creepy” to appli-cants. Finally, technological mediation presents other downsides, i.e., in-creased difficulty in the interviewer-applicant interaction and a rigid and imper-sonal process. Despite these biases, negative perceptions and downsides, technological mediation brings about simpler and more accessible interviews for applicants and recruiters, along with the chance of a greater level of inter-view standardisation. To solve the issues of mediated interviews, researchers suggest to do less interviews, pair them with other forms of assessment, stand-ardise interviews more, better inform applicants and make avatars able to transmit more characteristics of their operators, such as nonverbal cues.