Vindhya Rachur '22 will be defending her undergraduate honors thesis, "A Feminist Approach to Understanding Algorithmic Bias in Automated Hiring Practices," on Tuesday, May 3 at 5 pm via Zoom.
All members of the CICS community are invited to attend and support Vindhya's research.
Zoom link: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/91439434252
Abstract: Automated hiring has taken over the recruitment process in major tech corporations in society today. Data training and data labeling have demonstrated discriminatory impact inside of the hiring sphere. Algorithms are trained to observe patterns in large data sets to help predict outcomes. This is the case in the context of automated hiring in which an algorithm uses data from past resumes submitted to a given company. The data sets used to train these algorithms are typically drawn from up to a decade of previous employment cycles when there was an even more significant degree of male dominance across the tech industry than today. Based on this data, the system teaches itself that male candidates and / or white candidates are preferable, resulting in the penalization of resumes that include terms, names, and experiences associated more commonly with women and/or POC. My thesis tackles this issue of algorithmic bias in hiring through a feminist framework in order to understand how the development of these systems are tied to structures of social oppression. My research is critical in drawing attention to the experiences of women, particularly women of color, as they navigate racist and sexist automated hiring processes.