S4 E72 | eXpert Tease: How tech is being used to level the playing field and mitigate bias with Frida Polli

CXR Announcer 0:00Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management. Listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We're glad you're here.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:17Hello, I'm Chris Hoyt, president of CareerXroads. you've joined us for another eXpert Tease segment of our CXR podcast that can be found and subscribed to on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio and all the other usual places. And while we do a few different specials like our Uncorked broadcast, which is sort of like drunk history for HR, and our new Moments, That Matter series, where we kind of talk about tough topics within the realm of prejudice and racism. This is a weekly quick hit conversation with industry leaders and practitioners who are sharing a life or career lesson, sort of a hands on how to, if you will, with us in just 10 to 15 minutes now, the topics that were decided on an advanced by hundreds of talent acquisition leaders from around the world, covering a range of subjects such as innovation leadership, DE&I, employee wellness, or even like today, ethics and talent acquisition and hiring. So if you've joined us live, which anyone can do, you can both listen to and participate via the chat window on your screen, we're hoping you'll add a question or two. And if we've time, we'll try to get them answered here in the broadcast. If we run out of time, we'll address them in our free and open to the public exchange hosted by CareerXroads at CareerXroads, CXR.works/talenttalks. Now, today, I've got with me, Frida Polli, who has a PhD in neuro psychology and an MBA from Harvard, and is the co founder and CEO of Pymetrics, where their entire mission is to make hiring and internal mobility, more predictive and less bias through advanced technology now, Frida, I have been a fan of your work for years, as you know, we work hard to try to stay in touch and keep up with you. And the difference that you and your teams of pi metrics are having in your space. Welcome to the broadcast.

Frida Polli, Pymetrics 1:54Thanks, Chris. Happy to be here.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:56So the topic we want to take a stab at today is something that given our current societal challenges, not just in the United States, but around the world has really put a bright spotlight on within the realm of what we do right within talent, and that is ethics and bias in hiring. So I'd really like to get your take and ask for you to share one thing that you believe our listeners should be aware of in regards to how tech is helping to level the playing field for talent and HR leaders today.

Frida Polli, Pymetrics 2:21Sure. It's hard to condense, condense it into one thing, Chris? So I'll try. I think bottom line, I think, I would say this, that technology can be designed to level the playing field and mitigate bias. And, you know, I metrics we we do that we've been doing that since the beginning, we've built the platform to be a ground up, you know, from the ground up. At the goal, Ai platform, we selected on bias data, we pretest all of our algorithms for disparate impact before we release them, we don't release algorithms, if they have disparate impact, we test them after they get deployed. We've had a third party audit, by Krista Wilson at Northeastern, so we've like done, you know, pretty much as as much as you could do in order to build an unbiased platform, however, and therefore, you know, we we feel very confident that we level the playing field in many ways for all of our clients that use us. And you know, that's what the results show. I think what I will say is that it's not as bright and optimistic a picture as all that because, unfortunately, there is just and it was just always boggles my mind when this happens. There's just a lot of false advertising out there, meaning there is a there are a lot of tech platforms.