Hidden Workers, this is the title of a recently published (PDF) study into hiring software and general practices in the United States by the Harvard Business School.

This study unearths several issues within the country’s hiring system and in particular highlights how broken automated hiring software is, with millions of viable candidates seemingly rejected over a simple mistake.

To that end, while the systems employed by different pieces of software vary, the fundamental flaw identified in the study is lumping prospective candidates into two categories – good and bad.

The latter often includes candidates that have been discarded for arbitrary reasons and next to no further investigation, such as placing a candidate into the “bad pile” if there is a six-month gap in the applicant’s employment history for example.

As such, someone who has been on maternity or paternity leave, might be incorrectly excluded from applying for a position.

Added to this, unlike many of the changes resulting from the pandemic over the past 18 months, the hidden worker problem has been one that has been developing over some time.

“Our findings illuminate a situation that has worsened because of the pandemic but has, in fact, been growing over recent decades. A single data point made the intractability of the problem apparent – just under half (44%) of middle-skill ‘hidden workers’ reported that finding work was just as hard pre-Covid-19 as it was during our 2020 survey period,” explains a summary of the report.

“Our research revealed that long-standing and widespread management practices contribute significantly to constraining the candidates that companies will consider, leading to the creation of a diverse population of aspiring workers who are screened out of consideration – or ‘hidden.’,” researchers add.

Those organisations that wilfully ignore hidden workers could be hurting their own interests in the long run, the study also found.

“Companies that purposefully hire hidden workers realize an attractive return on investment (ROI). They report being 36% less likely to face talent and skills shortages compared to companies that do not hire hidden workers. And they indicate former hidden workers outperform their peers materially on six key evaluative criteria—attitude and work ethic, productivity, quality of work, engagement, attendance, and innovation,” the research highlighted.

As such, while hiring software may seem like an easy solution for a time-intensive task, as this study notes, it not only overlooks a large portion of the market, but could also mean you’re missing out on much needed talent for your business.

To read the Harvard Business School report in full, head here.

[Image – Photo by Matt Noble on Unsplash]