Banishing bias in recruitment with AI

(SOUNDBITE) (English) ARIEL LOPEZ, FOUNDER AND CEO OF KNAC, SAYING:“I myself have witnessed not only discrimination, but the micro-aggressions as well of being a Black and Latinx woman."

Ariel Lopez wants to banish bias in job recruitment

by using artificial intelligence to screen job applications

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

She is the founder and CEO of Knac

Her tech firm helps companies screen all submitted resumes

and find the best candidate for the job

even if they don’t fit a specific mold set by the hiring manager

(SOUNDBITE) (English) ARIEL LOPEZ, FOUNDER AND CEO OF KNAC, SAYING:

“For example, if a company isn’t using us and they have 20,000 people that apply to a job the recruiter is immediately overwhelmed. They are not going to be able to review 20,000 applicants.”

“What we are doing is we are taking a process that is very manual and full of bias because it is so manual, and automating it. But we are implementing a human element into the machine learning and into the tech that ultimately drives Knac.”

Lopez says founding Knac is a way for her to fight back against discrimination

that she herself had been made to enforce in the past

'‘One of my first recruiting jobs ever my boss at the time told me that, “If you see anyone that has a graduation date before the year of 1995 just kindly discard of their resume and push it to the side.” And I was like, you can’t be serious. I think that was one of the first times that I realized the amount of discrimination that exists, especially as it relates to hiring.”

Lopez says her technology helps women and people of color in particular

receive fairer treatment in the recruitment process