Harvard Business School and Accenture’s new report explains that automated hiring systems, such as CV scanners, are stopping an estimated 27 million people from finding full-time work. Businesses relying on automatic, sometimes AI-driven tech are turning down viable candidates, which means these people are "hidden" from recruiters. As many as 75% of employers rely on this technology, according to the report.
Companies are increasingly desperate for workers. As they continue to struggle to find people with the skills they need, their competitiveness and growth prospects are put at risk. At the same time, an enormous and growing group of people are unemployed or underemployed, eager to get a job or increase their working hours. However, they remain effectively “hidden” from most businesses that would benefit from hiring them by the very processes those companies use to find talent.
The irony that companies consistently bemoan their inability to find talent while millions remain on the fringes of the workforce led us to seek an explanation. How could such a breakdown in the fundamental laws of supply and demand occur? Why do companies consistently overlook large pools of talent? What changes would companies have to make to take advantage of that talent? Those became the driving questions behind our recent global study, which included a survey of more than 8,000 hidden workers and more than 2,250 executives across the U.S., the U.K., and Germany. 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.
The 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.” But it also affirmed that 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.