AI Ethics at
HireNext
AI in hiring carries significant responsibility. HireNext is committed to building and deploying AI that is fair, transparent, explainable, and always subject to human oversight — protecting both employers and candidates.
Table of Contents
Our AI Ethics Commitment
HireNext uses artificial intelligence to help employers screen resumes, score candidates, evaluate assessments, and automate workflows. We recognize that AI in hiring has the potential to both improve and harm the candidate experience — and we take that responsibility seriously.
Our AI ethics framework is built on six core principles: Fairness, Transparency, Bias Prevention, Human Oversight, Data Privacy, and Accountability. These principles guide every AI feature we build and deploy.
Fairness & Non-Discrimination
HireNext's AI is designed to evaluate candidates based on job-relevant skills, experience, and qualifications — not on protected characteristics such as gender, race, age, religion, nationality, or disability status.
What Our AI Evaluates
- Relevant skills and technical competencies
- Years and type of experience aligned to the job description
- Certifications and qualifications required for the role
- Assessment performance and coding evaluation results
- Salary expectations relative to the role's budget
What Our AI Does NOT Evaluate
- Name, gender, or any demographic inference
- Photo or physical appearance
- Age or date of birth
- Religion, nationality, or ethnicity
- Any characteristic protected under applicable employment law
HireNext recommends that employers configure job descriptions and screening criteria based solely on bona fide occupational requirements.
Transparency & Explainability
We believe employers and candidates deserve to understand how AI-generated scores and recommendations are produced. HireNext provides explainable AI outputs — not black-box decisions.
Bias Prevention
AI models can inherit biases from training data. HireNext takes active steps to identify, measure, and mitigate bias in our AI systems:
- Training Data Audits: We regularly audit training datasets for demographic imbalances and historical hiring biases.
- Disparate Impact Testing: We test AI outputs for statistically significant disparate impact across protected groups before deployment.
- Ongoing Monitoring: AI model outputs are continuously monitored for drift and emerging bias patterns in production.
- Diverse Evaluation Teams: AI models are evaluated by diverse internal teams before release.
- Customer Configuration Guidance: We provide guidance to employers on configuring screening criteria to avoid inadvertent discrimination.
- Feedback Loops: Employers and candidates can flag AI outputs they believe are inaccurate or unfair, triggering a review process.
Human Oversight
HireNext AI is designed as a decision-support tool — not a decision-making tool. All final hiring decisions remain with human HR professionals and hiring managers.
No candidate should be rejected or advanced solely based on an AI score. HireNext AI surfaces information, highlights patterns, and flags risks — but humans make the final call.
- AI scores are presented as inputs to human review, not final verdicts
- HR teams can override, adjust, or ignore any AI recommendation
- Automated pipeline stages require human configuration and approval
- Rejection communications are reviewed and sent by HR, not auto-triggered by AI alone
- Proctoring suspicion scores are flagged for human review — not automatic disqualification
Data Privacy in AI
HireNext maintains strict data privacy standards in how we collect, use, and store data for AI processing:
- No cross-customer data use: Candidate data from one employer is never used to train or influence AI models for another employer.
- No model training without consent: Customer data is not used to train HireNext's AI models without explicit contractual consent.
- Data minimization: AI models only access the data fields necessary for the specific evaluation task.
- Candidate transparency: Candidates are informed when AI is used in the evaluation process, in accordance with applicable law (including GDPR Article 22).
- Right to explanation: Where required by law, candidates can request an explanation of any automated decision that significantly affects them.
Accountability
HireNext maintains clear accountability structures for AI development, deployment, and monitoring:
- AI Ethics Review Board: Internal cross-functional team that reviews new AI features for ethical risks before launch.
- Incident Reporting: Clear process for reporting and investigating AI-related harms or unintended outcomes.
- Regular Audits: Periodic third-party audits of AI systems for bias, accuracy, and compliance.
- Customer Responsibility: Employers using HireNext are responsible for ensuring their use of AI-assisted hiring complies with applicable employment laws in their jurisdiction.
- Regulatory Compliance: We monitor and adapt to emerging AI regulations including the EU AI Act, NYC Local Law 144, and other applicable frameworks.
Our AI Principles
AI evaluates job-relevant criteria only. Protected characteristics are never factors in scoring.
Every AI score comes with a breakdown. No black boxes. No unexplained decisions.
AI supports human decisions. It never replaces them. Final hiring decisions are always human.
We treat bias as a defect to be found and fixed — not an acceptable limitation.
Data used for AI is minimized, isolated, and never shared across customers without consent.
We own the outcomes of our AI. We monitor, audit, and improve continuously.
Questions about our AI practices?
Our AI Ethics team is available to answer questions about how HireNext builds, tests, and monitors its AI systems.
Contact AI Ethics Team