How AI is causing an unemployment crisis among middle aged job seekers | 60 Minutes Australia Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 Coming up on 60 minutes. How many jobs have  you applied for? Over 240 jobs. Are you one of the unlucky ones? This is old lady CV. You  need to Botox it. How artificial intelligence has decided to shut out Take off your age, all  of your work experience. a generation [music] of workers. Ageism is still the elephant  in the room. That's next on 60 minutes.

00:26 Once upon a time, not even that long ago,  qualities like experience and loyalty were prized assets anyone would be proud to show off on  their work resumes. They were important features employers looked for when hiring new staff. But  now it seems not so. And that's because in a flooded and ruthless job market, companies  are relying on artificial intelligence to make decisions about who gets interviewed for  positions and who gets rejected.

00:53 As you'll see, the big losers in this brave new employment  world are workers with decades of dedication and hard-earned wisdom. Put simply, the  oldies are out when the computer says no. As a lead recruiter [music] for one of  Australia's biggest healthcare companies, Lizzie Barclay not only loved her job, she was  good at it. She knows as well as anyone that when it comes to working, a paycheck is only  half the story.

01:28 Having security and a sense of self is just as important. So how's this  for bitter irony? A year ago, the woman who dedicated her career to helping [music] others  into work suddenly found herself out of a job. Sitting here unemployed today,  how does it sit with you? Shameful. [gasps] I guess you question yourself,  you know, am I no longer needed in the industry anymore?

02:09 Is it perhaps I'm I have a use-by  date? Do I have an expiry? [music] Lizzie was made redundant in November last year, and now life  has dealt her another [music] blow. The single mom has been forced to move out of her Brisbane home  because she simply can't afford to pay the rent. Lizzie, how hard is this for you? It's incredibly  difficult to now be in this position where I haven't been able to get a job and stay here um  and pack up my whole life is incredibly difficult.

02:47 If you didn't have family, what would you do?  I'd be living in my car with my little boy. It's an awful feeling wanting to work, needing to  work, but not being able to get work. At first, Lizzie thought she was the problem, but now the  53-year-old is convinced otherwise. She knows she's part of an unemployment crisis faced by  many older, more experienced workers.

03:09 And it's one that's being blamed on artificial intelligence  and its widespread use in the hiring process. Hi, I'll be your AI interviewer today. My goal is  to learn more about you and the experiences, skills, and competencies you  might bring to this role. These days, companies are not only using AI  technology [music] to conduct job interviews, but to vet applications and resumes on mass.

03:38 It's  all about making recruitment cheaper [music] and more efficient. But what it means is algorithms  are shutting out a generation of workers before they can even get a look in. How many jobs  have you applied for? Over 240 jobs. To how far have you got with those jobs? Not very far.  I've probably only had 20, Demi-D, 20 jobs that have actually had somebody contact me.

04:09 What have  you applied for? I'm quite happy to apply for, you know, a hospitality industry. I mean, I can  cook. I'm a mom. Have you applied for those? Yes. And had any luck? No. [laughter] Even  night fill at, you know, Coles and Woolies. And you can't get that job? No. No, you can't  even get a job doing a night fill job. AI is quite simply a reflection.

04:34 It holds a mirror up to  society. And if society for many, many years has presumed that midlife women don't have a place  at work, then that's what AI picks up. We are in midlife. We are going to have to change our  Stacey Duguid should be every employer's dream. Instead, she believes she's another casualty of  the AI explosion. The 52-year-old is articulate, driven, and has held very senior roles at  luxury [music] department store Harrods and Elle magazine.

05:11 Now she feels like she's been  thrown on the scrap heap. Over the last 16 months, I've been woefully unemployed. Having sent out  a gazillion CVs, I convinced myself that I had become unemployable. When Stacey lost her [music]  high-flying role as fashion editor, she thought getting another position would be easy, but her  job search was [music] anything but.

05:33 I redid my CV. I perused LinkedIn. I thought, yeah, I'll  apply for that. I'll apply for that. I'll apply for that? This is going to be a no-brainer.  I'll have a full-time job. We're good. Except, I sent out tens of CVs April, May, June, nothing.  No response by Christmas. I'm I'm I'm a mess. One of my close girlfriends who works for a law firm  in London, she said, "Send me your CV."

06:04 So, I sent over my CV and she said, "Stacey, this is an  old lady's CV. You need to Botox it." [laughter] And I said, "What on earth do you mean I need to  Botox my CV?" And she said, "Take off your age, take off all of your work experience, only  have the last 7 years." And I just said, "Should I change my name to Steve while I'm at  it?" Turning her anger into action, Stacey took to social media and vented her frustration, [music]  convinced she was being unfairly shut out of the workforce.

06:46 As women [music] in midlife, we need  to take action. Let's lift the lid on this [ __ ] and let's talk to one another. She was astonished  by how her posts resonated around the world. You really hit a nerve, didn't you? My goodness,  who knew? I received thousands and thousands of messages. Oh my gosh, this is me. Oh my gosh,  this is me. Who knew that this pressure cooker, let's call it, had been bubbling in so many  women's lives silently in the background, just gently simmering away, and suddenly their lids  blew,

07:24 too. Yes, I hit a nerve in a way I had never ever [clears throat] imagined I could or would.  For Stacey, what it boils down to is AI influenced ageism, pure and simple. [music] One minute I'm  a fashion editor who is, you know, going to be an artist and then suddenly I'm flipped into  being an ageism campaigner. Face of a midlife movement. [laughter] It's quite bonkers.

07:55 What is  it do you think that we don't have going for us? I mean, I don't know how to say this in a  lady-like way. We are no longer fertile and therefore no longer [ __ ] It sounds outrageous,  but Stacy might have a point. Leah Lambart is a former recruiter turned career coach. She agrees  that age discrimination is rife, but insists AI is only doing the bidding of its masters.

08:32 At the  moment, it's happening [music] to a lot of our clients. Ageism is still the elephant in the room.  Unfortunately, it's often coming from the top. So, whilst the recruiters are the ones writing the  job ads and advertising, the brief comes from someone above. Um I've heard recently of a chief  people officer instructing a recruiter um when giving them a job brief and saying, "I know I'm  not supposed to say this, but don't shortlist anyone that's not under 40."

09:01 It's disturbing to  see just how clinically would-be employees can be discarded by AI. As soon as a resume is received,  it's scanned by an applicant tracking system known as an ATS. It zeros in on specific keywords  and other information that it uses to make assumptions [music] about the candidate. Anyone  who doesn't immediately fit precise criteria is booted out of the running.

09:34 How are they sifting  through all of those applications to find those younger employees? There's often knockout  questions that might knock someone out of that process. Uh so, it might be a question such as how  many years experience do you have? So, there's no reason why they couldn't have an algorithm in the  back end that knocks people out if they're over uh what the level of experience that they're  looking for.

09:58 So, if I put in there that I've had 20 years experience, what happens? So, basically,  they get put into the no pile um and are rejected. Um I've had clients who've applied for jobs at  1:05 in the morning and been rejected at 1:08. Coming up, taking on a tech giant. Houston,  we have a problem. Where there's smoke, there's fire. And confronting the  reality of age discrimination.

10:25 Is AI directly shutting older people  out of the [music] workforce? Where are Being organized is one of  Lizzie Barclay's many skills. So, it's not surprising she's documented every step of  her agonizing job hunt. You have a spreadsheet for everything, don't you? I do. Yeah, it's a part  of being uh you know, working in HR. But this meticulous [music] list has also become a brutal  reminder of the 240 jobs this former executive recruiter has applied for with no success.

11:09 You  got lots of confirmed there. Yes. that mean? So, that it's confirmed, but I haven't heard back.  So, you can see some of these are dated in July, and we are now in September, mid-September, and  I've not heard back. It's pretty extraordinary. It is. Yeah. Especially when you're tailoring  uh every single resume and a cover letter to every single job that I apply for.

11:36 [music] This  unemployed single mom feels pretty hopeless. But, she shouldn't. [music] Lizzie's been caught up in  a frightening new reality of trying to get a job in an AI [music] tech-driven world. Is AI directly  shutting older people out of the workforce? Most AI, yes, it is. I would say most AI tooling today,  yes, is excluding older people and probably a whole bunch of other people as well who don't  meet the CV grade.

12:08 It's a shocking admission, but one Barb Hyman says she's been [music] trying  to stamp out since starting her recruitment software company [music], Sapia AI, eight years  ago. Recruitment has been broken for decades, and it continues to be broken. AI for the most  part has not made it any better, either for the organization or for the individual. There are  a lot of people out there who are playing with, you know, quick and and dirty wrap-arounds, Claude  and GPT to do AI interviews.

12:39 That is incredibly risky. You are basically relying on data that  comes from us humans, which if we all believe that we humans are biased, which is undeniable, it's  just going to replicate that. [music] Incredibly, Barb says many employers have embraced AI  to recruit new staff without really knowing how it truly works, especially the risk of age  discrimination [music].

13:04 I suspect that if you went out and spoke to the market who are using these  tools now that are discriminatory, they would be shocked. Absolutely shocked. Um I just don't think  they realize that it's having this impact. Do you think companies really don't know, or do you think  they're going, "Hey, we can just use a computer to eliminate and and narrow it down to the list we  want?

13:29 I think that recruiters and companies are naively turning on features that create that bias  without realizing it. I don't think there's any malevolence in this. You know, if they knew that  that was going to be biased, they would never turn it on. Most of the market is completely naive to  this reality. I mean, that's such a hard thing for people, especially those affected at the moment,  to see.

13:54 Yeah, it is. You cannot just turn it on. You actually need to be educated. I think that  education has not happened and is not happening and is definitely not happening fast enough.  And if that doesn't happen, Barb, where does it leave your Lizzie's of the world? Well, it leaves  them where they are now, which is feeling really hopeless. That feeling of hopelessness is exactly  why Derek Mobley decided to stand up for what he believes is right.

14:24 Since becoming unemployed, the  52-year-old former corporate financier [music] has unsuccessfully applied for 100 jobs. It really  started to dawn on me that there was something that was going on. Because it was application  after application after application, and it didn't make sense to me cuz it was denial, denial,  denial. And there were times where I would get rejections at odd hours of the morning, like 1:00  in the morning.

14:50 1:30 in the morning, on a weekend. Derek [music] noticed a pattern and suspected  the work of artificial intelligence. Each rejection [music] he received came from the  same HR software company, Workday [music]. And why do you think the answer was no so many times?  I believe that somehow I was being flagged by Workday. Somewhere within their scoring system,  somewhere within the vast AI world or their server system, I was being flagged as a no hire.

15:26 Most  defendants [music] receive rejections within he didn't stand a chance was humiliating. But it also  made him angry and he vowed to fight. He turned to employment [music] lawyer Rod Cooks who agreed  to take on the tech giant. How do you turn that suspicion into a formal allegation? Mr. Mobley  was able to supply me with enough facts that I could come up with a theory.

15:57 It's basically  there's an intermediary between an applicant and the job. And the intermediary determines if  you advance to the job, to the employer. Now, because employers are interviewing people at such  a large scale that they use, you know, technology, which is not a bad thing. I'm not saying  technology is a bad thing, but it can be bad when it has these unintended or intended consequences.

16:25 The lawyer's [music] next move was to spread the word on social media and similar complaints poured  in by the thousands. He's now leading a landmark lawsuit to test whether software companies are  liable when AI algorithms discriminate against people applying for a job. For the age portion,  we have 15,000 people that we're currently representing.

16:55 And that just started with one guy,  Mr. Mobley. The fact you now have 15,000 people that you're representing, what does that tell you?  Houston, we have a problem. And it's not going anywhere anywhere soon. Where there's smoke,  there's fire. You know, one or two, you may, you know, could could, you know, say But you got  15,000 people singing out of the same hymn book, then there's something there.

17:19 Workday rejects the  allegations being made by Mr. [music] Mobley. In a statement, it says the claims are false  and says the company's AI recruiting tools don't make hiring decisions and are designed  [music] with human oversight at their core. A court will determine whether the case  can [music] proceed as a class action. But, Rod Cooks is confident.

17:42 Rod, if you win, it  will change the recruitment landscape. We're trying to ensure, going forward, that um these  companies, and whoever's using this technology, uses it in a fair and equitable manner;  and that we don't run into any more Mr. Mobleys 2 years from now, 3 years from now,  5 years from now; that they get the message and they clean up their house.

18:11 After the break,  outsmarting AI to stay in the job race. Leah, you as a human looked at her CV and thought it was  impressive. But, the computer says no. Correct? Welcome. Thank you. Welcome to Gridware.  Gridware. Ahmed Khanji is the CEO of cybersecurity company Gridware. What's the  average [music] age of a worker here? So, I'd probably say our average age is something  like 27.

18:48 27, huh? Are they good workers? They're the world's best. This is a workplace  where AI reigns supreme in most areas, but not when it comes to recruiting new  staff. Where do you find your staff? So, we have people reach out to us. Um we have  thousands of applications coming to us every single year. How do you go through all those  applications? Oh, it's extremely difficult, but we still do it manually because we're looking for  specific skills and capabilities that uh you know, are very difficult to find.

19:21 [music] Ahmed says  AI shouldn't be seen as the boogeyman. But he's concerned about its use in vetting job seekers.  Because it's only as good as the prejudices of the employers who use it. I don't think that AI  should be making decisions about hiring because the people who build these AI systems, they  come with their own inherent biases as well. And anyone who builds a system who has inherent  biases is going to pass those biases onto those systems.

19:53 Do you think there should be incentives  for bosses to hire older people? I think there absolutely should be incentives and in fact, I  think the government should be doing more to set the rules and criteria around what good governance  looks like when a business owner is making a decision with AI that's going to impact people's  jobs, people's livelihoods, people's careers.

20:17 Lizzie Barclay couldn't agree more.  Almost a year after being made redundant, the 53-year-old is still looking for a job.  Her resume has been constantly rejected by automated AI recruitment systems before she's  even got a foot in the door. To try and help, career coach Leah Lambart is taking a look  at Lizzie's resume. How often do you meet people in Lizzie's position?

20:45 Every day. It's  not uncommon uh what Lizzie's going through unfortunately. Leah helps people navigate the  AI minefield by botoxing [music] their CV. That means removing certain details including age  and lengthy experience to try and get ahead of artificial intelligence that's now being used in  high-volume recruitment. Lizzie's done a really good job with her resume.

21:13 Um when I heard that  Lizzie had had so much trouble looking for a job, and then [music] I actually saw her resume,  I was surprised. Also surprising was what the computer said when Lizzie's resume was put to the  test [music] against an AI online tool. Will this give a percentage? [music] Yes. Okay. So, is  scanning lower than I would have thought?

21:32 It's unbelievable how pedantic the technology [music]  is, even flagging how Lizzie saved the file name of her resume. But it's a tiny discrepancy, Leah  says, could be the difference between getting a job interview or not. So, they're quite fussy with  things like that. They're They're suggesting that you remove spaces or particular characters  from the file name.

22:00 Okay. That's got nothing to do with the job. No. Leah, you as a human  looked at her CV and thought it was impressive, but the computer says no. Correct. Despite the  fact that to a human, you would be a really good match for that role. Isn't that at the heart of  what's going on here, though? Absolutely. The most unfair thing is that these people like Lizzie have  got so much to offer.

22:25 There's so much potential that they could be bringing to an organization.  It's potential that CEO of Sapia AI, Barb Hyman, believes can be recognized by artificial [music]  intelligence if the technology is properly trained and built without bias. It's a bit like the cars.  Um when, for cars first came on the road, you know, all of the additional safety features that  have been loaded on cars over the last few decades seatbelts airbags, come from the realization that,  in fact, you know, driving this vehicle and being

23:03 in this vehicle is not particularly safe in the  absence of these guardrails. People like Lizzie in our story, Barb, are losing their home because she  just simply cannot get a job. What can be done for them now while we wait for all those guardrails  to make AI safer in recruitment? You need to be strategic. Um you need to multi-thread. You need  to narrow down your search and really pick a few, you know, in the center of the bull's-eye that  you want to go after and back yourself that they will see what you bring to

23:36 the table. But you  can't rely on the recruitment team. You can't rely on the recruitment technology. You  have to be way more strategic than that. And when it comes to strategy, perhaps we can  all learn from Stacy Duke Good. After spending 16 months searching for a job, she finally  outsmarted AI by just being herself. Stacy, I hear a congratulations is in order.

24:06 Yes,  I have finally, after many, many months, found a perfect role for me. She's got a  job with a wellness company fighting for women's rights. What did you do differently?  [laughter] [gasps] I went viral globally by talking about the plight of not just myself, but  multiple, I mean, like millions of midlife women. That's what I did differently. This  was literally a brand reaching out to me having watched my journey, and they said  to me, "You are exactly the person we've been looking for for this role.

24:49 We didn't even  know we needed it until we watched you." Lizzie Barclay too [music] hopes her  future boss might also be watching. I would take any job that pays my bills,  pays my rent, and put food on the table, and stability for my little boy.  That's all you want. That's all I want. On this week's podcast extra minutes, overcoming  the desperation older Australians feel when they can't find work.

25:24 So, you've got all of these  high-flying people that are having to make these life-changing decisions to just get on with it and  survive, but they shouldn't have to. That's extra minutes available now on the 60 Minutes Australia  YouTube channel and your favorite podcast apps.