Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural language processing (NLP) is the AI technology underlying many hiring tools that process text-based candidate data. In recruitment, NLP powers resume parsing (extracting structured information from unstructured resumes), job description matching (comparing candidate qualifications to job requirements), cover letter analysis, chatbot-based screening conversations, and sentiment analysis of written responses. NLP models can introduce bias through their training data and learned associations. For example, word embeddings — the mathematical representations of words that NLP models use — have been shown to encode gender and racial stereotypes from their training text. An NLP-based resume screener might associate certain words, writing styles, or name patterns with demographic groups, creating adverse impact. Auditing NLP-based hiring tools requires examining not just selection rates but also how the model processes and weighs different text features across demographic groups.