AI in the World of Work

Hilke Schellmann, The Algorithm - How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted & Fired & Why We Need to Fight Back Now (New York, NY: Harchette Books, 2024). Chapter 1: Resume Screeners Chapter 2: Cambridge Analytica for Work - Scanning Your Online Life Chapter 3: The Games We Play - On Creative AI Tests Chapter 4: You Said What? On Facial Expression and Tone-of-Voice Analysis Chapter 5: The Essential You - On the Ideas Behind AI Tools Chapter 6: Does One Size Really Fit All? On the Bias Agianst Disabilities Chapter 7: Finding Hidden Gems - On Predictive Analytics and Quiet Hiring Chapter 8: We Are Watching (and Measuring) - On Surveillance at Work Chapter 9: We're Ready to Help -On Our Health Data at Work Chapter 10 Fired by an Algorithm - On Trying to Find Problem Employees - Epilogue: Living in a Predictive Society Appendix Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) used by Google. Counseling sessions to employees who complain about discrimination => could send the message that the employee is the problem. There must be legislation to regulate and monitor EAPs. p. 228 Meditation apps and apps to sleep better => Bank of America and the insurance company AXA (Asia and Africa for the global insurance company) have formed the non-profit OneMind at Work that will score the effectiveness of an organization's mental health programs, but data sharing and ethical considerations around these programs are not on the non-profit's agenda. p. 229 Surveillance in the name of safety - Brain wave detection by SmartCap (Australia) to track miners and truck drivers' alertness and fatigue and alert them to prevent falling asleep at work/ at the wheel. In China, safety helmets and wave-sensing/EEG-based headbands used on schoolchildren to check their attention levels. MN8 headphones => detect electrical activity across different areas of the brain used to measure employees' levels of focus and stress.p 230 Digital Hiring Tools - Facial Expression and Tone of Voice Analysis:HireVue, and Retorio, vendors that built job interview by AI. p.84 Curious Thing,, company that sold AI-based phone interview software.p. 94 Vocal biomarker tools (still in its infancy at Ellipsis Health; Sonde Health, Oregon Health...) to detect anxiety and depression could be used via phone calls, Zoom meetings, recordings of meetings, smart speakers Alexa....p231 HireVue an assessment of employee performance pp. 249-250; Capterra, a tech review and research company. 98% of midsize companies would rely on algorithms, HR software, and AI to make layoff decisions in 2023. p. 251 "Algorithms are not going to replace us anytime soon, but what is changing is that algorithms and artificial intelligence-based toolsbare becoming the "bosses" of more and more workers." p. 252 Amazon, Amazon Flex and warehouse and delivery drivers/workers pp253-258; warehouse managers p. 260-263 "productivity rate", "make rate,""time off task" (TOT)...set by an algorithm; "digital sweatshop." Constant surveillance, monitoring the logs of employees'computers => main evidence in their termination. Food delivery workers - Postmates, DoorDash.... "An overly rigid application of a productivity algorithm will result in unlawful treatment." Charles Burrows, Chair of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). "the use of these technologies is not only increase employers' power, but it's decreaseing their incentive to take into account individual variations and workers' circumstances or the reasons that different things happen in the workplace. It encourages them to take this rigid, one-size-fits-all approach to monitoring their workforce." Matthew Scherer, senior policy counsel, Center for Democracy and Technology p. 263 AI tools have gotten way less attention than social media algorithms. Lack of regulation and oversight. The public is seeing only the tip of the iceberg. p. 265 Dice.com => products that scrape social media websites and build skills profiles of people. p. 271 Skill score system about workers. Job Application Tips pp289-291 Make your resume machine-readable: no images, no two columns, no special characters such as ampersands (&) or tildes (~). Computers may not be able to correctly ingest that information. Use the most common template. Use short, crisp sentences: be declarative and quantify achievements where possible (Ian Siegel, CEO of the job platform ZipRecruiter). List licenses, including license number and certifications. Do not list your address or location, especially if you do not live near the worksite. List your skills in a separate section using bullet points so machines can esily ingest it. Make sure your resume matches the keywords in the job description and compare your resume to the job description using online resume scanners (Jobscan and others) to see if you are a match for the role. (Aim for a 60-85 percent match because AI might filter out 100% matches, considering them a copy of the job description.) AI is used to infer whether you are a woman and/or a person of color. [Beware of unintentional cues/hints to AI for inferences] Do not apply via job boards if you can avoid it. Apply directly via the company's website. [Only if the candidate pool is insufficient, then recruiters turn to job platforms like Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, and others.] Contact recruiters via LinkedIn after applying for a job. Engage with recruiters on job platforms to signal to the AI that you are actively looking for a job. Most AI tools are optimized to find "qualified people likely to apply." Apply for jobs that require more expriences than you have, as long as you have some of the qualifications in the job descriptions. If you have a profile on a job platform like LinkedIn, make sure to list all your your skills because recruits often search for candidates by location and skills. Network with folks in the industry and at companies you want to land in. For entry-level and administrative jobs, consider stating that you are competent in Microsoft Office Suite applications, even if it's not in the job description. Many job applicants now use ChatGPT and other language models to write or polish their resume and cover letters. Make sure you fact check the results. Prompt ChatGPT for the most common interview questions and have it help you prepare answers in advance. Don't be discouraged What if I'm Being Tracked? p. 292 Assume everything on a work computer, tablet, and phone is monitored. Nothing is private, even private messages in Slack or Microsoft Teams. Everything can be accessed y an employer, including deleted messages (using remote tracking software). Assuming that every printout and every file you move off a work computer is tracked as well. Use a second personal computer or your personal phone to check your email or surf the web when at work. If you can avoid it, do not install company software on your phone. Check your email for sentiment. Some companies are enabling "employee listening" to track sentiment in messages. Keep yr updates in LinkedIn steady and do not update everything at once because they can increase your flight risk score. Related Links: https://apnews.com/article/ai-workplace-gemini-chatgpt-poll-4934bc61d039508db32bc49f85d63d99 How Americans are using AI at work, according to a new Gallup poll MATT O’BRIEN and LINLEY SANDERS 7:01 AM CST, January 25, 2026 Some 12% of employed adults say they use AI daily in their job, according to a Gallup Workforce survey conducted this fall of more than 22,000 U.S. workers. The survey found roughly one-quarter say they use AI at least frequently, which is defined as at least a few times a week, and nearly half say they use it at least a few times a year. That compares with 21% who were using AI at least occasionally in 2023, when Gallup began asking the question, and points to the impact of the widespread commercial boom that ChatGPT sparked for generative AI tools that can write emails and computer code, summarize long documents, create images or help answer questions…. AI at work for many in technology, finance and education About 6 in 10 technology workers say they use AI frequently, and about 3 in 10 do so daily. The share of Americans working in the technology sector who say they use AI daily or regularly has grown significantly since 2023, but there are indications that AI adoption could be starting to plateau after an explosive increase between 2024 and 2025. In finance, another sector with high AI adoption, 28-year-old investment banker Andrea Tanzi said he uses AI tools every day to synthesize documents and data sets that would otherwise take him several hours to review….In addition, majorities of those working in professional services, at colleges or universities or in K-12 education, say they use AI at least a few times a year. The benefits and drawbacks of AI adoption The AI industry and the U.S. government are heavily promoting AI adoption in workplaces and schools. More people and organizations will need to buy these tools in order to justify the huge amounts of investment into building and running energy-hungry AI computing systems. But not all economists agree on how much they will boost productivity or affect employment prospects. “Most of the workers that are most highly exposed to AI, who are most likely to have it disrupt their workflows, for good or for bad, have these characteristics that make them pretty adaptable,” said Sam Manning, a fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI and co-author of new papers on AI job effects for the Brookings Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research....Workers in those mostly computer-based jobs that involve a lot of AI usage “usually have higher levels of education, wider ranges of skill sets that can be applied to different jobs, and they also have higher savings, which is helpful for weathering an income shock if you lose your job,” Manning said. On the other hand, Manning’s research has identified some 6.1 million workers in the United States who are both heavily exposed to AI and less equipped to adapt. Many are in administrative and clerical work, about 86% are women and they are older and concentrated in smaller cities, such as university towns or state capitals, with fewer options to shift careers…. A separate Gallup Workforce survey from 2025 found that even as AI use is increasing, few employees said it was “very” or “somewhat” likely that new technology, automation, robots or AI will eliminate their job within the next five years. Half said it was “not at all likely,” but that has decreased from about 6 in 10 in 2023.…Reported AI usage is less common in service-based sectors, such as retail, health care or manufacturing…. [Gallup’s quarterly workforce surveys were conducted with a random sample of adults age 18 and older who work full time and part time for organizations in the United States and are members of Gallup’s probability-based Gallup Panel. The most recent survey of 22,368 employed U.S. adults was conducted from Oct. 30-Nov. 13, 2025. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1 percentage point.]