Worried about AI assessing your job application? You should be. 42% of job seekers have received identical or near-identical rejection emails from different employers, a sign the same software may be screening out the same people everywhere they apply. And a study of over 100,000 live graduate applications from UCL reveals ethnic minority candidates are disproportionately rejected at the screening stage despite having similar qualifications.

New research from non-profit People Like Us and Censuswide reveals that automated hiring software now stands between UK jobseekers and work, rejecting candidates within minutes, sometimes before applications have even closed. And the campaign. Reject the Rejections, by People Like Us  and Worth Your While, is making that known.

The impact falls hardest on ethnic minority jobseekers. People Like Us is calling for greater checks and balances on the automation and AI tools reshaping recruitment. Used well, they serve a real purpose in managing huge volumes of applicants, but their use must be disclosed before candidates apply, accountable to a human when challenged, and independently audited for bias.

The survey of 2,000 UK job seekers found that 80% have been rejected in the past two years and of those, nearly three quarters (74%) suspect at least one rejection was generated automatically without a human reading their application. And they may never find out as just 15% of candidates say an employer has told them an automated system was used. 

Ethnically diverse candidates are hit disproportionately as they apply for a third more roles than white counterparts, are rejected faster (41% within an hour of applying vs 32%), and are significantly more likely to remove elements of their identity from their CVs to get past automated systems (70% compared to 57%). Erasing parts of identity pre-dates automations and AI with decades of UK research on name bias demonstrating how this has been impacting workers, however automations add speed and scale and remove the person who could be asked why. 

Reject the Rejections has several objectives – to raise awareness among rejected job applicants that they may have the right to request a human review of their application if they suspect the decision was made by automation; to urge employers to disclose the use of automation in their hiring processes and commit to independent bias audits; and finally, to call on the government to consider screening transparency laws.

The 4-minute hero film, Dear [Name],  stars British actor, Ebenezer Gyau (Amandaland, Black Mirror, Suspect), and is directed by Amara Abbas through new—land productions. It transforms the language of real rejection emails sent to real ethnic minority candidates into a powerful spoken-word performance about hope, exclusion and the invisible barriers facing talented candidates.

In addition to the film, People Like Us is arming candidates with a tool to Reject the Rejections, developed with Planes Studio, that any rejected candidate can send in just two clicks to ask whether an automation was used on their application and remind job seekers they may have the right to request a human review under existing UK Data Protection laws. The tool is here.

Sheeraz Gulsher, co-founder of People Like Us, commented, “Employers aren’t the villains here, most resort to automations in good faith to cope with a surging volume of applicants, and four in ten did it believing they were reducing bias. However, good faith isn’t governance – when 82% of the employers who checked found outcomes vary by ethnicity, ‘we didn’t know’ stops being a defence. The Equality (Race and Disability) Bill gives the Government the vehicle to make transparency the rule to enable fairer access to jobs for all. Automation has a clear role in managing surging application numbers – but checks and balances must keep recruitment equitable for all.”

Tim Pashen, creative director & partner, Worth Your While, added, “When a machine can reject you before a human has even had a chance to see you, efficiency starts to look a lot like exclusion. This work is about putting the human back into human resources, because nobody should be rejected by a system before they are seen.”

Amara Abbas, director, new—land, commented, “This is a film that is interested in uncomfortable truths and in saying the quiet part out loud. In a world that feels more and more divided with each passing day, I hope this film can function as a way to break down the barriers and to create opportunities for important conversation and connection with one another.”

JCDecaux Community Channel is supporting the campaign over autumn, with an initial run across 19 large-format digital sites in London generating an estimated 154,000 impressions, ahead of a fuller national campaign launching in November. A 30-second cut of the film will also run as a two-week national cinema campaign in partnership with Pearl & Dean from October 2, screening alongside major releases including Sense & Sensibility, Heart of the Beast, Digger and Verity.