The increasing use of AI-enabled hiring tools often finds job applicants hyping their credentials in front of a reflection of themselves.

Also known as “automated” or “asynchronous” video interviews, one-way interviews have been marketed by some vendors as a way to cut through a deluge of applications with algorithms.

Some claim this is a common practice used by Fortune 500 companies. According to unpublished data shared with HR Brew, globally, “61% of recruiting and HR technology leaders say their organization is currently using [one-way video] technology,” Jamie Kohn, a research director in Gartner’s HR practice, wrote via email.

Taking the short (video) cut: HireVue, Spark Hire, and myInterview are among the providers of one-way video interviews—which typically involve a candidate filming themselves answering questions on a computer or phone, while a clock keeps track of an allotted time limit.

But some applicants have complained online that the impersonal nature of the process can be daunting when trying to communicate one’s skills.

Sophie Hager, an industrial engineer who sat for two one-way video interviews over the course of a year, described difficulty “getting across your attitude, your personality, who you are, because you're really just focused on, like, making sure that you're answering the question and not going too far out of what they asked for” during the process.

“You’ve got a time limit [and] all of these restrictions that I think prevent you from really being able to fully answer the question the way that you would want,” she explained to HR Brew.

Click here to read more about how one-way AI interviews are being used and their implications for hiring.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @SammBlum on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Sam for his number on Signal.

Demetris Cheatham is the senior director of diversity, inclusion, and belonging at code-hosting platform GitHub. Acquired by Microsoft in 2018, GitHub has become one of the web’s primary venues for computer programmers to collaborate and share their work. Cheatham is something of a multi-hyphenate professional—perusing her résumé, there is a computer science degree, a JD, an MBA, and a stint as executive director of the National Bar Association.

We spoke to Cheatham about DE&I at GitHub and beyond, and she shared some insights for aspiring DE&I professionals.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What are you seeing in the DE&I space currently that’s creating new challenges for leaders?

So I think that diversity and inclusion is grounded in the visible dimensions of diversity. So [is] race, ethnicity, even physical disabilities, neurodiversity, gender, sexual orientation, and things of that nature. And I think over the past three years, especially with the pandemic, I think diversity and inclusion is now expanding even more to include things like well-being. Conversations around burnout are now part of the diversity, inclusion, and belonging [discussion].

Before the pandemic, you had a lot of companies that had to go remote because you had to, but it was kind of looked at as more of a Band-Aid. But I don’t think this is going anywhere. So now [we] have to think about it more long-term and more holistically, to say that we have to include people that have different ways of working. And so, even learning styles and working styles—that’s also diversity, that’s also inclusion, and that’s also speaking to belonging.

I feel like the “B” has been tacked on to DE&I relatively recently. Can you talk to me a little bit about what belonging is and how belonging is fostered at GitHub?

Vernā Myers says, “Diversity is getting invited to the party, inclusion is being invited to dance, belonging is when the DJ actually thinks about what song you want to hear.” Like, that’s awesome, and that’s the expansion of it. We are really, really thoughtful about that. Even pre-pandemic, over 70% of our workforce was remote, working in 15 countries and regions around the world, all 50 states in the US.

We’ve always had this kind of remote and distributed team, so we always had to think about our employees as, “What song do they want to hear? What do we need to play for them in order for them to realize that we want them, hear their value, their contributions…for them to do the best work of their lives?”

Click here to continue reading our interview with Demetris Cheatham.—SB

As companies like JP Morgan Chase and Google try to entice employees back into the office for at least part-time, the debate continues over the effectiveness, longevity, and perfect model of hybrid work.

Recent research published by Harvard Business School points to a potential “sweet spot” based on a study of approximately 100 HR employees at BRAC, an international development NGO based in Bangladesh, over a nine-week period in 2020.

What’d they find? The paper asserts that “intermediate hybrid work is plausibly the sweet spot, where workers enjoy flexibility and yet are not as isolated compared to peers who are predominantly working from home.”

• The paper suggests that intermediate levels of WFH (one to two days a week) may result in an increase in both the novelty of work products and work-related communication.
• Intermediate WFH saw a 50% increase in unique email recipients.
• There was “no statistically significant difference in email activity depending on whether the individual works from home earlier versus later in the week.”

The intermediate group also reported greater satisfaction with working from home.

Click here to learn more about how this hybrid-work study was conducted.—KP

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @Kris10Parisi on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristen for her number on Signal.

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: 79% of surveyed US full-time employees want pay transparency, according to a new survey of 1,000 respondents from Visier, a people analytics software company. Further, women (68%) feel “less knowledgeable” about who makes compensation decisions compared with men (75%). (Visier)

Quote: “I think companies view LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights, and race in America as political issues rather than human issues. That’s when you start missing the boat.”—Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, in an interview that covers what matters to Gen Z and why the generation doesn’t trust corporations (Fortune)

Read: A large group of epidemiologists and aerosol scientists say that better ventilation at the workplace could be a tool against Covid (and other airborne disease), but many companies say they are unable to invest in upgrading current systems. (NPR)

Work perks go a long way: Perks are one of the top three factors millennials consider when deciding on an employer, according to a poll by Robin. Learn how employee views on company benefits have changed in a hybrid workplace.*

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Catch up on the top HR Brew stories from the recent past:

• What does an “audit” for bias in automated hiring tech really mean?
• Disney's ‘Don’t Say Gay’ debacle shows how quickly employees’ trust can be damaged
• Employees are bringing their comfy pants to the office