AI hiring: What candidates can’t see

Two job seekers filed a lawsuit against Eightfold AI in January 2026. They’re not claiming the AI is biased. They’re claiming something simpler: they never knew they were being scored.

Eightfold provides AI hiring tools to Fortune 500 companies. The lawsuit alleges that the system pulls data from LinkedIn, GitHub, and other public sources to create candidate profiles and match scores from 0 to 5.

Candidates applying through these systems had no idea this was happening. They couldn’t see their scores. They couldn’t dispute errors. They didn’t know this invisible evaluation existed.

The lawsuit argues these AI-generated profiles are “consumer reports” in the same category as credit checks and background investigations. Which means they should come with rules: notification, consent, the right to review and dispute.

Right now, none of that happens.

The plaintiffs — Erin Kistler and Sruti Bhaumik — don’t want to ban AI from hiring. Rather, they are seeking basic rights: to know when they’re being evaluated, to see what’s being said about them, and to challenge errors. The same rights people have had for decades around credit reports.

This lawsuit sits alongside the Workday case, which challenges whether AI hiring tools produce discriminatory outcomes. Together, they expose two problems: unfair results and invisible processes.

I don’t think AI hiring is going away. Used well, it helps find great candidates faster and can reduce some human biases. But the hidden nature is the problem.

What talent professionals can do:

• Tell candidates when AI is part of your process. In job postings and application confirmations. Not fine print.

• Know your vendors. What data are they using? Where from? Can candidates access their information?

• No auto-rejections without human review. AI can flag and rank. Humans decide.

• Create dispute paths. If someone believes they were unfairly screened out, they need someone to contact.

The question: Are we building systems that respect candidates’ basic rights to transparency, or creating invisible scorecards they can never challenge?

The candidates being screened out deserve to know why, which goes back to my New Year’s resolution to reject with kindness and specificity.