It's easy to hate on Workday due to its redundant application process, but here's a new reason: allegations of ageism.

There's a case against Workday that's making its way through the court system.

It alleges that they made it possible, and even easy, for their clients (i.e., companies with job openings) to filter out candidates with certain characteristics, such as age, race, or having a disability.

While still in the early stages, the suit claims that Workday is “designed in a manner that reflects employer biases and relies on biased training data.” The Court agreed this adequately “alleged the existence of a unified policy: the use of Workday’s AI recommendation system to score, sort, rank, or screen applicants.”

WOW, just wow!

You know how you've thought, "I have all the qualifications. Why am I being rejected?" or "How can I get a rejection within an hour of applying?" or "I check all the boxes, and then some. How am I not even getting a screening interview?"

You are not delusional.

And, you might just have a case.

Workday has confirmed that during the period in question (September 24, 2020 – now), over 1.1 billion (BILLION!!) applications were rejected using its software. This could become a collective action case affecting potentially hundreds of millions of job seekers.

The judge ordered Workday to turn over a list of applicants who were processed using their HiredScore AI feature. That list was delivered earlier this week.

Possibly including me and you.

We'll have to wait for the outcome and fallout from this decision. Repercussions for the hiring industry and how it uses AI to narrow down the candidate pool could be far-reaching.

In the meantime, you do have options to avoid this (alleged) bias.

ZenSearch does not have a single Workday job. Not one.

Check us out at ZenSearch.jobs and share our platform with anyone looking for something new. Together, we can make job searching a little more zen.