AI fails its job interview

Here are three of the week's top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web:

AI fails its job interview

Robot interviewers are producing robotic job candidates, said Zahira Jaser in Harvard Business Review. A growing number of employers are using automated video interviews, in which job candidates "record themselves on an interview platform, answering questions under time pressure." The video then gets assessed based on visual, verbal, and/or vocal cues. Our research suggests job seekers' experience with these AI-based interviews was poor. Most candidates didn't understand the technology and "felt that they had to behave like robots" in order to pass the interview. The AI experience was especially difficult for young job seekers from less-privileged backgrounds, but for all kinds of applicants, trying to appeal to a computerized interviewing system was exhausting "both emotionally and cognitively." 

Getting rid of unfair fees

The federal government is aiming to put an end to "junk fees," said Stacy Cowley in The New York Times. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau initiated a request for public comment last week on the use of "tacked-on expenses that collectively add billions to what Americans pay for goods and services." Those fees include late-payment charges, hotel resort fees, and service fees levied by concert-ticket providers. Banks have come under fire since "the agency issued a report in December on the $15 billion a year they collect in overdraft and insufficient-funds fees." Several banks, including Bank of America and Capital One, have since announced they are reducing or eliminating overdraft fees.

Suing workers who try to quit

A judge rejected a Wisconsin health-care provider's effort to block former employees from joining a competitor, said Karla Miller in The Washington Post. Nonprofit health-care organization ThedaCare had sued rival Ascension "for poaching seven workers" and sought an injunction, arguing that the employees' departure "would hamper its ability to offer critical round-the-clock" care. U.S. law generally gives a lot of freedom to businesses to fire employees; now, with a very tight labor market, businesses are seeing the other side of the coin of "at-will employment." ThedaCare's workers "were at-will employees with no contractual restrictions on changing jobs," and Wisconsin Judge Mark McGinnis ruled that the hospital system would have to fill its staffing gaps some way other than trying to sue their employees into staying at their jobs.

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.