This page explains masked resumes to help users understand how masking on the resume works. The intended audience for this guide are Eightfold Solution architects, Eightfold Support team, Talent Acquisition (TA) Leaders, and implementation partners.

Introduction

Masking a candidate’s personal information to hide their name and other information which could influence a hiring decision due to conscious or unconscious bias of users. It allows the TA teams to better assess candidates based on their skills and competency rather than variables that can lead to biased judgments. Here are some examples of identification details that are hidden in blind recruitment, as they can lead to discriminatory hiring practices:

• Gender
• Names
• Ethnic background
• Personal interests
• Education
• Age

To further reduce the risk of conscious or unconscious bias of users, the first and last names of ideal candidates and sample candidates in the calibration page will be replaced with their first and last name initials (e.g., the name “Sonya Nyugen” would be appear as “S. N.”).

Tasks:

• Show only initials of the ideal candidates on the calibration page (unless you are in the process of manually adding the ideal candidate).
• Similarly, show only the initials for sample candidates.
• The inline viewer for ideal candidates will be masked.
• The full page profile view will also be masked.

Basics

The masked resume will maintain the same formatting as the original document, keeping the readability consistent while honoring all the masking requirements.

For example:

• Masking names
• Emails
• Links
• Personally identifiable gender pronouns.

Key features

The masking issue of the resume is now resolved, and the new enhanced resume masking tool retains the resume's layout, font, and formatting.

Original Resume:

Fig.1: Original Resume Sample

Comparison of old masking and new masking below for the resume above

Fig.2: Old masking

Fig.3: New masking

In the Masked Resume, any field or data that could identify the person has been replaced with a generic label, like “Full Address” or “City, State, " while maintaining the original fonts and formatting.

There are specific scenarios in which the parser will fall back to the original masking style. Those scenarios are listed below:

1. The resume language is not English.
2. The file extension is .txt.
3. The AI cannot decipher the candidate's name from the resume.

4. There is insufficient text information extracted from the pdf.

   a. Example: encrypted PDFs or PDFs which are full images)

5. There is inconsistency in the links' redacted numbers.

   a. Example: number of links removed vs. number of links detected

Frequently asked questions

The following sections contain frequently asked questions about Enhanced Resume Masking Documentation.

What are masked resumes?

Resume masking is the process of hiding or removing certain personal information from a resume, such as a name, address, phone number, and email address.

Why are the resumes being masked? Is this a configuration? Can I turn off masking?

Masking resumes can help to reduce the potential for bias in the hiring process, particularly when it comes to demographic characteristics such as race, gender, age, and nationality. By removing personal identifying information, hiring managers better focus on the candidate's qualifications, experience, and skills. Masking of resumes is no longer a configurable feature in Eightfold.

How do masked resumes differ from the original resumes?

The masked resume will now maintain the same formatting as the original resume keeping the readability consistent while honoring all the masking requirements. For example, masking names, emails, links, and personally identifiable gender pronouns.