Can I show my skills? Affective responses to artificial intelligence in the recruitment process

Abstract Companies increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic decision-making (ADM) for their recruitment and selection process for cost and efficiency reasons. However, there are concerns about the applicant’s affective response to AI systems in recruitment, and knowledge about the affective responses to the selection process is still limited, especially when AI supports different selection process stages (i.e., preselection, telephone interview, and video interview). Drawing on the affective response model, we propose that affective responses (i.e., opportunity to perform, emotional creepiness) mediate the relationships between an increasing AI-based selection process and organizational attractiveness. In particular, by using a scenario-based between-subject design with German employees (N = 160), we investigate whether and how AI-support during a complete recruitment process diminishes the opportunity to perform and increases emotional creepiness during the process. Moreover, we examine the influence of opportunity to perform and emotional creepiness on organizational attractiveness. We found that AI-support at later stages of the selection process (i.e., telephone and video interview) decreased the opportunity to perform and increased emotional creepiness. In turn, the opportunity to perform and emotional creepiness mediated the association of AI-support in telephone/video interviews on organizational attractiveness. However, we did not find negative affective responses to AI-support earlier stage of the selection process (i.e., during preselection). As we offer evidence for possible adverse reactions to the usage of AI in selection processes, this study provides important practical and theoretical implications.