What should employers consider when using AI in recruitment?
Employers remain responsible under data protection and equality law when they use AI to source, screen or score candidates. The ICO expects a data protection impact assessment, a lawful basis, clear contracts with the provider, checks for bias, transparency with candidates and minimal data collection. Employers should also plan reasonable adjustments for disabled applicants.
Data protection questions to ask
After auditing providers of AI recruitment tools, the ICO set out key questions for employers buying them:
- Have you completed a DPIA, ideally at the procurement stage, and kept it up to date?
- What is your lawful basis, and a special category condition if you process data such as health or ethnic origin?
- Is it recorded in a contract who is controller and who is processor, with clear processing instructions?
- Has the provider mitigated bias, and are you monitoring outputs for fairness and accuracy?
- Do candidates know how the tool uses their information and how to challenge automated decisions?
- Does the tool collect only the minimum information needed?
Solely automated decisions
The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 changed the UK GDPR rules on solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects, now in articles 22A to 22D. The ICO's draft guidance explains that safeguards must give people information about such decisions and let them make representations, obtain human intervention and contest the decision. The ICO is consulting on that guidance, so employers should check the current version.
Equality and reasonable adjustments
The government's Responsible AI in Recruitment guide warns that AI tools can entrench existing biases and cause digital exclusion. The ICO found some tools allowed recruiters to filter out candidates with certain protected characteristics. The Equality Act 2010 continues to apply, including the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled applicants.
The guide recommends planning adjustments before deployment, piloting tools with a diverse range of users, asking suppliers for evidence such as bias audits, and offering an alternative route where a tool would disadvantage a candidate.
The law
“puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage in relation to a relevant matter…”
“applies to B a provision, criterion or practice which is discriminatory…”
Sources
- Thinking of using AI to assist recruitment? Our key data protection considerations · ICO
- What are the ADM safeguards? · ICO
- Responsible AI in Recruitment guide · GOV.UK
General information for employers in Great Britain, not legal advice. Check the official sources for your situation.
What employers can do
- Complete a DPIA before buying or switching on any AI recruitment tool
- Agree a written contract that sets out controller and processor roles and your instructions
- Ask the supplier for bias audit and accuracy evidence, and keep monitoring results
- Tell candidates in plain language where AI is used and how to ask for human review
- Offer a non-automated route and other reasonable adjustments where needed
- Train recruiters on the tool's limits so outputs are not relied on blindly
Related answers
- How do employers carry out right to work checks? Before someone starts work, employers should carry out one of three prescribed checks: a manual check of original documents, a Home Office online check using a share code, or a check through a certified digital verification service provider. Done correctly, it gives a statutory excuse against a civil penalty of up to £60,000 per illegal worker.
- Can employers monitor their staff? Yes, but the ICO says monitoring must be lawful, fair and transparent under data protection law. Employers need a clear purpose, a lawful basis, the least intrusive method that achieves it, and must tell workers about it. A data protection impact assessment is required for high-risk monitoring, and covert monitoring is justified only in exceptional circumstances.
- When must employers make reasonable adjustments? Under the Equality Act 2010, employers must make reasonable adjustments when they know, or could reasonably be expected to know, that a worker or job applicant is disabled and is likely to be put at a substantial disadvantage by a working practice, a physical feature or the lack of an auxiliary aid. The employer pays for the adjustments.