June

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rising trend within the recruitment industry. Whether you are an in-house or an agency recruiter, your success is dependent on quickly and effectively identifying, engaging and ultimately, hiring the best possible candidates. AI recruitment tools are often used to reduce hiring bias in instances where a human recruiter may be prone to unconscious bias. These tools are also believed to improve processes, making them more efficient and overall, they are seen to enhance the recruitment industry.   

However, issues can arise when the human element of recruitment is removed, as Amazon found out to their cost.  Amazon’s AI tool automatically discounted female applicants for technical and developer roles.  While Amazon cannot be fully blamed - the tool used 10 years’ worth of recruitment patterns within the tech industry, which is typically male-dominated - the lack of human intervention made it a costly mistake as the tool had taken over a year to develop.

More recently, LinkedIn has been criticised for its use of recruitment chatbots. A nonsense LinkedIn profile was created to see if something fishy was going on with their automated recruitment tool.

Despite living in an underwater pineapple, and bearing a profile picture of a fish, ‘Mr. Sea Bream’ was offered a job due to his “impressive background” in software development.

Such cases only highlight the importance of the human element in the recruitment industry.  As Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster who became the first world champion to lose to a computer when IBM’s Deep Blue beat him in 1997, argues “a human with a machine would always beat the strongest machine”.  After all, the industry is led by people for people, and a recruiter’s role is to build relationships that are focused on human-to-human interactions.  At Verifile, we’re committed to ensuring that every one of your employees is everything they claim to be and nothing fishy is going on. Trained humans are checking every single case we verify, and often more than one individual reviews each case.

What has happened in Greece in the 12 months since the GDPR became effective?

A review covers increased activity at, and fines imposed by, the data protection authority, as well as data protection matters that are under consideration by the Greek courts. Greek courts have already dealt with a number of GDPR-related issues, such as notification requirements for the transfer of personal data to be used within the framework of employment litigation, compensation for unlawful transfer of personal data, valid consent issues and surveillance of employees. National legislation to implement the GDPR is still 

Our founder and CEO Eyal Ben Cohen and Sales and Marketing Director Paul Gleave, met with royalty on Tuesday.

The reception at Buckingham Palace celebrated the 2019 winners of the Queen's Award for Enterprise. The award winners are recognised as leading British brands, and Verifile is delighted to be part of this prestigious list. Verifile won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade for an outstanding and sustainable growth in overseas sales over the past six years. Read the full story of why we won the Queen’s Award.

This year's winners gathered yesterday at Buckingham Palace for a reception hosted to mark their achievements. Paul Gleave reports on the event:

Arriving at the Dominion Gates of Buckingham Palace, Eyal and I met with our first hurdle of the day. Eyal’s daughters had been playing with is wallet, as daughters always do, and had removed his cards... Without an ID, entry to the Palace through the historic black and golden gates required more than a little persuasion and inventiveness!

Walking through the interior open courtyard and then entering the palace via the red carpet, we already felt special. Onwards to the opulent Green Drawing Room with its ceiling dripping with chandeliers we were welcomed by smiling house staff before they speedily offered to secure our mobile phones, which are not allowed inside the palace. It then struck me only one door separated us from the Throne Room!
We then climbed the circular staircase to collect our name badges and were led through to the Picture Gallery which includes paintings from famous artists such as Rubens, and also to the Council Room where the doors where swung open for us to look out to the Terrace and the Palace gardens.

Rubbing shoulders with MPs and Lords, we also mingled with other winners and jointly discussed our achievements.  Throughout the evening we were joined by Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Eugenie of York. 

We drank lots of champagne and consumed many hors d'oeuvres, which were both constantly being offered by the ever-attentive staff. Never a good thing to outstay your welcome, especially when at the Palace the staff graciously escorted us out at about 8:20. After taking a few selfies outside we made headway for home to prepare for another year of export success.