A hiring AI scored your resume before any human saw it. Nobody told you.

Eightfold AI sells hiring software to companies including Microsoft and PayPal. Its platform scrapes personal data from LinkedIn, job boards, and internet activity to build profiles on job applicants, then scores them on a scale of zero to five. Low-ranked candidates get filtered out before a human recruiter ever sees their application. The company describes its dataset as "the world's largest, self-refreshing source of talent data," covering profiles of more than 1 billion workers.

A class action lawsuit filed in January argues that none of this was disclosed to the people being scored. Plaintiffs say this is functionally equivalent to a background check — and under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, companies that compile those reports must share them with the individual and allow inaccuracies to be challenged. Eightfold's applicants had no idea the scoring was happening, let alone what their number was.

"I've applied to hundreds of jobs, but it feels like an unseen force is stopping me from being fairly considered," said plaintiff Erin Kistler. In a Monster survey of more than 1,000 job seekers, 77% already worried their resume was being filtered before reaching a human. The lawsuit is what it looks like when that feeling finds a law firm and a federal statute.

"Qualified workers across the country are being denied job opportunities based on automated assessments they have never seen and cannot correct," said Jenny R. Yang, a partner at Outten & Golden and former Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "As hiring tools evolve, AI companies like Eightfold must comply with these common-sense legal safeguards."