How to Stay Compliant and Fair in Recruitment: Lessons from the UK, US, and Saudi Arabia

Hiring has changed a lot in the last few years. And honestly? It’s not slowing down.

In 2024, the recruitment tech space is already worth over $617 million. By 2037, it’s set to more than double. That growth makes sense; teams are trying to fill roles faster, spend less, and create a better experience for people applying. The numbers show it’s working: up to 50% lower hiring costs and 60% better candidate satisfaction in some cases.

But here’s the thing. With all this new tech, one issue keeps coming up and not just for companies, but for candidates too.

Fairness.

More and more hiring decisions are being influenced by systems, tools that sort, rank, and screen people before anyone’s had a proper look at their CV or spoken to them.

And people have started noticing.

In the US, a recent study showed 66% of adults would hesitate to apply for a job if they knew some kind of automated system was involved in making the decision. That’s not fear. That’s the doubt, whether the process is really fair.

And let’s be honest, sometimes, it’s not.

If a system filters out someone because they had a career break, or misses key skills because they worded their CV differently, that’s a problem. Especially when there’s no one checking that outcome before a rejection gets sent.

That’s why, at Recruitment Smart, we built our tools a little differently.

Take VScreen, our video interview platform. It’s designed to help teams move faster, yes, but more importantly, it’s designed to be fair.

• Everyone gets the same structure, no random questions, no surprises.
  
  
• Every score is visible, and every decision can be reviewed by a person, not just accepted as final.
  
  
• And if someone’s rejected? There’s a clear process to explain what happened and why.
  
  

We’re not here to replace good judgment. We’re here to support it.

Especially in regions like the UK, where the ICO is tightening its grip on how hiring decisions are made, or in Saudi Arabia, where the PDPL now expects organisations to explain how personal data is being used, fairness isn’t optional. It’s part of the job.

So yes, the tools are getting better. But they only work if they’re built with real people in mind.

That’s the part we care about.

The Black Box Problem: Why Bias Still Haunts Modern Hiring

Let’s be honest, one of the biggest reasons people still don’t trust automated hiring is because no one really knows what’s going on inside the system.

Decisions are made. People are rejected. And when candidates ask, “Why?” there’s often no clear answer. Just silence or vague feedback that doesn’t really explain anything.

That’s what we call the black box problem. And it’s one of the biggest challenges we face in recruitment right now.

The patterns we inherit (and repeat)  

Here’s the part that stings a bit: most hiring systems are trained on historical data. But if that history includes years of biased hiring, favouring certain names, backgrounds, or education paths, then the system picks up those patterns and repeats them.

A study from the University of Washington showed that some screening tools preferred white-sounding names 85% of the time, and male names 52% of the time, even for roles that had traditionally hired more women.

And this isn’t just some old glitch. Amazon actually scrapped one of its internal hiring tools a few years ago because it was quietly downgrading CVs that included the word “women’s”, as in “women’s chess club” or “women’s coding bootcamp.”

When neutral isn’t actually neutral

Sometimes, a system might flag things like your postcode, your university, or even your hobbies and use them to make decisions. But those details can act like stand-ins for race, class, or gender without anyone realising.

So even though the system isn’t “technically” biased, the outcome still is. That’s called proxy discrimination, and it’s harder to catch than you would think.

The real issue? No one knows how it works

Most candidates never get to see why they were rejected. That’s the transparency gap. And it’s a growing problem. 79% of candidates say they want to know if automation was used in their hiring process. That’s not because they’re anti-tech, it’s because they want a fair shot. And they want to understand the rules of the game. When there’s no explanation, trust drops. And in today’s hiring market, where trust is everything, that matters.

The rules are catching up

In the US, courts are now holding employers accountable for biased decisions made by third-party tools, even if the company didn’t build the tech themselves. In New York City, Local Law 144 already makes bias audits mandatory for screening tools. Companies can be fined up to $1,500 per offence, per day.

In the UK, the ICO is now flagging employers who can’t explain how automated decisions are made. And in Saudi Arabia, ethical use of hiring technology is being tied into Vision 2030, with the SDAIA pushing for more accountability in how personal data is used and how fair the outcomes are, especially as Saudization policies demand more transparency.

And these aren’t just regulations. They’re warning signs that the free-for-all era of “just plug in the tool and hope for the best” is over.

People want fair, not fancy

Let’s not forget what’s at stake here.

In the UK, 73% of candidates say they’d be put off applying to a company if the screening process wasn’t transparent. In Saudi Arabia, where local hiring targets are a big part of national strategy, fair and explainable hiring isn’t just a value, it’s an expectation.

And when candidates don’t trust the system, you don’t just lose applicants. You lose reputation. You lose credibility. You lose the chance to hire the right people for the right reasons.

Data Privacy Isn’t Optional: It’s Built In

Bias usually gets all the headlines. But behind the scenes, there’s another risk that matters just as much: data privacy.

When you’re hiring across different countries, especially places like Saudi Arabia, the UK, and the US, you can’t afford to guess what’s allowed. Every place has its own rules. And the consequences for getting it wrong? Let’s just say they’re not small.

We’ve made sure our platform doesn’t just keep up with those rules; it’s designed around them.

Staying local, staying compliant, especially in Saudi Arabia

If you’re hiring in KSA, the rules are clear: personal data from Saudi residents is meant to stay in the Kingdom. That’s written into Article 29 of the PDPL, and it’s something the Saudi regulator (SDAIA) takes seriously.

So instead of routing data to faraway servers, we’ve done the obvious thing:
We run our platforms, including VScreen, on local cloud infrastructure right inside Saudi Arabia using Google Cloud Platform.

That means:

• Your candidate data stays in-country.
  
  
• You’re not worrying about data crossing borders.
  
  
• And you’re covered against penalties that can go up to SAR 5 million per violation.
   

|Hiring in Saudi? Why PDPL Compliance Starts with Local Infrastructure

We’re GDPR-ready, too and more

If you're working in the UK or handling any data covered by UK GDPR, you already know the bar is high. And yes, the risk of a fine can be massive, up to €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover (whichever’s worse).

That’s not something we take lightly.

Our platform has privacy safeguards baked in,  from consent flows and data minimisation to giving candidates easy access to their information. It’s all documented clearly in our Privacy Policy, and it’s all aligned with UK GDPR and global best practices.

So, whether you're recruiting in London or Jeddah, the compliance layer is already there; no extra work is needed on your side.

Security that goes beyond the basics

Privacy is only one part of the story. The other? Keeping data safe.

We’re proud to be ISO 27001 certified, which means we meet the highest international standards for how we manage information security. It’s not a checkbox, it’s how we work every day.

We also follow SOC reporting practices (like AICPA SOC 2), giving our clients added assurance that their data and their candidates’ data is protected at every stage.

| Building Ethical AI Video Interview Systems for Global Hiring

Data privacy and compliance might not be flashy. But they matter, to your brand, to your candidates, and to the people making the final hiring call.

That’s why we don’t treat it like a feature. We treat it like the foundation.

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The Future of Hiring Needs to Be Fair.

There’s no getting around it, bias is the biggest challenge in modern hiring tech. It’s not just about algorithms or audits. It’s about people. Their careers. Their trust.

And with more than 60% of organisations now using automated tools to manage talent, a jump of over 68% in just a year, there’s no more time to “wait and see.” This needs to be done right. Now.

At Recruitment Smart, we’ve built our platform to do exactly that, not just to be faster, but to be fairer.

• SniperAI keeps the focus on job fit, not background.
  
  
• VScreen keeps a human in the loop always.
  
  
• JeevesAI keeps candidates informed, involved, and respected throughout the process.
   

Our audits, privacy practices, and local cloud centres in Saudi Arabia make sure every part of the system stays accountable, especially in places like the UK, US, and KSA, where the legal and ethical bar is getting higher by the day.

We don’t believe technology replaces good hiring.
We believe it helps protect it from bias, from complexity, and from the mistakes that can quietly chip away at trust.

So if you’re looking for a hiring partner that gets the nuance, cares about fairness, and builds with compliance in mind, we’re here for it.

Let’s build the kind of hiring process people actually believe in.