Eightfold AI accused of using ‘hidden’ AI tools to score jobseekers on ‘likelihood of success’
Two California job seekers have filed a proposed class action in state court accusing recruiting software provider Eightfold AI of quietly compiling extensive digital dossiers on applicants and scoring them for employers — without the disclosures and rights required under federal and state consumer reporting laws, according to a complaint filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court.
Plaintiffs Erin Kistler and Sruti Bhaumik allege that Eightfold functions as a consumer reporting agency by collecting and evaluating data about candidates for employment decisions, yet fails to follow the Fair Credit Reporting Act and California’s Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act, as well as California’s Unfair Competition Law.
The suit claims Eightfold operates “hidden” artificial intelligence tools that pull together large volumes of information on people who apply for jobs through employers that use the company’s platform, including data they never directly supplied in an application, according to the filing.
Alleged hidden scoring of candidates
According to the complaint, Eightfold’s “Evaluation Tools” generate numerical scores from zero to five that purport to predict applicants’ “likelihood of success” and rank them against one another for use in hiring decisions. The plaintiffs allege that employers typically focus only on candidates with the highest scores and that lower‑ranked applicants can be screened out before a human reviews their materials.
The complaint says applicants “may not even know Eightfold exists,” and describes the company’s technology as operating in the background of online job portals used by a growing number of large enterprises.
Kistler and Bhaumik say Eightfold assembles data from multiple sources, including resumes and application forms submitted to employers, public information about candidates’ careers and online activity, and internal data Eightfold has gathered from prior hiring processes, according to the complaint.
Data sources and AI model described in filing
The filing alleges that Eightfold’s systems ingest information such as social media profiles, location data, internet and device activity, cookies and other tracking data, and third‑party records about applicants’ professional histories. The complaint states that Eightfold’s own privacy policy says it builds profiles using data from sites including LinkedIn, Stack Overflow and GitHub, along with information provided by employers and Eightfold’s existing databases.
According to the plaintiffs, the company’s model incorporates “more than 1.5 billion global data points,” including job titles, skills and profiles of people “working in every job, profession, industry,” and is marketed as the “world’s largest, self‑refreshing source of talent data,” citing materials the complaint attributes to Eightfold.
The suit alleges that Eightfold’s engineers describe a three‑step process in which the platform extracts “deep semantic embeddings” from unstructured text, adds interpretable features, and then performs “fast explainable inference” to generate match scores for applicants, according to the filing.
The complaint compares Eightfold’s reports to credit reports used in lending, arguing that the company is assembling information from multiple inputs to generate evaluative outputs that bear on a candidate’s character, reputation and personal characteristics for employment purposes.
Workday is facing a proposed class-action suit in the United States alleging that its algorithmic job applicant screening software is biased.
Applications with PayPal and Microsoft
Kistler, who applied for product management roles at PayPal in December 2025, alleges she submitted applications through links that contained “eightfold.ai/careers” in the address, signaling that PayPal used Eightfold’s tools for recruiting, according to the complaint.
She asserts that during the process, she:
- did not receive a standalone disclosure informing her that a consumer report would be obtained for employment purposes
- did not provide written authorization after such a disclosure
- did not receive a summary of her rights or information about Eightfold and its practices, as required by federal and California law, according to the filing.
The complaint alleges that, nonetheless, Eightfold gathered Kistler’s personal data, professional background, social media information, location data, online activity, other third‑party data and comparator applicant information drawn from millions of other profiles, and used this information to create a consumer report assessing her suitability for PayPal roles.
She contends she had no meaningful way to opt out without undermining her applications, and no chance to see or correct the information before it was used.
Kistler says she did not receive interview invitations or offers for the positions and that, before deciding not to advance her candidacy, PayPal and other employers using Eightfold did not provide her with a copy of any report or a description of her rights to dispute its contents, according to the filing.
Bhaumik, who holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pittsburgh and has more than a decade of project management experience focused on digital products and AI, alleges she applied for various roles at Microsoft and other companies beginning in 2023, including a “Senior Technical Program Manager‑Responsible AI” position in mid‑2025, according to the complaint.
The filing states that Microsoft used Eightfold’s tools for that role and that Bhaumik was also subject to Eightfold’s collection, assembly and evaluation of her data and comparator information under the same company‑wide practices, without the disclosures, authorizations and dispute rights required by law, according to the complaint.
Class allegations and scope
The lawsuit seeks to represent a nationwide class and a California subclass of people who applied for jobs and were evaluated by Eightfold’s tools during the applicable limitation periods, according to the complaint.
The complaint contends that common questions include whether Eightfold is a consumer reporting agency, whether it furnished consumer reports to employers without satisfying the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the California Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act, whether its conduct constitutes an unfair business practice under California’s Unfair Competition Law, and whether injunctive and declaratory relief, as well as damages, are warranted, according to the filing.
The plaintiffs seek actual, statutory, nominal, exemplary and punitive damages where available, along with a declaratory judgment that Eightfold’s alleged practices are unlawful and an injunction barring the company and those acting with it from continuing the challenged conduct, according to the filing.
