Covert Agents of Workforce Ruin, Exploiting Personal Information for Profit Without Individuals' Awareness or Approval.
Harvard Business Review (2022): Over 27 million U.S. workers are screened out by automated systems without ever being reviewed by a human.
Workday and its integrated vendors collect data from resumes, tracking pixels, third-party brokers like Lightcast.io, and even social media metadata. Much of this data is acquired without explicit consent and used to train predictive models that feed back into the job seeker’s shadow profile.
Data brokers involved in this ecosystem, such as Lightcast.io and People Data Labs, compile extensive personally identifiable information (PII)—including names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, job history, and inferred demographic characteristics like race, gender, disability, and socioeconomic status. They also traffic in sensitive health-related data, such as predicted disability status, mental health indicators, and biometric risk scores based on behavioral patterns, tone of voice, facial recognition, keystroke dynamics, and inferred cognitive traits.
This data is transmitted through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and embedded Software Development Kits (SDKs) into Workday’s enterprise platforms. These integrations enable seamless ingestion of personal and behavioral data into tools such as Skills Cloud, Career Hub, and People Analytics. There, it powers inference engines that generate risk scores, persona summaries, and promotion potential assessments. Employers are often unaware of the full data supply chain, and job seekers are never given the opportunity to consent, inspect, or correct the information that may shape or deny their employment outcomes.
Harvard Business Review (2022): Over 27 million U.S. workers are screened out by automated systems without ever being reviewed by a human.
Applying for a Job is Not Consent for Selling, Storing and Analyzing Our Personal Data Found Through Web Stalking
Labor market analytics firms aggregate and analyze employment data to provide insights for businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies. The company collects vast amounts of workforce-related data, including job postings, worker profiles, and labor trends, to support skills-based hiring and workforce development.
Data brokering in hiring involves collecting and selling workforce-related information, including:
Lightcast.io and similar labor analytics firms gather this data from various sources, including public job boards, corporate ATS systems, government labor reports, and third-party databases—often without workers being explicitly aware that their information is being analyzed and sold to clients.