AI Use in Hiring: Clause Set

What this is

Clause text for a hiring policy, written to be edited. Each clause below is a starting paragraph for your own counsel to change, cut or replace before it goes anywhere near a candidate.

This is not a complete policy. A complete one also names which requisitions and which states it reaches, keeps a dated inventory of what runs on candidates, says what is kept and for how long, and says what forces a re-approval. Those four sections are not here. What is here is the part a candidate reads.

How to use it

• Replace every bracketed placeholder before the document leaves your building.
• Put clauses 3 to 6 where the candidate meets them, which is the assignment brief and the email that carries it, rather than a policy page nobody opens.
• Name an owner beside each clause you keep. The AI Risk Management Framework asks that roles, responsibilities and lines of communication be documented, and that policies define the roles for human oversight ¹.
• Take the edited version to employment counsel for the states you hire in, with your tool inventory and your list of decision points beside it.

The clauses

Clause 1. Notice of the employer's AI use

[Employer name] uses automated tools at [the stage] to [what the tool produces]. Candidates are told which tools are in use, what those tools produce, and how the result is used, at least [number] business days before a tool runs.

For. Telling a candidate what runs on them, early enough that they can ask for something else. Open. The tool list, the notice period, and where the notice is published, which are yours to set and are the three things a candidate quotes back to you.

Clause 2. Where a person decides

At [the stage], [role] makes the decision. It rests on [what the reviewer sees], written down at the time. No candidate is advanced or ended by a tool alone.

For. Naming the human decision point, which is what most notice, audit and explanation duties key on. Open. Which stages get a named role and which do not, a judgment nobody outside your process can make for you.

Clause 3. What a candidate may use

At [the stage], you may use an assistant for drafting, research and [other permitted work]. The reasoning in what you send has to be yours. The same rule applies to everyone at this stage.

For. Permission written in verbs rather than product names, so the clause survives a model release and a tool switch. Open. Which verbs belong to which job family, which reads differently for a marketer, an analyst and an engineer, and is the clause most templates leave blank.

Clause 4. What a candidate does unaided

You must be able to talk through the choices in what you send, with no assistant open, and to say what would change your answer. Nothing else at this stage is assessed unaided.

For. The thing the exercise actually tests, stated before the exercise rather than after a disagreement. Open. Which part is unaided, which follows from what the stage is for and is the decision every other clause here depends on.

Clause 5. What the candidate discloses

When you send the work back, add two or three sentences saying what you used an assistant for and what you changed or threw out in what it gave back. That note reaches the reviewer with your work. It is never on its own a reason to end the process.

For. A question the careful half of a pipeline can answer without walking into a trap, which is the work the last sentence does. Open. How long the note is kept and who outside the hiring team reads it, which probably has an answer already in your privacy notice.

Clause 6. Consequence when a rule is broken

If the work you send is not your own, or you cannot talk through the choices in it, the process ends there. That decision rests on three things: what you sent, what you said about it, and what you can explain in a conversation.

For. A consequence attached to evidence a person can be shown. Open. Nothing here, deliberately, and the paragraph below says what was left out and why.

The obvious fourth item, a tool that reports whether a machine wrote the text, is absent on purpose. Independent testing of twelve public tools plus two commercial systems concluded that the available tools are neither accurate nor reliable, and that they lean toward calling text human-written ². On a shared benchmark, swapping characters for lookalike homoglyphs cut the accuracy of several tools sharply while barely touching one ³. A check that folds to a find-and-replace is a check on the people who were not hiding anything.

Clause 7. Human review of a decision

If a tool was used in a decision about you, you may ask for that decision to be looked at again by a person who was not part of it. Write to [contact] within [number] days. [Employer name] answers within [number] working days, saying what was reviewed and what the answer is.

For. A route that exists and has a name on it, rather than a right the candidate has to work out whether they hold. Open. Who reviews, and what they are allowed to change, which is the half of this clause that decides whether it means anything.

Clause 8. Adjustment and an alternative route

If you need an adjustment to take part in [the stage], or you would rather be assessed another way, write to [contact]. Asking costs you nothing and is not held against you. [Employer name] answers within [number] working days with what is available.

For. An alternative route in writing, carried in the same message as the notice, so nothing has to be disclosed to a hiring manager in order to ask. Open. Which alternatives exist, which is a procedure to build rather than a sentence to write.

Duties already in force

The clauses above are drafting. Some duties attach whatever a policy says, and no legal text is written into this document: the table names the places this set references and carries the current wording beside each. It is not a map of every state you hire in.

What this does not do

• It applies no law to your facts and states none of its own.
• It is not a complete policy, and four sections of one are missing by design.
• It takes no answers and returns no document. There is no form here, and no version of this assembles clauses from what a reader types.