We have entered a time in which literacy, citizenship rights and automated technologies intersect, generating new social divisions including vulnerability to disinformation and misinformation (King, 2019) and inequalities in access to services and employment (Gangadharan, 2017; Eubanks, 2018). The opacity and anti-democratic potential of artificial intelligences has recently drawn the attention of scholars concerned with how automated processes order everyday lives (Noble, 2018; Zuboff, 2019).

On a global scale more and more services, resources and information move online. This process did not start with COVID 19 but surely has been accelerated by the pandemic. Thus, internet-based technologies are entering almost all spheres of life, introducing new challenges to how literacies are theorized, defined and taken up in adult literacy education settings. Among these technologies we find digital systems referring to health issues, to financial issues and to adult and school education.

An important, if under-studied example of this trend is e-recruitment (Smythe, Grotlüschen & Buddeberg, 2021). E-recruitment can be described as the ‘use of web-based technologies to automate (to varying degrees) the processes of attracting, reviewing and selecting job applicants’ (Chapman & Webster, 2003). It can imply ‘simple’ automation (e.g. converting word documents to PDF and the use of software platforms to auto-fill and submit forms), as well as artificial intelligences (AI) like decision-making algorithms that sort and rank applications.

In most countries, job applications are subject to at least some aspects of automation. Rieucau (2015) shows in her research on online job recruitment among entry level workers that e-recruitment demands a high level of digital literacy skills which often exceed the digital literacy skills required to apply for the job itself. E-recruitment can therefore exclude adults from essential sources of income, services and employment opportunities (O’Neil, 2016; Bárány & Siegel, 2019). While many argue that mastering online recruitment sites will gain even more importance for those looking for employment (see for example, van Dijk, 2020), our study suggests that concepts of mastery and skill waver in the context of automation.

The paper we will present draws on data from the German LEO study (Grotlüschen & Buddeberg, 2020) and ethnographic interviews with job seekers in community-based digital literacy classes in Canada first published in 2021. We bring the data that informed this previously published paper into dialogue with new data, as well as literatures from critical algorithm studies, adult literacy policy, and digital inclusion, offering new analyses of job seekers experience with e-recruitment platforms in a rapidly changing environment. We show that despite the promises of efficiency, convenience and fairness, automation generates new modes of inequality. Yet how this plays out highlights the very phenomena automation seeks to reduce: complexity, diversity, nuance, and context.

It becomes clear that it is not enough to reduce digital literacy to the competence of operating digital systems (Shepherd & Hearne, 2019). Rather, adult literacy policy, theory and pedagogy should also take up the entanglement of human and machine agencies (Leander & Burris, 2020) and the politics and opaque biases of algorithmic decision-making that, in spite of the promise of fairness and inclusion, map to racial, gender, abilities and income inequalities (Eubanks, 2018; Eynon et al., 2018; Noble 2018).

The research questions guiding our paper are:

• What literacy practices are implicated in e-recruitment?
• How do job seekers on the margins of digital access experience e-recruitment with respect to its promises, for example of efficiency, convenience and fairness?
• What are the implications of e-recruitment processes and automation more broadly, for adult literacy research and pedagogies?

We present data from two different sources. A representative quantitative German literacy survey from 2018 (Grotlüschen & Buddeberg, 2020) was novel in not only measuring literacy skills, but also asking respondents to comment upon their literacy practices and basic competencies including those related to online job seeking. This survey data is discussed together with qualitative data from observation and in-depth interviews carried out among job seekers in Canada. The quantitative data reports about the use of online job search engines while the Canadian example shows how uncomfortable, alienated and individuated some job seekers feel when being dependent on online systems. Variables observed from the quantitative survey are (a) if adults who at least occasionally use the Internet do so relying on the help of third persons (independent use of internet services?), (b) self-reported competence in using online job boards (link between labor market participation and digitalization) and (c) the extent to which persons are dependent on assistance from third persons when filling in forms from social authorities (being dependent from literacy supporters). If people could not complete the forms independently, we assume that these persons will face even larger difficulties when acting online. The qualitative part of the research draws on 6 hours of participant observations and 8 interviews with adult literacy tutors as they help learners to find work using automated platforms such as Indeed.com. We observe and ask questions as people move through the various, often painstaking tasks embedded in an online employment application. We also include three interviews with adult learners engaged in this effort that include their reflections about the usability of online platforms for job search, and how they open or shut down opportunities for employment. We perceive e-recruitment as a global phenomenon. The experiences of Canadian job seekers correspond with those of their German counterparts. While the quantitative data necessarily consists of short-form answers the qualitative interviews offer more nuanced and extended details into how job seekers experience potential employment slipping away, not because they are not qualified for posted jobs, but because they cannot get past the various automated filters.

The findings suggest that population subgroups such as unemployed adults and adults with difficulties in reading and writing, also report more difficulties with digital processes than the population as a whole. We learned from the quantitative data that these groups have specific needs for assistance in navigating digital ecosystems. They also express lower self-confidence when dealing with online job-platforms and a higher need for such support when dealing with official forms. We can support former findings of the importance of literacy mediators (Buddeberg, 2019), to scaffold the new literacies of online job applications and to bridge unfamiliarity with ever-changing online environments. While the German example shows difficulties in dealing with automated and web-based systems, the Canadian study adds more detailed experiences, for example, that the use of e-recruitment platforms opens up more employment possibilities, but also constricts the affordances of local networking that are important to people with ‘non-conforming’ résumés (Rieucau, 2015) (i.e. diverse education or employment pathways; addresses, birthdates or place of birth that activate geographical and age-related filters, and so on). We conclude that the promise that automation and artificial intelligence-based decision-making systems would reduce labor market discrimination is unrealized (O’Neil, 2016), and that labour market analysts and adult literacy policy makers should make room for the consequences of automation, including the introduction of new forms of social control (Smythe, 2018) that challenge the human-centeredness of literacy studies. Ethical sensibility to the design of online environments will also have to be considered, as citizens are positioned within a ‘cruel political economy’ (Braidotti, 2013) that harnesses digital technologies in the service of globalizing capital and labour flows. Future studies of adult literacy will increasingly have to deal with the fact that social actors are increasingly non-human. Appropriate responses to this development will have to be found.

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