Candidate Consent and AI Resume Screening in NYC

Where "Consent" Keeps Tripping Up Recruiting Teams

A candidate emails your recruiting inbox: "Did I agree to let a computer screen my resume?" Your ATS vendor markets an AI ranking feature you turned on six months ago. Nobody sent a consent form, because nobody thought one was required — and they were right, but not for the reason they think. Your talent acquisition lead now wants a straight answer before the next req goes live: what exactly does New York City require here, and is "consent" even the right word for it?

It isn't. Local Law 144 doesn't ask employers to get a candidate's permission to run an automated employment decision tool. It asks employers to tell candidates it's happening, tell them what it is, and give them a way to ask for something else. That's a narrower, more procedural obligation than "consent" implies — and mixing the two up is how notice language ends up either overbuilt (with waivers and acknowledgments the law doesn't ask for) or underbuilt (missing the piece that actually matters). By the end of this piece, you'll know precisely what the notice has to contain, when it has to go out, and how it's different from asking someone to say yes.

This is operational and educational information about how the notice requirement works, not legal advice — confirm any notice language and accommodation procedure with counsel and with DCWP guidance before you finalize it.

Candidate Consent and AI Resume Screening: What the Notice Requirement Actually Says

Local Law 144 defines an automated employment decision tool as any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or AI that issues a simplified output — a score, classification, or recommendation — used to substantially assist or replace discretionary decision-making about employment (Perkins Coie, 2023). Resume screening tools that rank, shortlist, or filter candidates fall squarely inside that definition when they're doing that substantial-assistance work in New York City.

The law's candidate-facing mechanism is notice, not consent. An employer using an AEDT on a candidate or employee residing in NYC must provide notice at least 10 business days before use, describe the tool and the qualifications or characteristics it assesses, and offer an alternative selection process or accommodation route where one exists (Crowell & Moring LLP, 2023; Epstein Becker Green, 2023). There is no requirement that the candidate sign anything, click "I agree," or opt in before the tool runs. The candidate can decline the AEDT and request the alternative process — that's the closest LL144 comes to a consent-like choice, and it's opt-out in spirit, not opt-in.

Why does that distinction matter operationally? Because "consent" framing pushes teams toward building the wrong artifact — a waiver, a checkbox, a signature line — when what DCWP is actually looking for is a notice that was sent to the right person, at the right time, with the right content, and a documented channel for the alternative-process request. If you're building or auditing your notice language against every required element, our breakdown of what an AEDT candidate notice must include walks through the content requirements line by line.

The 10-Business-Day Clock and Why It Isn't a Formality

The 10-business-day window is measured from notice to use, not from job posting to interview. That means the clock starts running the moment you know a specific candidate or employee is going to be run through the tool — which, for high-volume resume screening, is effectively the moment they submit an application into a role where the AEDT is active.

Teams that treat this as a soft guideline tend to get caught by their own hiring velocity: a role moves fast, a recruiter wants to screen the pipeline the same week it closes, and the notice either goes out late or doesn't go out until someone asks. Both are violations, and both are the kind of gap an outside auditor or a candidate complaint surfaces after the fact, not before. We go deeper on how to build the timing into your actual requisition workflow — including where the clock starts for rolling applications — in our piece on the AEDT 10-business-day notice.

Notice, Consent, and the Alternative Process Aren't the Same Lever

It's worth separating three things that get flattened together in casual conversation:

• Notice — a one-way disclosure. The employer tells the candidate an AEDT is in use, what it assesses, and where to find the public audit summary.
• Consent — not required under LL144. No opt-in, signature, or acknowledgment is part of the statute's mechanism.
• Alternative process or accommodation — the candidate's actual lever. If offered, a candidate can request a different path through the selection process instead of the AEDT.

Local Law 144 gives candidates a way to ask for something different — not a form to sign agreeing to something the same.

Getting this distinction right in your written policy also protects you from a second failure mode: publishing a notice that reads like marketing copy about your AI tool rather than a compliance disclosure. A study of 391 employers subject to LL144 found only 13 had posted a compliant transparency notice at all (ACM FAccT, Wright & Muenster et al., 2024) — most of the gap wasn't candidates refusing consent, it was employers never publishing the notice language in the first place. For the full set of requirements the notice sits inside, see our Local Law 144 candidate notice requirements guide.

Where This Applies to Resume Screening Software Specifically

Not every ATS filter is an AEDT. A basic keyword match or a Boolean search that a recruiter builds manually generally isn't the kind of computational process the statute targets. Where resume screening crosses the line is when the software's own model — trained on prior outcomes, scored features, or ranked signals — is doing the substantial-assistance work of deciding who advances.

That distinction determines whether the 10-day notice, the alternative-process offer, and the underlying bias audit apply to your screening tool at all. If your team is still mapping which specific product features trigger LL144 coverage, our guide to resume screening software and Local Law 144 walks through the vendor-feature questions worth asking before you assume — or assume away — coverage. For the full compliance picture beyond notice alone, including the audit and posting obligations that run alongside it, see our NYC Local Law 144 compliance guide.

Building a Notice Process You Can Defend, Not Just a Form

None of this requires software. It requires a repeatable operating rhythm: know which requisitions are running an AEDT, know when each candidate entered the pipeline, send notice with the required content at least 10 business days out, log that it went, and have a documented path for anyone who asks for the alternative process. When DCWP or a candidate complaint asks "did you notify this person, and when," you want an answer with a timestamp attached — not a memory of the recruiter who handled it.

That's the operational gap our Candidate Notice Operations Workbook — Screener / Video / Ranking Notice Sets is built to close: pre-structured notice language sets for resume-screening, video-interview, and ranking AEDTs, a tracker for the 10-business-day clock per requisition, and a log for alternative-process requests you can hand to an auditor or answer a complaint with. It doesn't perform your bias audit and it isn't legal advice — it's the paperwork spine that makes your notice practice defensible on the day someone asks.

Start with the workbook that matches your screening stack, and subscribe to our newsletter for the next piece in this series on building an audit-ready candidate notice program from the ground up.