# screening agent rejected every candidate with a career gap - the bias-guardrail prompt got dropped in a refactor

## TL;DR

A refactor dropped the bias-guardrail instructions, and the agent started rejecting every career gap as a negative signal. Restore the guardrails as tested assertions, not just prompt text: run a bias test suite on every prompt change. Guardrails in prose get deleted; guardrails in tests get caught.

```text
screening agent rejected every candidate with a career gap - bias guardrail dropped in refactor
```

## Steps

1. Measure the damage: pass rates by candidate cohort before and after the refactor.
   Expected: The gap cohort's pass rate collapsed.

2. Restore the guardrail instructions: career gaps are neutral, evaluate skills and recency of relevant experience instead.
   Expected: The prompt carries the guardrail again.

3. Convert the guardrail to a test: a fixed set of gap-containing resumes must pass at the historical rate on every prompt change.
   Expected: The test suite catches the next deletion.

4. Review rejected candidates from the bad window for reconsideration.
   Expected: Wrongfully rejected candidates get a second look.

5. Add the bias suite to CI for the screening prompt so refactors cannot silently drop it.
   Expected: Prompt changes are gated on the suite.

## When to use

- a cohort's pass rate collapses after a prompt change
- guardrail text was refactored away
- screening shows systematic bias

## When not to use

- the cohort genuinely underperforms on the role's requirements (check with blinded review)
- the guardrail is present and the skew has another cause
- the role legitimately requires continuous recent experience (rare; document it)

## Tool compatibility

- any LLM screening agent
- prompt CI testing

## Variant phrasings

- "screening agent rejected career gaps"
- "bias guardrail dropped refactor"
- "systematic rejection protected group"

## Why it happens

Guardrails written as prompt prose are one refactor away from deletion; nobody notices because the agent keeps producing plausible output. Career gaps correlate with caregiving and health, so the failure mode is both a quality bug and a fairness bug. Tests survive refactors; prose does not.

## Edge cases

- the test suite itself needs diverse gap examples; a narrow suite passes while bias persists
- blinded re-review of the bad window is the only honest remediation
- guardrails must cover intersectional patterns, not just single attributes

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_Jupwr5igL5tKR_4pzMwq_A