Philippines: Hiring by Algorithm: What Philippine Employers Need to Know About AI in Recruitment
Authors: Rashel Ann C. Pomoy and Lawrence Ivan Manalo
Philippine employers are increasingly using AI-powered tools to support recruitment — from résumé parsing and candidate ranking to automated interview scheduling and skills assessments. The efficiency gains are real, and the adoption is likely to continue. What has not kept pace is regulatory clarity.
The Philippines does not yet have a comprehensive AI-specific statute or a dedicated regulatory framework governing the use of AI in the workplace. In the meantime, employers deploying these tools are subject to existing law — principally the Philippine Labour Code and the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (“DPA”) — as well as an emerging body of guidance from the National Privacy Commission (“NPC”). Neither the absence of AI-specific legislation nor the involvement of a third-party AI vendor alters the employer’s compliance obligations.
The NPC Guidelines: DPA Obligations Apply to AI Systems
In 2024, the NPC issued Advisory No. 2024-04, setting out guidelines on the application of the DPA and its implementing rules to AI systems that process personal data. The guidelines confirm that the obligations of Personal Information Controllers and Processors under the DPA continue to apply in full where AI systems are involved. AI-enabled processing does not reduce those obligations — in practice, it tends to raise expectations around documentation, explainability and controls.
The NPC guidelines identify several specific obligations that bear directly on AI-assisted recruitment.
On transparency, employers must provide candidates with comprehensive information about how their personal data will be processed, including whether it will be used in the development or deployment of AI systems. This disclosure obligation is typically satisfied through a Privacy Notice, but the notice must actually describe the AI processing in sufficient detail to be meaningful.
On accountability, employers must implement appropriate governance measures to ensure responsible and ethical processing, including documented decision controls and mechanisms that allow for meaningful human intervention. Reliance on a vendor-provided tool does not transfer this accountability to the vendor. The employer remains responsible for how the tool is deployed and what decisions flow from it.
On fairness and accuracy, employers must implement mechanisms to identify, monitor, and limit biases in AI systems, and must ensure that the personal data used by those systems is correct and current. A practical baseline measure is a candidate confirmation step at submission, supported by processes to address inaccuracies when they are flagged.
On data minimization and lawful basis, employers must limit AI processing to personal data that actually improves the system’s function, identify and document the applicable lawful basis for each processing activity described in the Privacy Notice, and ensure the corresponding safeguards are in place.
The NPC has separately confirmed, in Advisory Opinion No. 2024-002, that there are no apparent legal issues with using AI tools to improve workplace process flows, provided that proper safeguards are in place to protect the rights of data subjects whose personal information is being processed.
Anti-Discrimination Obligations Are Not Delegated to the Algorithm
Beyond data privacy, employers using AI in recruitment remain subject to Philippine anti-discrimination laws. The use of an automated system does not insulate an employer from liability for discriminatory hiring outcomes. Philippine law prohibits discrimination in hiring on a range of protected grounds, including sex, age, disability, solo parent status, membership in indigenous communities, mental health conditions, HIV/AIDS status, and pregnancy.
AI recruitment tools trained on historical data carry a recognized risk of encoding and amplifying existing biases — screening out candidates from protected categories not because of a deliberate policy but because the data the system learned from reflected prior discriminatory patterns. An employer cannot avoid responsibility for that outcome by pointing to the algorithm. The obligation to ensure non-discriminatory hiring rests with the employer, and it requires active monitoring of AI-generated outputs, not passive reliance on them.
Practical Compliance Baseline
At present, Philippine employers may use AI tools to facilitate and streamline recruitment, provided they remain within the bounds of existing law. At a minimum, a defensible compliance posture requires three things: meaningful human review for decisions that adversely affect candidates, documented job-related criteria underpinning all screening decisions, and periodic bias audits to detect and address discriminatory patterns in AI outputs.
Employers should also ensure that their Privacy Notices are updated to reflect AI processing accurately, that vendor agreements include appropriate data processing terms and accountability allocations, and that internal oversight of AI-assisted hiring decisions is assigned to a specific function rather than left to ad hoc management.
Looking Ahead
The regulatory landscape governing AI in the Philippine workplace is still developing. A comprehensive AI statute remains forthcoming, and further NPC guidance can be expected as the technology becomes more widely deployed. Employers who build sound compliance foundations now will be better positioned to adapt as the framework matures.
The efficiency case for AI in recruitment is well established. The legal case for deploying it without adequate controls is not. The responsibility for lawful and ethical use of these tools remains with the employer, and that responsibility does not diminish because the decision was assisted by an algorithm.
