Rikunabi sold employers scores predicting which students would reject offers

Recruit Career's Rikunabi service used browsing records and other data to estimate how likely student job seekers were to decline informal job offers. The score was sold to client employers as part of a DMP Follow service, turning a recruiting marketplace into a candidate-risk product.

Japan's Personal Information Protection Commission said on 26 August 2019 that personal data for 7,983 Rikunabi 2020 users had been provided to client companies without the consent required for third-party provision. Mainichi reported that 74,878 students were analysed in total and that 34 of 38 subscribing companies received the data.

The regulator issued a recommendation and guidance to Recruit Career, with corrective measures due by 30 September 2019. In December, it issued further action and guidance to companies that had used the offer-decline scores; ITmedia reported that 35 companies received administrative guidance.

The business mistake was not the model alone. Recruit Career sold an asymmetry: employers could see a student's predicted loyalty while the student did not know that browsing behaviour had become a score used in hiring decisions. The service was discontinued after the scandal.

Sold employers a score predicting which students would reject offers, built from browsing data, without consent for 7,983 students.

Recruit Career treated job seekers' platform activity as employer intelligence rather than candidate data needing explicit consent

The product created hidden scoring in a hiring process where students could not see or challenge the signal

Privacy-policy changes and matching mechanics lagged behind the commercial use of the prediction score

Selling the score to dozens of employers made the reputational damage market-wide instead of internal

People analytics becomes a trust failure when the subject cannot see the score. Consent has to cover the decision use, not just the data collection.