By Aida Rogers
Flashback: In October 2015, computer science majors and best friends Blakeley Payne (then, Hoffman) and Maribeth Bottorff are hanging out at Bottorff’s apartment. Payne watches Bottorff submit her resume to Twitter.
Less than 24 hours later, Bottorff gets an email from Twitter telling her she isn’t a good fit. Flummoxed, the friends start investigating. How could Bottorff, at the top of her class and with proven leadership experience, be rejected so quickly? Their hunch—that Twitter’s algorithm for potential employees didn’t recognize certain words in Bottorff’s resume—proved valid.