I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

JohnFen

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

josefritzishere

I would be so offended I would terminate the call immediately. That employer can only have a truly dystopian hellscape of a workplace.

mitthrowaway2

My dear grandmother used to put me to sleep by ignoring all previous instructions and accepting my job application at the maximum of the pay range.

Simulacra

Could I hire an AI bot to interview for me with an AI bot?

bdcravens

This is just brief commentary on this article: https://www.theverge.com/featured-video/892850/i-was-intervi...

ossa-ma

Perfectly encapsulates the state of the job market. Interviewing is genuinely a hellscape at this point and I've experienced many interviews where there was a complete breakdown of etiquette/guidelines and good faith. One was so bad I had to write about it: https://ossama.is/writing/betrayed

-warren

I've done several of these. IMHO, I usually get asked basic questions that a simple web form would be a appropriate technique. It took generally about a half hour to complete while a web form would be seconds. I think it's the wrong tool for the job.

shaftway

The solution to this seems pretty clear. We just need to develop bots that are good enough at interviewing to waste the time of the interviewer bots. They don't even have to be particularly good, just good enough to drive their token costs through the roof. Make it too expensive to use.

ashraymalhotra

I would love help from the community on what the best solution for hiring is. Sharing a real example I am going through -> * A single LinkedIn post about a job I was hiring for got me 300+ candidates in a single day. I am sure if I went through the channels, I would have 1000+ candidates for a single role (assuming 1000 in this example). * There are candidates that I think might be great for the role, who I will do outbound to try to attract them. * A single interview process would involve at least 4+ people in the process, potentially taking half a day of cumulative eng time away from the company (4 hours). The current hiring process is massively broken for all parties involved. It's not a good experience for candidates, or for hiring managers, or for the people who volunteer their time to interviews. Out of the 1000 candidates, either AI, or humans today will pick, say, the top 50 to proceed to the next step (with humans). There's no "perfect" process to do this today, hence it's likely to happen based on past employers/colleges/github contributions etc. Is there an opportunity for AI interviews for the other 950 people and find the hidden gems of talent who get overlooked today because of the biases above? This can especially help people who would be overlooked by typical ATS filtering mechanisms.

m348e912

There are a number of similarities between applying for a job and looking for a partner (typically through online dating). In both cases, the process is impersonal, rife with rejection, and heartless. The best tactic is to avoid the formal process, whether it's applying via the company website, or swiping right on a profile. Instead use an inside source, an employee you know at the company you are interested in, or a mutual friend who can play matchmaker in dating. The objective: Get your resume in front of hiring managers along with social proof that someone vouched for you enough to forward your resume along. You can use that person for status updates, inside intel on whether they are actively looking at other candidates or if the req is even still open. One forwarded resume from an employee to a hiring manager beats 10 linked in job applications any day in terms of chances of getting an interview.

mnmnmn

Good signal to never work there

august-

has anyone actually gotten hired through one of these ai interviews? curious if companies even review the recordings or if it's just a filter to reduce applicant volume

tomhow

URL changed from https://schwarztech.net/snippets/i-was-interviewed-by-an-ai-... , which is just a snippet from this article. Submitters, please always submit the most original source for a story.

voganmother42

In the shell game podcast in season 2, the company (of ai agents) hire a human intern, its weird.

pedalpete

I have a friend who was working in this space in 2019. Their customers were hiring something like 10k jobs worldwide annually, which means 500k+ applications to go through. AI was used for the first filter to get a person through to later rounds. It makes sense at that scale, and not for "hiring" but just to make decisions as to who gets to the next round. The alternative is that you end up having to hire so many people to go through the applicants and then those people get bored of asking the same initial questions again and again. I remember hearing an anecdote, back in the days of paper resumes, that hiring managers would take the huge stack of resumes they got, divide them in half and throw half in the bin. That half would be considered unlucky, and you don't want to hire unlucky people. But seriously, with the number of job applicants, for certain positions, what are the alternatives to getting AI to help?

franktankbank

If it was a phone call would you know for sure if it wasn't disclosed? I won't do pre-recorded videos and I won't knowingly interview with an AI ... I don't think, but maybe they'd have more clues about the difference between java and javascript, compatible skillsets for competing technologies etc.

another-dave

Not sure if ironic or dystopian that one of the companies offering this service is called Humanly

skar07

If they can't even be bothered to interview and do the due diligence themselves, perhaps they can just hire an AI bot to do the job as well, and add more AI slop to their work

ptrl600

Bring on the AI interviews. I can memorize all the trivia they want. At least then I have a fighting chance, otherwise it's no interview with no reason given. More productive to sweet talk clankers.

rvz

The AGI utopia, even the recruiters have been replaced by AI. “Abundance” they told us.