AI-powered job interviews are becoming increasingly common as companies deploy chatbots to conduct initial candidate screenings, but job seekers are pushing back against the technology. Many unemployed professionals are refusing to participate in AI interviews, viewing them as dehumanizing and a red flag about company culture, even at the risk of missing job opportunities.
What you should know: HR teams are turning to AI interviewers out of necessity as they struggle to manage thousands of applications per role with reduced staff.
- Companies use AI to filter top applicants, schedule interviews, and automate hiring correspondence beyond just conducting interviews.
- Job seekers describe encounters with robotic voices, cartoon avatars, and repetitive questioning that can’t provide information about company culture.
- Some candidates are ending AI interviews within minutes or avoiding companies that use them entirely.
The candidate experience: Job seekers report feeling frustrated and devalued by AI interview processes, with many describing them as “soul-sucking” and impersonal.
- Debra Borchardt, a 64-year-old editorial professional, ended her AI interview in under 10 minutes: “I’m not going to sit here for 30 minutes and talk to a machine… I don’t want to work for a company if the HR person can’t even spend the time to talk to me.”
- Allen Rausch, a technical writer, encountered AI interviewers three times featuring “woman-like cartoons with female voices” that lasted up to 25 minutes but couldn’t answer his questions about company culture.
- Alex Cobb from Murphy Group, a U.K. energy company, won’t pursue AI-proctored interviews anymore, saying: “It makes me feel like they don’t value my learning and development. It makes me question the culture of the company.”
Why employers embrace AI interviews: Hiring managers view AI interviewers as essential tools for managing high-volume recruiting, particularly for customer service, retail, and entry-level tech roles.
- Priya Rathod from Indeed, a job search platform, explains they’re “becoming more common in early-stage screening because they can streamline high-volume hiring.”
- Adam Jackson, CEO of Braintrust, an AI interviewing company, says the technology allows hiring managers to focus on meaningful conversations later in the process: “It does 100 interviews, and it’s going to hand back the best 10 to the hiring manager, and then the human takes over.”
The technology’s limitations: Even AI interview proponents acknowledge the technology has significant constraints in assessing candidates.
- Jackson admits: “AI is good at objective skill assessment—I would say even better than humans. But [when it comes to] cultural fit, I wouldn’t even try to have AI do that.”
- Job seekers report AI interviewers hallucinating, repeating questions endlessly, and providing robotic, impersonal experiences.
The reality check: Despite candidate resistance, AI interviews are becoming a standard part of the hiring process that job seekers may need to accept.
- Jackson notes: “The truth is, if you want a job, you’re gonna go through this thing… If there were a large portion of the job-seeking community that were wholesale rejecting this, our clients wouldn’t find the tool useful.”
- Social media shows mixed reactions, with some candidates finding AI interviews less nerve-wracking than human interactions while others call them awkward and ineffective.
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