Job-Seekers Are Facing a ‘Jarring’ New Interview Experience

Job candidates are encountering a new hiring hurdle that can feel unsettling.

According to a new report from CNBC, AI has taken over almost every stage of the hiring process for both recruiters and job-seekers. The technology does everything from writing resumes on the applicant side to evaluating resumes for companies.  

Now AI is penetrating another aspect of the job search: interviews.

For many job-seekers, the first interview for a position no longer involves speaking to a recruiter on the phone or a hiring manager on Zoom. Instead, candidates answer questions from automated software before they speak with a person.

The shift is becoming more common. In a Greenhouse survey of 2,950 active job-seekers across the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and Australia in April, 63% said they had completed an AI-led interview. 

That figure was up 13% from six months earlier, according to the hiring platform’s report. 

These interviews can take several forms. Some tools use a voice or text chatbot that asks candidates a standard set of questions. Others use digital avatars that mimic human expressions, including smiling, blinking and nodding. For applicants, the experience can feel more like speaking to a simulation than having a typical conversation.

Job-seekers are still trying to figure out how to handle interviews conducted by automated technology, Katrina Kibben, a Rockford, Illinois-based recruiting consultant and job-posting copywriter, told CNBC.

For most people, an interview has traditionally meant a conversation with another person. That expectation is changing as companies use automated tools in the hiring process, Kibben said. Candidates are now left wondering if the usual interview rules, such as building rapport and reading reactions, still apply.

Why employers are turning to AI interviews

The simple reason companies are using AI interviews is that they are inundated with applications and need to evaluate more candidates than ever. 

Research from LinkedIn released in January showed that the number of U.S. candidates for each open role on the site has doubled from four years ago. 

Meanwhile, interest in automated interviewing tools has risen sharply in recent months, according to Dina Taylor, chief evangelist at recruiting and hiring technology company HireVue. 

Taylor told CNBC that HireVue introduced its voice-based AI interviewer in June. It’s a tool that can conduct two-way, job-specific screening conversations and give recruiters a ranked set of candidates to review. 

For employers, the appeal is largely speed and scale. Kathleen Nolan-Raygoza, a technical recruiter with nearly 10 years of experience, told CNBC that companies have often reduced recruiting teams after years of layoffs. Smaller teams can struggle to personally screen every applicant. 

An AI interviewer can talk with candidates at any hour and handle far more initial conversations than a human recruiting team can manage. “Human recruiters don’t have the scale and the time to interview thousands of people in a week,” Taylor said. “That’s really what the AI interviewer is designed to do.”

However, for applicants, “it can be very jarring to hop on a call and either see a bot or an avatar,” Nolan-Raygoza noted. 

Job candidates are encountering a new hiring hurdle that can feel unsettling.

According to a new report from CNBC, AI has taken over almost every stage of the hiring process for both recruiters and job-seekers. The technology does everything from writing resumes on the applicant side to evaluating resumes for companies.  

Now AI is penetrating another aspect of the job search: interviews.