AI interviews are failing in the most cringe way possible
I went down a YouTube rabbit hole of fake AI interviews. If you think AI can pass interviews for you, you were misled by bad marketing.
AI interviews are failing in the most cringe way possible. And yes, I’m talking about jobseekers who use AI to interview for them.
Just last week, I heard 2 of these nightmare stories from my network. (If you’ve followed my writing for a while, you can probably count my top 3 worst nightmares: AI interviews, AI ATS, and LinkedIn EasyApply).
One of the stories went like this: A finance analyst candidate who’s a business school grad and interned multiple times in finance at different startups joined the interview call. The interviewer was excited about her promising profile.
As soon as the candidate started to give her answer to the first question, the interviewer could see the reflection of her glasses change to a familiar layout. She opened ChatGPT…
The interviewer was disappointed with the extremely unoriginal answers. She asked: “Let’s go with something simple. Tell me about some common elements on a P&L (profit and loss) sheet.” The candidate tried to use AI, but seemed like GPT didn’t load the answers right away. She visibly freaked out. And this on paper very experienced finance person who had to come up with her own answer, said:
“…Revenue?”
Needless to say, neither were called back for the next round.
Why did they fail?
“Why were these answers so bad?” You may ask. “Aren’t interviewers looking for knowledge and structure?”
First of all, using AI to answer for you is like hiring someone to sit in the driving exam. Most companies consider this cheating.
If you had to rely on something else to give you the knowledge, to the hiring team this means you had no relevant knowledge in the field you’re interviewing for. If you did, you wouldn’t need AI. So why should companies hire you?
“But companies use AI internally too”, you might rebut.
To facilitate some of their work, perhaps. I know many companies that use AI to draft some content or image, or summarize meeting notes, or a little bit of Copilot for the code, or get ideas for a small task like what ice breaker questions to use for the retrospective.
But if they could just ask ChatGPT, then why are they opening a whole job position? Why don’t they just ask AI themselves? Try having ChatGPT interview for you for a job at Open.ai and I bet they would have chosen rejection too.
Why was I told AI is the new interview hack?
If you think passing interviews is about getting the answers right, sorry - you’re misled. You were very likely misled by AI companies making fake videos of AI passing interviews.
To prove this, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole and watched 20+ of the most viewed “AI interview hack”, “bro’s interviewer almost caught him using AI” videos and shorts. I was very certain all of them are fake. Even if one or two were real, the interview answers were so bad that they could only fool fresh grads.
An interviewer that appeared in the 10M views short “Bf showed me how to lock in interview without getting caught” was also in an Instagram reel of the company, where he asked a marketing interview question followed by saying “Because this is America.” Then proceeded to hold up his phone and play the song This is America by Childish Gambino and started dancing. He and the candidate are clearly friends shooting a goofy video.
Another character who’s supposed to be an “angry interviewer” somehow appeared in 14 videos for just one account, where he apparently has led both a “Deloitte consultant interview” and a “GE electrical engineer” interview.
Digging further, I found that the top 2 accounts that post the same style of fake AI interviews are LockedIn AI and Final Round AI. LockedIn AI’s founder is Kagehiro Mitsuyami, who also cofounded Final Round AI. Mitsuyami himself graduated from his Master’s in 2022, and only did 2 internships for less than 1 year before founding both companies. I highly doubt he has an hiring experience himself. LockedIn AI’s LinkedIn page was a feed of clearly AI-generated SEO articles with no reactions or comments. Even LockedIn AI’s Trustpilot reviews seemed AI-generated and I couldn’t find a genuine review video of their product.
Tools that actually help with your interview prep
Let me remind people what interviews are really looking for:
Highly relevant skills and experiences for the job;
A candidate who could show those above skills and experiences better than anyone else in the process;
A nice colleague the hiring team will enjoy working with;
An employee who’s interested in the company and will stay for the long run.
In today’s highly competitive market, most tech company could probably get plenty of people that have 1 and 2. However, the ones who are also good at showing 3 and 4 will be the ones that stand out and make an impression. That’s why companies like Amazon have the “bar raiser” interviewers to vet top contenders.
The one YouTube channel I will always recommend is Exponent. This is not an ad and their mock interview series actually helped me land my last job at an early stage startup. Exponent conducts mock interviews with real tech employees at well-known companies like FAANG, LinkedIn, Stripe, so you can see what good answers actually look like.
Once you’ve watched some good mock interviews, make sure to practice with a real person. You can either work with a coach, or simply have a family member or friend jump on a Zoom call. Even if your family member or friend cannot give you professional assessments, saying your answers out loud will make you realize what works and what doesn’t, or if you have any weaknesses in structuring your answers for a particular type of question.
Next time before you let AI take over your interview, ask yourself: do you really want this job? If the answer is yes, close ChatGPT right now.