How AI Can Make Job Interviews More Human

Artificial intelligence is quickly disrupting traditional business processes, assisting with everything from low-level grunt work to high-level decision-making. But one of the most overlooked opportunities for the technology to make an impact is in recruitment, and particularly the job interview process.

This might seem counterintuitive. Job interviews are quintessentially human activities, built on layers of inquisitiveness, empathy, instinct, and judgment.

In practice, however, job interviews are often far from consistent, informative, and free from bias. Just as candidates don’t deliver their best performance every time they sit down with a recruiter, HR professionals aren’t always consistent either. That’s where AI comes in.

AI in the Interview Room

The technology is already being used in a range of processes designed to help recruiters fill positions faster. From job postings to résumé screening, predictive analytics to chatbots, AI has established itself as a vital tool in the recruiter’s toolbelt, but only recently has the technology been applied to the interview process itself.

According to a recent survey , 10% of companies have already adopted AI in their interview process, and another 34% intend to do so by the end of 2024, with two-thirds believing it will increase hiring efficiency.

At the same time, 79% of respondents worry that a fully automated interview is more likely to screen out worthy candidates more frequently. While many are experimenting with chatbots and automated video interviews, such concerns point to a more hybrid approach, especially for higher-level positions.

A Co-Pilot, Not a Replacement

What does that look like in practice? As with many AI tools today, it’s likely the technology will play a co-piloting role—one where it is present in the interview room to make helpful, real-time suggestions to recruiters, rather than replacing them.

Powerful AI co-piloting tools are already being used for customer service operations, creating real-time transcripts of live conversations, pulling out keywords, generating summaries, and even measuring the sentiment of the speaker. It’s easy to see how the same technology could be applied to the candidate screening and interview process.?

This would allow recruiters to get real-time feedback and helpful suggestions on what to ask and what to look for, while creating a thorough, automatically generated report that can be used for future analysis.

Using Technology to Enhance Empathy

Ironically, adding more automation to the interview process can lead to a more empathetic interaction. As we’ve already begun to see in customer service, AI can make interactions more human by automating some of the more tedious tasks and providing deeper insights to recruiting professionals.

The technology can already spot subtle human behaviors, expressions, and tones in ways that humans can’t or might miss if they’re not paying attention. With this information, it can help identify the most effective approach to conducting an empathetic interview and even steer interviewers in the right direction when they begin to veer off course. That not only enhances recruiter insights but can also improve the likelihood of job acceptance among successful candidates.

As with many other HR tasks, AI is poised to help improve the interview process by ensuring that managers ask the right questions, check the right boxes, and establish a better connection with the interviewee. While some intend to use this new capability to fully automate the interview process, we believe the future of recruiting is a more empathetic experience facilitated by a human recruiter alongside an AI assistant.