A New Interview Hack

Article taken from Business insights! ?

It’s really hard to get a job right now. After a few years of employees calling the shots, employers once again have the upper hand —?and they’re making sure applicants know it.?

?In some cases, landing a job requires personality tests, on-site assessments, and several rounds of interviews (and that’s assuming you don’t get ghosted midway through).?

?But a new cohort of AI tools and startups is looking to make the interview process easier for candidates, Business Insider’s Rob Price writes — by quietly telling them the right answers to interview questions in real time.

?Some people have built homemade AI tools to help interviewees, releasing them online for free. Others, like Final Round AI, are trying to bring it into the mainstream.?

?A startup developing AI-powered tools for job seekers, Final Round AI offers an AI résumé builder, a cover letter writing service, and a mock interview tool. More controversially, it has its Copilot: an app that listens in on an interview and feeds answers to the interviewee.?

?Michael Guan, the startup’s CEO, called it a “magical teleprompter” — but made it clear he doesn’t consider it cheating. He’s not the only one looking to AI to change the interview process.?

The use of artificial intelligence in job interviews is at the center of a heated debate in Silicon Valley.?

?Gaming the interview process is nothing new. As Rob reported in 2022, some people go as far as to hire stand-ins to do the interviews for them in risky bait-and-switch schemes.?

?But the use of AI, in particular, has the industry up in arms.?

?BI’s Melia Russell found that no one can seem to agree upon the use of AI chatbots in technical interviews. Some say they want to see a candidate’s abilities without a technical crutch. Others say banning AI chatbots in interviews is like prohibiting calculators during math tests —?if workers can use the tech in their jobs, why not in the interview process, too?

?Some startups, Melia found, are now changing their tests and asking applicants to complete chatbot-resistant tasks.??

?But for those who don’t see AI assistance as cheating, it’s irrelevant. Guan, the Final Round AI CEO, told Rob that if an applicant can use AI to ace an interview, then they should be able to use it “to become the top performer in their daily jobs.”

?Regardless of their take on AI-assisted interviews, several of the people who spoke with Rob and Melia said the industry’s technical-interview process is broken. The question now, Rob writes, is whether chatbots will change the technical-interview process — for better or worse.

?