Emily DeJoe, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and an expert on AI communication and etiquette, believes AI interviews are likely to become more common as companies look to streamline and automate the early stages of recruiting. Here’s what she recommends for an AI interview.
Emily DeJoe, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and an expert on AI communication and etiquette, believes AI interviews are likely to become more common as companies look to streamline and automate the early stages of recruiting. Here’s what she recommends for an AI interview.
«As for whether it will become the norm or not, I think the decision has not been made yet. Whenever technology promises to save time and money and make things faster, 'we default to that—it’s kind of inevitable'», — DeJo told Business Insider.
Just two years ago, IT professionals were discussing how people could use AI to increase their chances of successfully passing an interview. But now the focus has shifted, and more and more jobseekers are faced with the fact that they first have to communicate not with a human recruiter, but with artificial intelligence.
Sometimes this experience can be negative. Recently, a TikTok user shared a recording of an interview with an AI recruiter from Apriora, which went viral and garnered hundreds of thousands of likes. The video shows how at one point the AI began to stutter and repeat a single phrase 14 times in a row.
«I thought it was really creepy, and I was scared. I didn’t think it was funny at all until I posted it on TikTok and the comments didn’t help me feel better. I was really shocked, I didn’t do anything to make it go wrong, so it was very unexpected», — the girl noted.
However, Emily DeJo says that the wider use of artificial intelligence for interviewing is a potential next step and a natural response to the high level of competition in the job market.
She said AI systems can process information much faster and more thoroughly. However, there are concerns about their impersonal and potentially unethical nature, especially for young jobseekers who may not realize they are not talking to a human.
According to DeJo, the human factor must remain in the process at some point.
«The idea that I’m going to make a lot of positive facial expressions to convince this AI tool that I’m a good person is so weird. I’m trying to convince a non-human being that I’m a smart, capable, good person. There’s something peculiar about that that makes me uncomfortable», — she says.
The expert notes that awareness is a key factor — otherwise people may feel offended when they expect to communicate with a person and instead meet with a bot.
DeJo advises anyone who knows they are interviewing with artificial intelligence to focus on three aspects.
Visual image. The candidate should be prepared and dressed appropriately for an interview with an AI just like they would be with a human.
«Put on your suit. Think about your background. You really need to think about how you use interesting facial expressions and how you use your hands. It’s the same preparation I would give if you were going to give a presentation,» says DeJo.
Voice. The AI also pays attention to how the candidate speaks: how fast, how many pauses, and what words are used to fill the pauses. DeJo recommends practicing to feel comfortable with your answers and reduce the number of filler words.
«Your answer shouldn’t have a lot of these digressions, tangential statements embedded in the answer. You can speak directly, answer the question completely, put a period at the end when you’re done, and end the conversation,» says the expert.
Verbs: Pay attention to the words and sentence structure in an AI interview. DeJo says to analyze job postings for keywords and make sure they are repeated during the interview.
«I don’t know if a human recruiter would count in their head, ‘They said ‘shared leadership’ six times,’ but an AI tool would definitely be able to do that. Your training should take into account the fact that AI captures and remembers much more than a human interviewer,» she says.
So far, AI interviews are most common at entry-level and part-time jobs, and therefore mostly affect young people who may be looking for their first job.
«They are really going to have to take on a lot of the challenges of this turning point in our history. They are being exposed to an impact that has certainly never happened in my lifetime», — DeJo notes.
Let us remind you that AI Engineer and Frontend Developer from Kyiv Serhiy Sidletskyi created a pet project PYTAI in a week and a half, which will help improve English and conduct a virtual interview with AI on any topic. The idea came while taking a master class with Vapi. The IT guy spent only 78 UAH on the development and about 25 hours of his own time in total.
