Your Next Job Interview Might Be With an AI Recruiter

Going through the job interview process can be pretty stressful.

You’re tweaking your resume a hundred times. You’ve told people “a little about yourself” more times than you’d like to. And you’ve probably gotten a few “We’ve decided to move forward to another candidate” emails.

It’s the name of the game.

But here’s another curveball you probably weren’t expecting: Going through an interview process with an AI-generated recruiter on the other end.

Tools like Apriora and Micro1 are making it happen, with the promise of better candidates and a streamlined recruiting process.

We’ve definitely heard that before. And it doesn’t always work out that way.

How Micro1 is Gamifying Interviews with AI

AI in recruitment isn’t new.

We covered AI in hiring a few months ago and how companies use it in the recruitment process, particularly in the early phases.

Recently, two companies have put a new spin on it. Or, a new face to it?

Micro1’s ‘GPT Vetting’ tool gives job seekers the distinct pleasure of speaking with an AI interviewer that presents as a cartoon, instead of interviewing with a human.

On the backend, set up is simple:

• Hiring managers define what they’re looking for in the tool.
• Candidates receive an invite to participate in the interview (and asked to provide self-ratings, in some cases).
• Candidates who decide to move forward are tested on specific skills.
• After the assessment, the AI tool provides a detailed report of the candidate’s performance, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 model.

Founder Ali Ansari says his background in recruitment helped him identify a gap in the market: AI products targeting hiring managers, not job seekers.

But does this product take it too far?

Interviewers can start the interview by choosing which character will interview them, gamifying the process. (In case you were wondering, this is where I would hit the big red “EJECT” button.)

To be fair, Micro1’s tool doesn’t just conduct video interviews, they also oversee technical assessments and use AI to report on the candidate’s proficiencies.

This is particularly attractive to companies hiring technical roles like software engineering, where assessments are usually done live over a one- to two-hour time block.

Having an AI interviewer conduct this work can save interviewing panels hours in the day and weed out unqualified applicants.

The question is, what impact does this have on the job seeker’s experience? Isn’t the whole thing impersonal enough?

Having video interviews with current employees allows you to assess early on how you’d fit in with the team. It also gives you a chance to ask some questions off-the-cuff about the company, the team’s dynamic, and the work.

But there’s always a counter argument to consider: At that stage of the process, is that value worth the cost to the business? Only a company can decide that for itself.

Apriora’s AI Interviewer

Apriora, which just raised $2.8 million in funding, also offers an AI recruiter. But this one skips the gamification.

It’s just the interviewer and their human-sounding AI recruiter.

In their pitch deck, the team at Apriora says, “conversational AI is better than most human interviewers.”

In some aspects, they’re right.

For one, AI can far outpace humans when it comes to the number of interviews it can do. With humans come complicated schedules, breaks, time zones. An AI tool, however, needs no lunch or potty break, and doesn’t get Zoom fatigue.

Plus, for job seekers who already have a full-time job, scheduling an early round interview over the weekend is a huge plus. It gives you the flexibility to explore opportunities without sacrificing PTO hours.

Similar to GPT Vetting, Apriora’s AI will report its findings and recommendations following the interview to the hiring manager, providing a candidate score and a recap of the conversation.

Many job seekers are already using ChatGPT for mock interviews. And if you’ve ever reached a company’s customer service department, you’re used to speaking to (or chatting with) an automated system.

So, would this be so different? Maybe not. But would I like it? Also no.