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Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

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21–30 of 735 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way. We do an intro call, an engineering chat (exactly as you describe), a coding challenge and 2 team chat sessions in person. At the end of that, we usually have a good feeling about how sharp the candidate is, of they like to learn and discover new things, what their work ethic is. It's not bullet proof, but it removes a lot of noise from the signal. The coding challenge is supposed to be solved with A…

> The coding challenge is supposed to be solved with AI. We can no longer afford not to use LLMs for engineering, as it's that much of a productivity boost when used right, so candidates should show how they use LLMs. They need to be able to explain the code of course, and answer questions about it, but for us it's a negative mark of a candidate proclaims that they don't use LLMs. Do you state this upfront or is it s…

I would say as long as it is stated you can complete the coding exercise using any tool available it is fine. I do agree, no task should be a trick.

I am personally of the view you should be able to use search engines, AI, anything you want, as the task should be representative of doing the task in person. The key focus has to be the programmer's knowledge and why they did what they did.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#22
post #5

As someone currently job searching it hasn’t changed much, besides companies adding DO NOT USE AI warnings before every section. Even Anthropic forces you to write a little “why do you want to work here DO NOT USE AI” paragraph. The irony.

They will very happily use AI to evaluate your profile, though :)

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#23

Changed enormously. Both resumes and interviews are effectively useless now. If our AI agents can't find a portfolio of original work nearly exactly what we want to hire you for then you aren't ever going to hear from us. If you are one of the 1 in 4000 applications who gets an interview then you're already 70% likely to get an offer and the interview is mostly a formality.

Does that mean you will not hire anyone without a public portfolio?

I thought that meant what you typically write in the "Experience" section. GP, am I wrong?

Is everyone writing a "Projects" section by rewording what they wrote in "Experience"?! For me, "Projects" should strictly be personal projects. If not, maybe that's what I'm missing.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#24

Part of my resume review process is trying to decide if I can trust the person. If their resume seems too AI-generated, I feel less like I can trust that candidate and typically reject the candidate. Once you get to the interview process, it's very clear if someone thinks they can use AI to help with the interview process. I'm not going to sit here while you type my question into OpenAI and try to BS a meaningful res…

Agreed. This is why - while I won't ding an applicant for not having a public Github, I'm always happy when they do because usually they'll have some passion projects on there that we can discuss.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#25
I have a colleague that uses AI to comment on RFCs. It is so clearly machine generated, that I wonder if I am the only one to see it. He is a good colleague though, but as he is a bit junior, it is still not clear to me if AI is helping him to improve faster or if it is hindering his deep learning of stuff.

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are much more sophisticated methods than that now with AI, like speech to text to LLM. It's getting increasingly harder to detect interviewees cheating.

I think GP's point is that this says as much about the interview design and interviewer skill as it does about the candidate's tools. If you do a rote interview that's easy to game with AI, it will certainly be harder to detect them cheating. If you have an effective and well designed open ended interview that's more collaborative, you get a lot more signal to filter the wheat from the chaff.

> If you have an effective and well designed open ended interview that's more collaborative, you get a lot more signal to filter the wheat from the chaff.

I understood their point but my point is a direct opposition to theirs, that at some point with AI advances this will essentially become impossible. You can make it as open ended as you want but if AI continues to improve, the human interviewee can simply act as a ventriloquist dummy for the AI and get the job. Stated another way, what kind of "effective and well designed open ended interview" can you make that would not succumb to this problem?

Re: Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

#30

Changed enormously. Both resumes and interviews are effectively useless now. If our AI agents can't find a portfolio of original work nearly exactly what we want to hire you for then you aren't ever going to hear from us. If you are one of the 1 in 4000 applications who gets an interview then you're already 70% likely to get an offer and the interview is mostly a formality.

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