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

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

#51
post #47

My startup got acquired last year so I haven't interviewed anyone in a while, but my technical interview has always been: - share your screen - download/open the coding challenge - you can use any website, Stack Overflow, whatever, to answer my questions as long as it's on the screenshare My goal is to determine if the candidate can be technically productive, so I allow any programming language, IDE, autocompleter, e…

I'd be fine with the GPT side of things, as long as I could somehow inject poor answers, and see if the interviewee notices and corrects.

That's actually a horribly awesome idea.

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

#52
The traditional tech interview was always designed to optimize for reliably finding someone who was willing to do what they were told even if it feels like busywork. As a rule someone who has the time and the motivation to brush up on an essentially useless skill in order to pass your job interview will likely fit nicely as a cog in your machine.

AI doesn't just change the interviewing game by making it easy to cheat on these interviews, it should be changing your hiring strategy altogether. If you're still thinking in terms of optimizing for cogs, you're missing the boat—unless you're hiring for a very short term gig what you need now is someone with high creative potential and great teamwork skills.

And as far as I know there is no reliable template interview for recognizing someone who's good at thinking outside the box and who understands people. You just have to talk to them: talk about their past projects, their past teams, how they learn, how they collaborate. And then you have to get good at understanding what kinds of answers you need for the specific role you're trying to fill, which will likely be different from role to role.

The days of the interchangeable cog are over, and with them easy answers for interviewing.

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

#54
I don't understand why an interviewer would ban the use of AI if they are allowed to use AI in the role.

The interview is a chance to see how a candidate performs in a work like environment. Let them use the tools they will use on the job and see how well they can perform.

Even for verbal interviews, if they are using ChatGPT on the side and can manage the conversation satisfactorily then more power to them.

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

#55
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Projects are personal projects, or at least projects in which you did a distinguishable effort.

They don't have to be public to the whole world, you can have links that are only in your resume.

But if they're on GitHub, they have to be public, since there aren't unlisted repositories.

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

#56
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is called fraud, and it is a crime. People don't really call the police, nor sue over this. But they can, and have in the past. If it gets bad, look for people starting to seek legal recourse. People aren't developers with 5 years experience, if all they can do is copy and paste. Anyone fraudulently claiming so is a scam artist, a liar, and deserves jail time. So you create an interview process that can only be…

Can you cite case law around where some one misrepresented their capabilities in a job interview and were criminally prosecuted? Like what criminal statute specifically was charged? You won’t find it, because at worst this would fall under a contract dispute and hence civil law. Screeching “fraud is a crime” hysterically serves no one.

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

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> at some point with AI advances this will essentially become impossible.

In-person interviews, second round comes with a plane ticket. This used to be the norm.

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

#58
post #40

I don’t know the answer, but I’d like to share that I asked a simple question about scheduling a phone interview to learn more about a candidate. The candidate’s first response? “Memory updated”. That led to some laughs internally and then a clear rejection email.

My first read of this was they made a joke (not wise when scheduling for interviews sure but maybe funny) by intentionally responding that way. This is because my brain couldn't fathom what is likely the reality here -- that someone was just pumping your email thru AI and pumping the response back unedited and unsanitized, and so the first thing you got back was just the first "part" of the AI response. ...Christ.

Yeah I don't know about this specific situation, but as someone who is on the job market, is a good developer, but can come off as a little odd sometimes, I often wonder how often I roll a natural 1 on my Cha check and get perceived as an AI imposter.

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

#59
Buddy of mine recently got a position with the help of custom built model that was listening on the call and printed answers on another screen. The arms race is here and frankly, given that a lot of people are already using it at work, there is no way to stop it short of minute upon minute supervision and even biggest micromanagers won't be able to deal with it.

Honestly, if I could trust that companies won't try to evaluate my conversation through 20 different ridiculous filters, I would probably argue that my buddy is out of line.. As it stands, however, he is merely leveling out the playing field. But, just life with WFH, management class does not like that imposition one bit.

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

#60

My startup got acquired last year so I haven't interviewed anyone in a while, but my technical interview has always been: - share your screen - download/open the coding challenge - you can use any website, Stack Overflow, whatever, to answer my questions as long as it's on the screenshare My goal is to determine if the candidate can be technically productive, so I allow any programming language, IDE, autocompleter, e…

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