Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers • Hacker News Board

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#411

Post by zhyder » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

AI interviews don't make sense when it's each company making the candidate do separate interviews, coz the company isn't spending any human time (no skin in the game) and can easily abuse candidates' time. I think it'd make sense tho if there were shared interviews, e.g. candidate does just one interview for all backend SWE roles (or all SWE roles that use AWS EC2 and Dynamo, or whatever further specialization)... any number of companies should then be able to access the AI insights of that interview, together with other candidates' interviews for that same role.

Then hiring manager can still bring the 2-5 best-fitting candidates onsite for 1-3 human-led interviews (hopefully fewer than what were needed before). The benefit of the AI interview would be to give way more signal than a resume can, making matching more efficient for both sides.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#412

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

I would be careful about taking too negative of a view of this:

> Still, stretched-thin HR teams say it’s the only way to handle thousands of applicants.

I sometimes wonder if a better solution is to limit the number of jobs someone can apply to; IE, push job seekers to be more selective and screen openings more carefully.

Alternatively, if there was a way for an employer to prioritize applicants that have sent out less applications, it might also help.

---

I also would be weary of people who blame the process. It seems that some people like to find an excuse instead of really reflecting on their situation.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#413

Post by gwbas1c » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

sumtechguy wrote: post #334

bobro wrote: post #301

> It does 100 interviews, and it’s going to hand back the best 10 to the hiring manager, and then the human takes over,” he says. Yikes. One thing that's incredibly important about reaching the interview-stage of a job application has been that there is a parity, or even an imbalance favoring the candidate, in human time usage. The company's people (often multiple people at once) have to spend time with the candidate…

> Admitting right off the bat that you're going to waste the time of 90% of your applicants without these stakes is just wildly disrespectful. They were already doing this. Now it is just more automated. You didnt have the right keywords. 2pts into the basket. Too long (meaning old/bad team fit), gone. You worked for a company that might have some sort of backend NDA, gone. Wrong school, gone. Wrong whatever, gone. Y…

> They get 300 resumes. 299 of them need to go away. It has been like this forever.

I doubt that. The number of applicants per job has gone up over the past few decades. Likewise, the number of jobs that people apply to has gone up too.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#414

Post by ben_w » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

imglorp wrote: post #363

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sickle and hammer looking real interesting now.

We (the US) had a very successful, carefully designed system that seems to have been an unstable configuration. It was neither hammer and sickle nor single megacorporation: it was balanced on a hill between both. The combination of (1) checks and balances, (2) separation of money, religion, corporation, and government, and (3) regulation in moderation worked pretty well for around 200 years. Monopolies and labor abus…

200 years? And went wrong in 1970? The USA absolutely wasn't a good system in 1770, and has sucked for a lot of people for large fraction of those years.

Who could vote was all over the place for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_t...

Civil War was about as far from "balanced" as you can get, and the problems weren't even on the axis of "hammer and sickle" vs "single megacorporation".

The New Deal was a radical change in the economic organisation of the USA, basically ended Laissez-faire. Before that point, there was enough social unrest that, for the people at the time, I think it wouldn't have seemed at all implausible the USA would have faced an actual communist revolution similar to the one in Russia, because of events such as e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#415

Post by downrightmike » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 5:01 PM UTC

zhyder wrote: post #411

AI interviews don't make sense when it's each company making the candidate do separate interviews, coz the company isn't spending any human time (no skin in the game) and can easily abuse candidates' time. I think it'd make sense tho if there were shared interviews, e.g. candidate does just one interview for all backend SWE roles (or all SWE roles that use AWS EC2 and Dynamo, or whatever further specialization)... an…

realistically, they are going to have a much higher percentage of north korean IT workers, because they will spend the time to game the AI interview to get hired

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#416

Post by smrtinsert » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 5:02 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #89

I did one of these once. Once . I felt so bad afterwards that I swore them off forever. It's not like the 'interview' was terrible or anything. I knew it was AI from the start. It was just that when I got done with it, I realized that I had talked at a computer for ~45 minutes. And, yet again, I was going to be ghosted by the company (I was), and that I was never going to get those 45 minutes back. That was time I co…

If they don't have time to meet you, they won't give a damn about you during your employment there. This instinct is 100% in my opinion. Meeting you should be one of the most crucial human in the loop events.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#417

Post by mark_l_watson » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

I am retired now, but the AI interviewers thing still pisses me off. For most of my career, I would be the first face both intern and employment applicants would see. I took pleasure in getting them excited about our company and doing a light pre-screen. Interviewing is tough abd I liked to treat applicants as human beings, respectfully even if it was obvious they weren’t a good fit (which I would let know instantly.)

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#418

Post by buu700 » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

ndiddy wrote: post #204

jstummbillig wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: AI in its current form is democratizing and allowing exactly the not rich to be relatively more dangerous. So yeah, the rich might use it to get richer. But so can everyone* else.

If the AI industry achieves its short-term goals, instead of paying a human $100,000/year to do some desk job, companies will pay Microsoft/Google/OpenAI/whoever $20,000/year in API tokens and keep the extra money for themselves. To me, this doesn't seem like a way to reduce wealth inequality, it seems like a way to accelerate it. Sure, there's nothing inherent to AI that makes it cause wealth inequality. However, li…

Big companies may save money on salaries, which would have first-order effects on the job market — but you could say the same about cloud computing, or computers, or mechanical reapers. Now what about all the companies that previously couldn't afford to exist because someone with a good idea didn't have six+ figures of discretionary income to throw at it?

If AI proves useful enough to effect sustained savings for Big Tech to the degree that you're suggesting, then the flip side of that coin is that it's effectively ZIRP on steroids for startups. The successful businesses which come out of that will ultimately have human labor needs of their own. Job market continues to trend upwards, only with lower concentration and greater overall resulting economic value in the form of more products and services.

Or AI/robotics/etc. gets so good that eventually no one needs human labor, and every company trends toward just being a CEO + board + AI. In that world, unless we expect everyone and their grandma to become an entrepreneur, something to the effect of a UBI would be necessary to keep the world turning without major societal upheaval.

On the other hand, AI skeptics can plan to sit back and eat popcorn while they watch the bigcos suffer the consequences of their mistakes and yield ground to startups. Either way, AI will have been a democratizing force.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#419

Post by queenkjuul » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

Yeah last year i was talking to a recruiter about a job i was fairly excited about until they told me i had to take an AI "interview," and they warned me not to use two monitors because any time i wasn't looking right at the camera the AI would think i was cheating.

You want to hire a senior software engineer and step one is an "interview" with an app that can't tell the difference between glancing away from a camera and reading from a script?

Clearly not somewhere i want to work.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#420

Post by ben_w » Mon, Aug 04, 2025, 5:05 PM UTC

AyyWS wrote: post #364

QuercusMax wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what's so incredibly stupid about the tariffs, immigration crackdowns, etc. Life is not a zero-sum game, and treating it like it is just makes it worse for everyone - unless you're the sort of person who really gets off on having other suffer worse than you.

What society or culture survived by taking the high road? I'm reminded of Princess Leia's quote: No! Alderaan is peaceful, we have no weapons.

The high (moral) road doesn't preclude self-defence, it precludes sadism and zero-sum thinking.