WWhen Ty passed a phone interview with a financial/banking company last month, they thought it would be nothing more than a quick chat with a recruiter. When Ty answers the phone, he assumes the recruiter named Jamie is a human. But things have become robotic.
“The voice sounded like Siri,” said Tai, 29, who lives in the D.C. metropolitan area. “It was creepy.”
Ty realized they weren’t talking to a living, breathing human being. Their interviewer was an AI system and had a tendency to be quite rude. Jamie asked Ty all the right questions – what is your management style? Are you suitable for this role? – But she wouldn’t let Ty answer completely.
“After disconnecting me, the AI responds, “Great!” Sounds good! perfection! ‘Move on to the next question,’ Tai said. “After the third or fourth question, the AI paused for a moment and said the interview was complete and someone from the team would contact me later.” (Ty said his current employer We asked that our last names not be used because we do not know that they are looking for work.)
According to a Resume Builder study released last summer, by 2024, four in 10 companies plan to use AI to “converse” with candidates during interviews. Of these companies, 15% said hiring decisions are made without any human input.
As Laura Michelle Davis wrote in CNET, “Today, it’s not uncommon for applicants to be rejected by robots in human resources departments before they even connect with a real human.” To discourage us, many people wonder if generative AI, which uses datasets to create text, video, audio, images, and even robot recruiters, will take our jobs completely. I’m worried that it won’t happen.But can AI help us? search Any new gigs in the meantime?
the human element is lost
If you ask employers who are using AI in the hiring process about their choices, you’ll hear a common sentiment. These systems are used to accomplish routine tasks from a recruiter’s daily schedule. AI can help narrow down the top 1,000 applicants, but once you get to the top 10, it becomes an entirely human process.
In 2019, ZipRecruiter noted that AI systems could streamline tedious tasks like writing job descriptions and scanning resumes, giving recruiters “back up time to spend on more strategic tasks.” did. (Imagine being in the shoes of someone applying to dozens of jobs a day.) A 2020 study sponsored by AI interviewing system Sapia.ai found that 55% of companies We found that companies are increasing their investment in automated recruitment strategies. .
“I’m not using AI to write job descriptions, but I know a lot of employers who are,” said Julia Pollack, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. Pollack also said managers could ask her AI program to provide a list of reasons why shortlisted candidates should or shouldn’t be hired. “Employers use it as a coach, guide and friend to discuss ideas,” she added.
But as applicants like Ty are now finding out, the use of AI by employers goes beyond just a sounding board role.
Experts advise applicants to act like they’re talking to a human during AI-driven interviews, but that’s easier said than done. Adele Walton, a 24-year-old journalist and content creator from Brighton, UK, was recently interviewed by an AI that felt very unnatural. “I was expecting a person or a panel,” she said. She said, “When I clicked on the call, I was surprised to enter my private chat room with her.”
A question flashed on a screen that also showed her own face. Mr. Walton had 60 seconds to respond. “I was watching how my face moved and how it looked on screen,” she said. “As someone who suffers from body dysmorphic disorder, I found my face an unnecessary distraction during the interview process. I know I could have done better if I had someone else.”
Walton was not interviewed again. “In a face-to-face meeting, you can receive more social messages from the other person,” she said. “In this case, I was just talking to myself, or the AI system, and had no way of gauging how well I was doing. I couldn’t read anyone’s face or body language and couldn’t say ‘yes.’ I couldn’t even see him nodding off. The human reassurance that comes with a physical interview is completely lost when companies outsource interviews to AI. ”
Applicants are abusing the system
If employers are using AI to ease the hiring process, shouldn’t applicants be using it too? That’s what Fanta-Marie Touré thinks. Her 24-year-old girlfriend, who lives in Atlanta and works in the cybersecurity field, used AI tools to customize her resume, write her cover letter, and even auto-apply to her jobs. She does this through a program called Massive.
“It’s very expensive to hire someone to help you with your resume,” Touré says. “A lot of people charge $150 an hour for resume reviews. That’s a lot of money, so why not use a tool that costs about $30 a month?”
Touré argues that it is still important to “personalize” application materials, for example by adding relevant anecdotes. “Otherwise, everyone using AI will get the same results,” she said. “We need to adjust.”
What appears to be a hack exploiting the AI hiring process can also hit social media. A few years ago, Touré heard a trick. A TikTok creator advised applicants to copy and paste a job description onto their resume, then change the font of the description to a smaller size to match the resume’s white background. Humans can’t see it, but the AI scans it, recognizes the text as it is, and sends it to the front of the pack. Or so the theory worked.
“I haven’t had a hit since then,” Touré said. “That was a few years ago, but I think the systems are smarter now.”
It’s a familiar move to Mr. Pollack, the economist at ZipRecruiter. “That tactic is so widely used that most field algorithms are aware that it will be penalized. Don’t be too smart with your resume; if it’s too close, it will be weeded out. ”
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Employers these days are increasingly skeptical of AI-generated resumes and cover letters, Pollack said. “We’re hearing that employers are currently discounting a lot of the information they receive in writing and want to have face-to-face conversations with candidates as soon as possible so they can properly vet them,” she said. To tell. she explained.
Applicants can also ask AI programs for assistance with video interviews conducted by humans or robots. Michael G is the founder of Final Round AI, an “interview copilot” who listens to recruiters’ questions and prompts personalized questions. Respond in real-time based on the resume and cover letter uploaded by the interviewee. (Michael asked that his last name not be used because Final Round AI is still in “stealth mode,” a state of temporary secrecy that startups use to stifle competition.)
“Users can skim the AI’s responses and create their own responses to questions,” Michael says. “You don’t have to read the text straight from the screen. That makes sense. Celebrities and TV hosts look at teleprompters all the time. Why can’t ordinary people use teleprompters?”
Michael says Final Round AI has more than 500,000 users, some of whom have sent him job offers because of the service. (Hard to fact-check – Final Round AI has fewer than 2,000 followers across his social platforms.) Michael says that about 40% of his users are from the tech industry, and 30% are from banking or finance. He added that he works in the field. Usage fees range from $0 to $100 per month.Michael says everything personal Although the data is deleted at the end of the call, AI systems generally learn from the data they are fed over time.
Is it cheating? “I think because of AI, there are new boundaries that make it difficult to define whether someone is cheating or not,” Michael said, sounding a bit scared. “And if I were an employer, I would prefer candidates who know how to use AI, because it brings value and productivity gains to the company.”
Michael said he used Final Round AI at key points when answering questions for this interview. Yes, I understand.
Who is being hit hardest by AI adoption?
AI systems encode bias. You don’t have to be an imaginative person to think about how that affects job seekers. Amazon has reportedly scrapped an internal hiring algorithm trained on applicant-submitted data that favored men and penalized resumes that included the word “female.” ”. Will automated hiring processes reject people who aren’t white, male, or able-bodied?
“The current wave of AI uses algorithms that are probabilistic models, meaning they’re just making likely predictions based on patterns in past data,” said Community Organizing for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. said Rory Mill, Associate Director. “The problem is that historical data contains patterns that emerge from systematic biases.”
Racial bias exists when humans perform recruitment. Research shows that recruiters are more likely to ignore names that identify as black when considering resumes. To avoid such bias, Pollack said ZipRecruiter removes “any kind of identifying information,” such as names and zip codes, from resumes before running them through its AI system. But if a resume still includes educational information, an AI system could theoretically learn to prioritize applicants who attended Ivy League schools. Pollack defended the practice of retaining education because “employers want to know:” [that]”.
Upper echelons in the corporate world rarely apply for jobs. At a certain salary level, network instead. Mir believes early-stage or low-level applicants will “bear the brunt” of her AI hiring efforts. “The AI does not choose the CEO, it could screen applicants for management positions, and it could have the final say on hiring gig workers,” they said. “Automated employment will have a huge impact on marginalized populations who rely on more precarious jobs.”
Case in point: 404 Media recently reported on a company called Paradox.ai, which is used by the companies behind FedEx, McDonald’s, and Olive Garden. The company was recruiting people for customer and food service jobs with a “long and bizarre personality quiz.” “Blue Humanoid Alien”. The goal was to find out how candidates “rank in terms of ‘agreeableness’ and ’emotional stability.’
After speaking with an AI recruiter, Tai didn’t hear back from anyone at the company. I think they won’t. They are not surprised that the interview process has become more artificial.
“I was directly asked by a human recruiter in an interview what I thought about using apps like ChatGPT for creative work and whether I would be comfortable doing it in my job. ” they said. “So I think it was only a matter of time before I was interviewed directly by a robot.”