Paperclip Marketing

My experience with HR people is mixed. Job interviews, especially at the start of the process, can seem more about proving that I am personable than about technical abilities and demonstrating how qualified I am for the role. There’s often this whole “I just want to get to know you” phase, that I understand but have never really enjoyed.

So, I went into my recent AI interview with some excitement, because I expected it would be a completely new experience, and it was…

The Good:

• The AI bot asked me questions (likely seed questions or prompts written by the hiring manager). But, follow-up questions were clearly generated to dive deeper into specific elements of the answers I gave,
• These deeper questions were very specific, in a way that I’ve never experienced with human screening interviews.
• By the third question on a topic, I found myself talking about concepts I was surprised to be discussing at this stage.
• Clearly, I was impressed at this point.

The Bad:

• Shortly after the interview ended, I was surprised to feel short-changed. I am more than a robot, it is my humanity and empathy that steer my curiosity, decision-making, and my creativity. Without the “getting to know you” phase, I was left with the feeling that AI missed learning who I really am.
• I answered the questions well. I did all the things you are supposed to include, specifically naming results/impacts/learnings.
• But, there were never more questions after I did this- meaning, whatever I said as my “wrap up” wasn’t the most important thing.
• I feel like a human HR person would have listened to me say “as a result, I quadrupled top-line revenue in 6 months” an had some follow up questions to make sure they believed it.
• But, the AI bot just moved on.

In Conclusion:

I am certain that AI will play a major role in the hiring process. In my first experience “face to face” with a robot I was thoroughly impressed with how much the questions seemed as if they were the words of a smart person in my exact field. But, I believe there is much more to this than just checking the right boxes. So, while I am excited by the rapid progress it has made, I don’t think I’m ready to hand over the HR keys to an AI robot quite yet.