Recruiter discovers he has been interviewing with an AI avatar posing as the job candidate for a full 30 minutes: 'My gut told me something was off'

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  • "About 10 minutes into the interview, I realized I wasn't talking to a real human."

    We were hiring for a Senior Machine Learning position, and I got on the video call to start a normal conversation with him about his experience, you know, the usual small talk to break the ice.
  • Almost immediately, my gut told me something was off. The person's gaze was too fixed, and his voice didn't quite sync with his lip movements. At first, I thought it might be a bad internet connection and decided to carry on.
  • Then, this "candidate" went on a monologue for about 3 straight minutes. His speech was perfect. Not a single 'umm' or 'uhh.' Just perfectly structured, professional corporate-speak. It was too polished. So I decided to give him a simple test: 'Can you explain a neural network to me in simple terms?'
  • The answer I got sounded like it was copied word-for-word from a Wikipedia page. To confirm my theory, I asked him the exact same question a minute later. I got the same verbatim answer again. I asked a third time, and boom, the same thing again. Then the connection suddenly dropped.
  • A little while later, I got a message from HR. It turns out I had been interviewing an Al d e for 30 minutes. Apparently, the real person joined for the first minute, did the introductions, and then swapped with this bot. And it was modeled after his LinkedIn photo. Insane.
  • So there you have it. We've moved past faking CVs. Now we have Al avatars showing up for video calls. The job market has entered a whole new dimension.
  • A man sits in front of a laptop while interviewing another person on a video call.
  • panam2020 Oh no you didn't.
  • plaidyams On the other end, it's been Al interviewers for months. It's been so many companies who don't have the decency to even use a human being to interview me.
  • I'm not saying this is okay or it's what I do personally. I hate Al. I'm saying you're late to the game of feeling screwed by this. Imagine being unemployed for over a year and you can't even get a human being to interview you. It's beyond dehumanizing. This job market has been here.
  • Smyley12345. We are rapidly circling back to the boomer advice of "put on a tie and show up in person" becoming sane and reasonable. Either that or so much of our workload being suddenly machine replaced that capitalism as we know it breaks down.
  • MediocreClue9957. Am I crazy for kind of wanting Al or w/e to become such a problem similar to your situation that the only way to do anything is in person lol
  • Pink11Amethyst I loved your tactic of asking the same question again!
  • Pogostickio This reminds me of a secure paper recycling company in NW UK I applied for a few years ago.
  • Two middle aged female managers entered the Teams chat. One had their webcam video signal switched off. When the interview started the other manager changed their live video feed to a static picture. Basically they just stopped the live feed but continued the interview.
  • Remember the cold war interrogation situations like a Mission Impossible TV episode where someone shines a bright light in your face so you can be seen but you can't see? That's what I began to experience. What felt like an interrogation.
  • I was not comfortable but I finished the interview without mentioning it. I did not get the job, but based on the sheer lack of respect and empathy from the two interviewers I was no longer interested. If that's how they are going to treat me before I've even started at the company then that's a hard pass.

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