{"id":115454,"date":"2025-08-03T11:26:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T11:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/115454\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T11:26:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T11:26:15","slug":"ai-is-doing-job-interviews-now-but-candidates-say-theyd-rather-risk-staying-unemployed-than-talk-to-another-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/115454\/","title":{"rendered":"AI is doing job interviews now\u2014but candidates say they’d rather risk staying unemployed than talk to another robot"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next time you get buttoned-up and sit down for a long-awaited job interview, you might not find a human on the other end of the call. Instead, job-hunters are now joining Zoom<\/a> meetings only to be greeted by<\/a> AI interviewers. Candidates tell Fortune they\u2019re either confused, intrigued, or straight-up dejected when the robotic, faceless bots join the calls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking for a job right now is so demoralizing and soul-sucking, that to submit yourself to that added indignity is just a step too far,\u201d Debra Borchardt, a seasoned writer and editor who has been on the job-hunt for three months, tells Fortune. \u201cWithin minutes, I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t like this. This is awful.\u2019 It started out normal\u2026Then it went into the actual process of the interview, and that\u2019s when it got a little weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI interviewers are only the newest change to the<\/a> hiring process that has been upended<\/a> by the advanced technology. With HR teams dwindling and hiring managers tasked to review thousands of<\/a> applicants for a single role, they\u2019re optimizing their<\/a> jobs by using AI to<\/a> filter top applicants, schedule candidate interviews, and automate correspondence about next steps in the process. AI interviewers may be a god-send for middle-managers, but job-seekers see them as only another hurdle in the intense hunt for<\/a> work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The experience for some job-hunters has been so poor that they\u2019re swearing off interviews conducted by AI altogether. Candidates tell Fortune that AI interviewers make them feel unappreciated to the point where they\u2019d rather skip out on potential job opportunities, reasoning the company\u2019s culture can\u2019t be great if human bosses won\u2019t make the time to interview them. But HR experts argue the opposite; since AI interviewers can help hiring managers save time in first-round calls, the humans have more time to have more meaningful conversations with applicants down the line.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Job-seekers and HR are starkly divided on how they feel about the tech, but one thing is fact\u2014AI interviewers aren\u2019t going anywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is, if you want a job, you\u2019re gonna go through this thing,\u201d Adam Jackson, CEO and founder of Braintrust, a company that distributes AI interviewers, tells Fortune. \u201cIf there were a large portion of the job-seeking community that were wholesale rejecting this, our clients wouldn\u2019t find the tool useful\u2026 This thing would be chronically underperforming for our clients. And we\u2019re just not seeing that\u2014we\u2019re seeing the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers\u00a0<\/p>\n

Social media has been exploding with<\/a> job-seekers detailing their AI interviewer experiences<\/a>: describing bots hallucinating and repeating questions<\/a> on end, calling the robotic conversations awkward<\/a>, or saying it\u2019s less nerve-wracking than talking to a human. Despite how much hiring managers love AI interviewers, job-seekers aren\u2019t sold on the idea just yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Allen Rausch, a 56-year-old technical writer who has worked at Amazon<\/a> and Electronic Arts<\/a>, has been on the job hunt for two months since getting laid off from his previous role at InvestCloud. In looking for new opportunities, he was \u201cstartled\u201d to run into AI interviewers for the first time\u2014let alone on three occasions for separate jobs. All of the meetings would last up to 25 minutes, and featured woman-like cartoons with female voices. It asked basic career questions, running through his resume and details about the job opening, but couldn\u2019t answer any of his questions on the company or culture. <\/p>\n

Rausch says he\u2019s only open to doing more AI interviews if they don\u2019t test his writing skills, and if human connection is guaranteed at some point later in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the percentage of responses that I\u2019m getting to just basic applications, I think a lot of AI interviews are wasting my time,\u201d he tells Fortune. \u201cI would probably want some sort of a guarantee that, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re doing this just to gather initial information, and we are going to interview you with a human being [later].\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

While Rausch withstood multiple AI interviews, Borchardt couldn\u2019t even sit through a single one. The 64-year-old editorial professional says things went downhill when the robotic interviewer simply ran through her resume, asking her to repeat all of her work experiences at each company listed. The call was impersonal, irritating, and to Borchardt, quite lazy. She ended the interview in less than 10 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter about the third question, I was like, \u2018I\u2019m done.\u2019 I just clicked exit,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not going to sit here for 30 minutes and talk to a machine\u2026 I don\u2019t want to work for a company if the HR person can\u2019t even spend the time to talk to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Cobb, a professional now working at U.K. energy company Murphy Group, also encountered an AI interviewer several months ago searching for a new role. While he\u2019s sympathetic towards how many applications HR has to sift through, he finds AI interviewers to be \u201cweird\u201d and ultimately ineffective in fully assessing human applicants. The experience put a bad taste in his mouth, to the point where Cobb won\u2019t pursue any AI-proctored interviews in the foreseeable future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I know from looking at company reviews or the hiring process that I will be using AI interviewing, I will just not waste my time, because I feel like it\u2019s a cost-saving exercise more than anything,\u201d Cobb tells Fortune. \u201cIt makes me feel like they don\u2019t value my learning and development. It makes me question the culture of the company\u2014are they going to cut jobs in the future because they\u2019ve learned robots can already recruit people? What else will they outsource that to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

AI interviewers are a god-send for squeezed hiring managers\u00a0<\/p>\n

While many job-seekers are backing away from taking AI interviews, hiring managers are accepting the technology with open arms. A large part of it comes from necessity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re becoming more common in early-stage screening because they can streamline high-volume hiring,\u201d Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor at Indeed, tells Fortune. \u201cYou\u2019re seeing them all over. But for high-volume hiring like customer service or retail or entry-level tech roles, we\u2019re just seeing this more and more\u2026 It\u2019s doing that first-stage work that a lot of employers need in order to be more efficient and save time.\u201d<\/p>\n

It should be noted that not all AI interviewers are created equal\u2014there\u2019s a wide range of AI interviewers entering the market. Job-seekers who spoke with Fortune described monotonous, robotic-voiced bots with pictures of strange feminized avatars. But some AI interviewers, like the one created by Braintrust, distribute a faceless bot with a more natural sounding voice. Its CEO says applicants using the tech are overall happy with their experience\u2014and its hiring manager clientele are enthusiastic, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Jackson admits AI interviewers still have their limitations, despite how revolutionary they are for HR teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does 100 interviews, and it\u2019s going to hand back the best 10 to the hiring manager, and then the human takes over,\u201d he says. \u201cAI is good at objective skill assessment\u2014I would say even better than humans. But [when it comes to] cultural fit, I wouldn\u2019t even try to have AI do that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n