Christopher, a government contractor, has applied to roughly 700 jobs over the past six months without success. Five of these applications went through Riley, an AI recruiter for Everforth Apex Systems. The first time Riley reached out, Christopher was excited, but no human recruiter followed up. Riley never contacted him again, prompting Christopher to use ChatGPT to mimic his own voice in subsequent interviews. The AI recruiter, Riley, never reached out to a human, leading Christopher to question the effectiveness of the process. Christopher eventually created a fake candidate, Don Dickner, with a resume tailored to an open job posting, which resulted in Riley contacting him again. The virtual recruiter spoke with ChatGPT for 23 minutes, discussing topics like sustainable operational improvement and customer experience under volume pressure. Riley promised to review the application and contact a recruiter if the candidate met the qualifications. Christopher never heard from Riley again.
Christopher’s experiment highlighted the limitations of AI in the hiring process. While AI has become common in job applications, interviews remain a challenge for voice AI, which struggles with accents and interruptions. According to Ophir Samson, head of voice AI at Greenhouse, this is a 'very, very difficult engineering problem.' Despite these challenges, AI interviews are increasingly common, with 63 percent of job seekers reporting they’ve encountered one. AI recruitment startups now offer tools to detect overly scripted responses, mirroring Christopher’s experiment.
Christopher’s experience reflects a growing trend of applicants using AI to navigate the hiring process. Mark Monaghan, vice president of organizational development at IQor, acknowledges that bot-on-bot interviews are the 'next logical stage' but notes that using AI to respond to AI is justified. Monaghan believes that if a company sends a bot, applicants should be allowed to respond with one as well. Christopher’s final attempt with a fake candidate, Don Dickner, resulted in Riley contacting him, but no further action was taken.
Source: wired
