Why 'faceless bots' are interviewing job hunters

Job seekers lucky enough to land an interview are facing a new hurdle when they discover that they're being interviewed not by an HR manager but a robot.

You might worry that artificial intelligence is "coming for your job, but it might also be "coming for your job interviewer", said The New York Times.

'Paradoxically humanising'

Although some aspects of job searches, such as screening CVs and scheduling meetings, have become "increasingly automated over time", the interview had "long seemed to be the part of the process that most needed a human touch", but now AI is "encroaching upon even that domain".

AI interviewers can be a "godsend" for middle managers, said Fortune, and experts said their use can help save time in first-round calls, allowing human interviewers more time to have "more meaningful conversations" with applicants in the next round.

So, like it or not, this is a "new reality" job seekers "will have to put up with no matter what", said Futurism, because the industry sees it as a "way to free up time for overworked hiring managers", particularly for "high-volume hiring" in areas like customer service.

This might seem a dehumanising development but supporters insist that the opposite is true. "It's really paradoxical", Arsham Ghahramani, chief executive and co-founder of Ribbon AI, a company that produced an AI interviewer, told The New York Times, but "in a lot of ways", this offers a "much more humanising experience" because AI can screen the avalanche of applications and then "ask questions that are really tailored to you".

'Added indignity'

Job hunting is objectively tough right now: a study found that it takes between 100 and 200 applications to receive a job offer these days, and recruitment has become a "labyrinthine, opaque and time-consuming" process, said The Guardian.

AI interviewers are seen as "another hurdle in the intense hunt" for work, said Fortune. Some told the outlet that they're "confused, intrigued, or straight-up dejected" when "robotic, faceless bots" join interview calls. This is an "added indignity" and a "red flag for company culture", they said.

Many said they're "swearing off" interviews conducted in this way, because AI interviewers make them feel so "unappreciated" they'd prefer to miss potential job opportunities, and they reason that the company's culture "can't be great" if human bosses won't interview them.

However, "not all AI interviewers are created equal", said Fortune – there are "monotonous, robotic-voiced bots with pictures of strange feminised avatars", but some produce a "faceless bot" with a "more natural-sounding voice". And, unlike humans, AI interviewers can focus on "relevant signals" while "ignoring irrelevant signals" including those "linked to social class, demographic status, and any information likely to decrease fairness", said Forbes.