Why 'faceless bots' are interviewing job hunters

Jobseekers who manage to land interviews are increasingly facing a new hurdle: 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", said The New York Times. But now AI is "encroaching upon even that domain".

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

Like it or not, this is a "new reality" that jobseekers "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 such as customer service.

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

'Added indignity'

Yet many jobseekers view AI interviewers 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.