Floria Tan applied for an internship at Chinese food delivery giant Meituan. And her first video interview wasn't with a human.
The interviewer seemed quite real. She was a woman, about Floria’s age. She smiled amiably, but her voice and manner of speaking were unnatural and clearly robot-like. First, the interviewer briefly talked about Meituan and asked a series of formulaic questions, such as “What challenges have you faced in the past?” After each answer, she summarized what was said and asked a follow-up question.
It was an AI-powered avatar. It worked with a list of pre-prepared questions, but it used a large language model that generated natural-sounding answers on the fly. Still, Tan says it felt more like a written exam indonesia phone number resource than a conversation. “I didn’t think of him as a real person,” she says. “I just looked into the camera and spoke.”
Once considered a curiosity, AI interviews are now gaining popularity as startups seek to build businesses based on the amazing capabilities demonstrated by platforms like OpenAI.
The industry is still small, and tools like these are typically used in mass recruitment campaigns that require companies to screen thousands of candidates at once. And as more organizations look for ways to integrate AI into their businesses, virtual interviewing should become commonplace.
In the corporate world, the US is already on fire with the idea of using big data models to further automate the hiring process. According to a 2023 survey, 10% of companies were already using AI in recruiting, and another 30% planned to start doing so in 2024.
Gartner has included natural language chatbots in its list of key innovations for 2023 in the recruitment industry, describing the technology as experimental but promising.
The practice now appears to be gaining popularity in China and India. AI interviews in China have been reported by job applicants at companies including Siemens, China Mobile and Estee Lauder. MoSeeker, a Chinese provider of AI-based recruitment systems, conducts hundreds of thousands of automated interviews each year. Its clients include international companies such as Disney and Mars.
