Cheating with AI: US companies return to face-to-face interviews

Due to the increasing use of AI technology in the recruitment process, Cisco, Google and other US companies are once again demanding more frequent face-to-face interviews. The Wall Street Journal reports this, quoting the head of a recruiting company from the IT sector as estimating that one in three corporate clients are now once again requesting such personal interviews. Last year, only around 5 percent of customers did so. The background to this is the fear that job seekers are cheating in the application process with the help of AI. The extensive switch to video interviews has made this much easier.

At least one personal interview with Google

According to the report, interviews for jobs in software engineering and programming are the biggest problems. These are often advertised as home office positions, especially by smaller companies. This is one reason why the application process is also largely virtual. It is therefore effortless to cheat here and not show your own skills, but delegate the solution of test tasks to an AI. Back in June, Google CEO Sundar Pichai explained that the search engine company ensures that there is at least one face-to-face interview "just to make sure the basics are there".

The US newspaper describes the return to face-to-face interviews as the latest twist in a real battle in which both sides are relying on AI. In the face of a flood of applications, companies are relying on AI to pre-sort the requests. Applicants, in turn, would use AI technology to apply for as many jobs as possible. The situation was also exploited by North Korea, with the regime smuggling masses of IT specialists into Western companies under false identities. Their job was not only to earn money for North Korea, but also to steal company secrets or even cryptocurrency.

(mho)