what to do when a candidate is using AI during an interview

A reader writes:

We recently had an interview with a candidate who seemed very promising on paper. She had years of relevant experience and good recommendations from previous employers. Our team is remote, so this was a Teams interview and we expect everyone to be on camera.

During the first few minutes, she claimed to have technical difficulties and couldn’t get her camera working. After a few minutes of trying, we decided to move forward with the interview anyway and it very quickly became apparent that the candidate was using AI to answer our questions.

Her answers restated the question, they were filled with buzzwords but had no substance whatsoever, and her speaking cadence was exactly like someone reading from a script. We tried to ask her questions such as, “How did you feel about that?” and “Do you have any questions for us?” but even her answers to those questions were AI.

We went through the motions, sped through the interview in about 15 minutes, and let the recruiting company know afterwards.

Now I’m just wondering if we should have said or done something in the moment. She no longer had a chance at the position as soon as she read off her first answer, so should we have just stopped the interview then? This was a frankly bizarre experience and I didn’t know how to react. Given the prevalence of AI though, I want to be prepared for the next time this happens.

I’m a fan of calling it out right in the moment — not just with AI, but with anything that’s off, the same as if someone were clearly reading off a written script they’d prepared or, I don’t know, seemed to be getting answers through an earpiece.

So when you first started realizing what was happening, one option was to say: “It sounds like you may be looking up answers and reading them. We’re really looking for your thoughts on these questions.”

If she course-corrected at that point, well … it’s still a pretty big strike against her and I’m skeptical someone would be able to come back from it, but it would be interesting to see how the interview went after that.

And if she kept doing it even after you called it out, it would be reasonable to say, “As I said, we’re really looking for your thoughts here, not what you’re looking up, so it doesn’t make sense to continue this interview. We’ll wrap up here, and best of luck of to you.” (And part of the advantage of the first call-out is that it makes it possible for you to do this next.)

The post what to do when a candidate is using AI during an interview appeared first on Ask a Manager.

View the full article