SAN FRANCISCO – When Ms Jennifer Dunn, 54, landed an interview in June through a recruiting firm for a vice-president of marketing job, she looked forward to talking to someone about the role and learning more about the potential employer.

Instead, a virtual artificial intelligence (AI) recruiter named Alex sent her a text message to schedule the interview. And when Ms Dunn got on the phone at the appointed time for the meeting, Alex was waiting to talk to her.

“Are you a human?” she asked.

“No, I’m not a human,” Alex replied. “But I’m here to make the interview process smoother.”

For the next 20 minutes, Ms Dunn answered Alex’s questions about her qualifications – though Alex could not answer most of her questions about the job. Even though Alex had a friendly tone, the conversation “felt hollow”, she said. In the end, she hung up before finishing the interview.

You might have thought AI was coming for your job. But first it is coming for your job interviewer.

Jobseekers across the United States are starting to encounter faceless voices and avatars backed by AI in their interviews. These autonomous interviewers are part of a wave of “agentic AI”, where AI agents are directed to act on their own to generate real-time conversations and build on responses.

Some aspects of job searches – such as screening resumes and scheduling meetings – have become increasingly automated over time, but the interview had long seemed to be the part of the process that most needed a human touch. Now AI is encroaching upon even that domain, making the often frustrating and ego-busting task of finding a job even more impersonal.

Talking to AI interviewers has “felt very dehumanising”, said Charles Whitley, 22, a recent computer science and mathematics graduate from Santa Clara University who has had two such conversations in the past seven months.

In one interview, the AI voice tried to seem more human by adding “ums” and “uhs”. It came across as “some horror-movie-type stuff”, Mr Whitley said.

Others said they liked talking to AI interviewers. Mr James Gu, 21, a college student majoring in business, spoke to a robot interviewer for a summer analyst position through Propel Impact, a nonprofit in Vancouver, British Columbia, that teaches young people about financial investing. Being drilled with questions by someone stresses him out, he said, so part of him was relieved not to speak with a person.

Autonomous AI interviewers started taking off in 2024, partly driven by tech start-ups like Ribbon AI, Talently and Apriora, which have developed robot interviewers to help employers talk to more candidates and reduce the load on human recruiters – especially as AI tools have enabled jobseekers to generate resumes and cover letters and apply to tons of openings with a few clicks.

AI can personalise a job candidate’s interview, said Mr Arsham Ghahramani, chief executive and a co-founder of Ribbon AI. His company’s AI interviewer, which has a customisable voice and appears on a video call as moving audio waves, asks questions specific to the role to be filled and builds on information provided by the jobseeker, he said.

Ms Jennifer Dunn, a marketing professional, at her home in San Antonio, Texas, on July 2. Ms Dunn said she had a job interview with a virtual artificial intelligence recruiter.

PHOTO: ARIANA GOMEZ/NYTIMES

“It’s really paradoxical, but in a lot of ways, this is a much more humanising experience because we’re asking questions that are really tailored to you,” Mr Ghahramani said.

Propel Impact began using Ribbon AI’s interviewer in January. That allowed it to screen 500 applicants for a fellowship programme it offers, far more than the 150 applicants who were interviewed by people in 2024, said Propel Impact executive director Cheralyn Chok.

“There’s no way we would have been able to successfully recruit and set up offers to 300 people to join our programme,” she added.

Ms Chok said the AI interviews also saved applicants the hassle of doing multiple interviews with outside financial firms to determine their fellowship placements. Instead, Propel Impact sent the recorded AI interviews to those companies.

Still, humans cannot ultimately be taken out of the hiring process, said Ms Sam DeMase, a career expert at ZipRecruiter. People still need to make the hiring decisions, she said, because AI may contain bias and cannot be trusted to fully evaluate a candidate’s experience, skills and fitness for a job.

At the same time, more people should expect AI-run interviews, Ms DeMase said. “Organisations are trying to become more efficient and trying to scale faster, and as a result, they’re looking to AI,” she added.

Ms Dunn has had about nine job interviews over the past two months. Only one was with an AI like Alex, she said, for which she was “grateful”. Given the choice, she never wants to interview with AI again.

“It isn’t something that feels real to me,” she said. NYTIMES

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