More than 100,000 people have passed MicroOne’s screening process hoping to join the marketplace of engineers, and a number of tech companies, including DoNotPay (whose CEO is also an investor in MicroOne), are among the companies that have used the company’s system to screen engineers or hire from the marketplace. Ansari said companies use MicroOne to screen as many as 30,000 candidates a month.
As asynchronous video interviews have become commonplace, companies have turned to pre-recorded responses in automated systems to handle screening interviews. This work has become more tedious as a series of layoffs over the past two years has reduced the number of available positions and recruiters posting jobs on sites like LinkedIn can receive hundreds or thousands of applicants. Generative AI tools have also made it easier for job seekers to apply in bulk, resulting in more applications for recruiters and hiring managers to review, some of which may have little to do with the job. But while AI is also becoming more commonplace on the hiring side, some recruiters are wary of biases that AI may have and avoid using the tools to make decisions.
Of course, AI tools also have biases, Ansari said. “Of course, humans have biases too. The goal of an AI system is to have less bias than humans.” With AI, micro1’s AI interviewers don’t pass or fail candidates. Instead, they categorize candidates into categories such as novices, intermediate and advanced. It’s then up to the hiring manager or recruiter to decide if the candidate is a good fit for the job, Ansari said. They can also listen to audio recordings of the answers rather than relying solely on the AI interviewer’s interpretation.
Zahira Jaizer, an associate professor at the University of Sussex Business School, says there’s still a lot we don’t know about the impact of AI and asynchronous interviews, including how the technology will affect candidates. Recording your own voice can be awkward, and you won’t be able to pick up on human cues from an AI interviewer. If you’ve spent your career being told to be natural and do your best in an already nerve-wracking human job interview process, you might not know how to present your best self to a chatbot, especially when faced with the opaque biases built into the AI.
“In the real world, humans are biased. But there are technologies we can use to overcome this human bias,” Jaser says. “With algorithm-driven bias, this can become very systematic.” For example, some AI recruiting tools are trained on profiles of successful employees in the past, raising concerns that they will repeat biased hiring practices of the past.
For now, these AI tools don’t have the final hiring decision power, but they will increasingly influence which applicants get to meet with real people, which could have a huge impact on the future of the workforce.
But if you ask Ansari, there’s a different path for interviews in the future. He thinks job seekers will interview with AI interviewers using AI-driven avatars, leaving the painful and tedious aspects of the first job search entirely to the computer. AI can “match really well” job seekers and companies, Ansari said, “and companies and candidates can spend real time on Zoom calls and in-person interviews.”
