Your interview playbook: the role of AI

Mhorag: Since we spoke a year ago on how people can create an ‘interview playbook’, the role of AI has continued to rise. Where can it be of help – starting with interviewees?

Alastair: A lot can change in a year. AI is now established as a valuable source of support as people prepare for job interviews, on each of the three preparation areas we discussed: refining a set of concise compelling messages you want your interviewers to remember; building a bank of Q&A responses you can draw on and adapt during an interview; and thinking about how you are present in the room.

AI can contribute to this by acting as a thought partner, researcher and coach. It can be a source of ideas, feedback and challenge. It can help you research into a role and organisation; identify questions you may be asked; highlight strengths to emphasise and blind spots to be aware of; develop and refine answers; simulate and provide feedback on mock interviews. It can also act as a source of learning across multiple interviews or jobs. And these and other uses will doubtless evolve over time too.

If these are the benefits, what are the limitations?

The benefits of AI for job applications comes with a paradox. The prevalence and value of the use of AI in written job applications will shift employers’ focus towards ways which they can assess what you bring to a role, how you will fit with an organisation and connect with your future colleagues, and how fulfilled you will be in a role without the filter of AI. This implies employers’ increasing the time and importance that they give to formal and informal interviews and other real-time exercises.

This will make it even more important for interviewees than before that what you say, how you present, and the quality of the energy you bring to the conversation, resonate authentically. In practice, this means giving added focus to conveying who you are as a professional, future colleague and human being.

What else should interviewees be aware of?

AI increases the importance of focusing on things which are the opposite of artificiality. It makes it even more important that you continue to invest time in the inner work that allows you to increase your sense of who you are (your inner ‘essence’), radiate this to others, and be centered and present in the room. It means treating AI as a complement, not a substitute, for investing time in reflection, personal development, engaging with art or nature, or simply going for a walk.

On a practical level, make sure that everything you communicate, in writing or orally, is in your own voice. Use language that comes naturally to you and does not come across as overly polished or over-prepared. Only make statements for which you can answer follow-up questions in real time, including requests for evidence of perspectives or capabilities you mention.

As for other uses of AI, the value AI provides will be directly linked to how well you inform and prompt it, including asking it to stand in the shoes of your interviewer. That’s true whether questions relate to a specific role, organisation and interviewers, your experience and skills, any information you have on the aims and structure of an interview, your reflections and any feedback received from other interviews, or what type of support will be most helpful for you.

How would you describe its benefits and limitations for interviewers?

There are also parallel uses of AI for interviewers. It can help inform your assessments of multiple, increasingly well-presented candidates. It can help identify incisive questions and competencies to probe. It can bring together data from applications, interviews, psychometrics, references and tests. It can also free up scarce time to spend on interviews and reflection, by automating note-taking and records. And, as for interviewees, these uses will only increase over time.

Likewise, while interviewers may make increasing use of AI in informing an assessment of candidates’ capabilities and fit, AI-enabled applications and assessments will increase the importance of human judgement. At the end of any selection process, whatever use they have made of AI, interviewers need to look each other in the eye as they reach decisions on which candidate to select, questioning their own and each others’ assessments of what they have read, heard and seen as they do so.

It will also be important for interviewers to remember that AI can be as vulnerable as humans to bias, with the implications this brings for selecting a less-ideal candidate, reducing diversity or creating legal risk.

All of this reflects the fact that the objective function of interviews will be unchanged by AI. The big questions will stay the same: How will this human being provide value to my organisation (including through their effective use of AI)? How will they get on with and be a source of positive energy for with my team and the wider people they will engage with? How will they find impact, fulfilment and growth in a role?

Given all of this, what is your one key message for interviewees on how they use AI?

Use AI as one of the things which help you prepare for an interview … and then leave it at the door before you walk into the room – or turn it off before you join a virtual conversation or record answers to preset questions.

And for interviewers?

You need colleagues who are skilled at using AI. You can also benefit from it as an interviewer. But it cannot replace your and your fellow interviewers’ central role: of exercising your judgement about who will bring most to and be most fulfilled by a role.