What it is

An AI interview is a job interview where some or all of the process is handled by artificial intelligence rather than a human. This ranges from chatbots asking you screening questions over text, to video interviews where an AI watches your face, analyses your tone of voice, and scores your responses — all without a human being present.

Companies like HireVue and Pymetrics have been doing this for years, but it's becoming far more common. You might record a video answering pre-set questions, and an AI evaluates your answers for keywords, confidence, and even facial expressions. Some systems now conduct fully interactive interviews where the AI asks follow-up questions based on your responses, making it feel eerily like talking to a real person who just happens to have no soul.

Why it matters for your job

If you're job hunting — and statistically, you will be at some point — there's a growing chance your first interview won't be with a human. This matters because the things that impress an AI are not always the things that impress a person. A warm smile and a firm handshake count for nothing when a machine is parsing your word choices.

It also raises some genuinely uncomfortable questions about bias. These systems are trained on data from past successful hires, which means they can bake in all the same biases human recruiters had — they're just faster and more consistent about it. If you don't fit the pattern the AI was trained on, you might never get past the first round.

What to do about it

Practise with the technology before you need it. Record yourself answering common interview questions and watch it back. Use clear, structured answers — AI tends to reward the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Speak at a steady pace, look at the camera, and don't waffle. And if you feel the process was unfair, say so — companies need that feedback.