Job Searching Meets AI: The Emergence of Quirky Interview Bots
The job search can be an intimidating journey—countless applications, customized cover letters, and lengthy waits for replies that often seem elusive. Now, candidates are encountering a fresh hurdle: facing interviews with artificial intelligence bots that can be clumsy, erratic, and anything but personable.
Recently, TikTok has been inundated with trending videos where individuals recount their experiences with AI-driven interviewers. While some of these clips are evidently humorous or scripted, others come across as startlingly genuine.
A recent article from Slate emphasized the increasing implementation of AI in recruitment processes. One interviewee, Kendiana Colin, gained fame after sharing a TikTok that displayed her peculiar exchange with an AI bot during an interview at a stretching studio. The bot incessantly repeated “vertical-bar pilates,” leading to a bizarre and unintentionally funny encounter. “It was exceedingly disrespectful and a waste of time,” Colin remarked to Slate.
She is not the only one experiencing this. Another viral video features a bot caught in a repetitive loop, echoing phrases like “when, when, when” and “let’s circle back”—a surreal reflection of corporate lingo. The creator of this video explained to Newsweek that it was a genuine interview for an actual role, not a spoof.
As more individuals recount their AI interview experiences online, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell apart satire from actuality. Some TikToks are clearly marked as comedic, while others blend the distinction. One such clip, shared by a satire account, still went viral—likely due to its striking resemblance to reality.
The unsettling aspect? The mock interviews don’t differ much from the actual ones. The AI interviewer featured in Colin’s video, for instance, was created by a startup known as Apriora, which promotes its bots as solutions for hiring.
So if you’re on the job hunt in today’s landscape, brace yourself: your upcoming interview might not involve a human at all, but rather a glitchy AI bot that can’t help but repeat itself. Welcome to the hiring future.