Allowing AI in interviews could make hiring more reflective of modern work realities. At the same time, it risks distorting assessments of individual ability, authenticity, and potential. Image: freepik.com.
With artificial intelligence rapidly affecting all facets of life in the workplace, Dan Schawbel suggests the traditional job interview may not survive in its current form.
The job interview has long been seen as a test of individual capability. It’s where candidates demonstrate their knowledge, communicate their experience, and prove their ability to think on their feet.
However, as artificial intelligence becomes embedded in everyday workflows, that premise is being challenged.
Today, candidates can use AI tools to draft responses, summarise information, generate talking points, and even receive real-time prompts during virtual interviews.
This raises a fundamental question for employers: If AI is part of how work gets done, should it also be part of how candidates are evaluated?
Allowing AI in interviews could make hiring more reflective of modern work realities. At the same time, it risks distorting assessments of individual ability, authenticity, and potential.
As organisations rethink hiring in an AI-driven world, the interview itself is becoming a battleground for defining fairness, skill, and trust.
Traditional interviews were built around a simple assumption: that a candidate’s responses reflect their own knowledge and thinking.
That no longer holds in many workplaces. Employees increasingly rely on AI to complete tasks, generate ideas, and improve outputs. If that’s the case, evaluating candidates without AI may not reflect how they will actually perform on the job.
To put it bluntly, interviews assess a version of work that is quickly becoming outdated.
For some candidates, using AI during interviews feels like a natural extension of how they work every day. They may use tools to refine their answers, check for clarity, or generate examples in real time.
From their perspective, this isn’t cheating — it’s demonstrating resourcefulness.
In fact, the ability to use AI effectively could be seen as a skill in its own right — prompting, editing, validating outputs, and applying AI-generated insights all require judgment.
Candidates who excel at these tasks may perform better in AI-enabled roles, even if their unaided responses are less polished.
Allowing AI in interviews could therefore shift the focus from memorisation and recall to how well candidates leverage tools to produce strong outcomes.
At the same time, AI introduces new risks into the hiring process. A polished answer may reflect the quality of the tool rather than the individual.
This is particularly concerning for roles that require independent thinking, quick decision-making, or deep expertise.
If a candidate cannot perform without assistance, their on-the-job effectiveness may be limited in situations where AI is unavailable or insufficient.
Employers are trying to understand how candidates think, communicate, and respond under pressure. If AI mediates those interactions, it becomes harder to gauge authenticity.
At this point, it is worth remembering that candidates have always used external resources to prepare for interviews.
They research the organisation, rehearse answers, and seek advice from mentors or career coaches. AI is, in some ways, an evolution of these practices, but the difference is immediacy.
Traditional preparation happens before the interview. AI can now influence responses during the interview itself.
Organisations must decide where they want to draw that line. Banning AI outright may seem like a simple solution, but it is difficult to enforce and may not reflect how work is actually performed.
Candidates can use AI discreetly during virtual interviews, and detecting it reliably is challenging.
A more practical approach may be transparency. Organisations can set clear expectations about when and how AI can be used. For example, they might allow AI for take-home assignments but not for live interviews, or they may explicitly design interview stages in which tool usage is part of the evaluation.
By acknowledging AI rather than ignoring it, employers can create a more consistent and fair process.
Some organisations are rethinking interview design altogether, focusing on areas where human judgment is more visible. This might include asking candidates to explain their reasoning and decision-making processes; presenting ambiguous scenarios that require interpretation; or incorporating real-time problem-solving tasks that reveal thought patterns.
These approaches shift the emphasis from what candidates say to how they think.
As AI becomes more integrated into work, employers may begin to assess AI literacy directly. This includes not just technical proficiency, but the ability to use AI responsibly, ethically and effectively.
Candidates who can demonstrate when to rely on AI — and when not to — may stand out. This requires critical thinking, self-awareness, and an understanding of the tool’s limitations. In this context, the question is no longer whether candidates use AI, but how well they use it.
Allowing AI in interviews also raises important equity considerations. On the one hand, AI can level the playing field by helping candidates articulate their thoughts more clearly, particularly those who may struggle with language barriers or interview anxiety.
On the other, unequal access to advanced tools or training can create new disparities. Candidates with greater exposure to AI may have an advantage, reinforcing existing inequalities rather than reducing them.
Organisations must consider how their policies impact different groups and whether additional support or guidance is needed to ensure fairness.
Whether or not candidates should use AI in interviews is ultimately the wrong question. The better question is how hiring processes can evolve to measure the right skills in an AI-driven world.
Organisations that address this challenge proactively will not only make better hiring decisions but also build trust with candidates navigating an increasingly complex landscape.
As AI continues to reshape work, the interview must evolve alongside it — not to preserve the past, but to reflect the future.
Dan Schawbel is a bestselling author and managing partner of Workplace Intelligence, a research and advisory firm helping HR adapt to trends, drive performance and prepare for the future. This article is part of his Workplace Intelligence Weekly series.
