A quick post on LinkedIn about interviewing a candidate who used real-time AI got more engagement than is usual for me. And as often happens when something goes semi-viral, some folks took issue with what I said, so I want to expand on the point I was trying to make (it wasn’t that “AI is cheating”).
Here’s what I wrote:
I had my first experience interviewing a candidate who used real-time AI today. If you’re someone who uses AI daily, it’s so easy to spot. The pause before the answer, the constant eyes flicking to the other screen, the perfectly-manicured 3-point answer…
Friends, just don’t do this. It’s too easy to spot, and it will also set you up for failure, because it might get you a job that you’re not a good fit for, which is bad for everyone.
Use AI in your job, for sure. But don’t use it to get the job. The interview process is about you. Be you.
One response called this “absolutely myopic” (I had to double check I didn’t accidentally post on Hacker News) and asked why candidates shouldn’t use AI if it allows for “a better, more creative answer.” Another suggested that if candidates will use AI on the job anyway, then the “real you” isn’t going to be working, so what’s the difference?
Let’s dig into this.
What interviews are actually for
I don’t interview people to test whether they can produce a good answer to a question. I interview people to understand how they think, what they’ve actually done, and whether we’ll work well together.
When I ask “Tell me about a time you had to make a difficult prioritization decision,” I’m not looking for the theoretically optimal framework. I want to hear your story. The messy details and the trade-offs you wrestled with. The thing you got wrong and what you learned from it. AI can’t give me that. It can only give me a polished summary of what prioritization frameworks exist.
One commenter put it well: “It’s about both the company and the individual, so you will often talk about their real experience, what they did, how they felt, what did they learn, digging deeper into their real experience to find out the interesting things that could make them a good match.”
AI might help you phrase things more clearly. But if it’s generating your answers, you’re hiding the very thing I’m trying to evaluate.
The fit problem
Here’s the part that didn’t seem to land: using AI to get a job you’re not qualified for is bad for you.
Let’s say the AI-assisted interview works. You get hired. Now what? You show up on day one, and the expectations are set based on how you performed in those interviews. But that wasn’t you. That was a performance enhanced by a tool you won’t have in the same way during actual work conversations, whiteboard sessions, and quick chat exchanges where people expect you to just… know things.
I’ve seen what happens when there’s a mismatch between interview performance and actual capability. It’s not a fun experience for anyone, least of all the person who’s now struggling in a role they weren’t ready for. One person called it “artificial buzzword ventriloquism” in the comments. Harsh, but not wrong.
It’s about context, not absolutes
A few commenters suggested that interviews should evolve to assume AI assistance, since that’s how people will actually work. One person wrote: “By prohibiting AI during interviews, the interview environment diverges from actual job conditions and fails to evaluate a critical skill: the ability to effectively use one of the most powerful productivity tools available today.”
I think there’s something to this. In fact, our interview process includes a take-home assessment where we explicitly encourage candidates to use AI. We want to see how they approach a problem, how they structure their thinking, and yes, how they use modern tools to get to a good answer. That’s a legitimate skill worth evaluating.
But that’s different from what happened in my interview, where someone was clearly trying to hide their AI usage while answering questions about their past experience. That’s not “using AI as a tool.” That’s using AI as a mask.
I think candidates should absolutely use AI to prepare for interviews: research the company, practice answering common questions, refine their resume.
But in the interview itself, when I’m asking about your experience and your thinking, I need to hear from you. Not because AI is cheating, but because the whole point is to figure out if you are the right fit for this role and this team. If I can’t evaluate that, we can’t make a good hiring decision. And that’s bad for both of us.