How to Ace the Interview with an AI Agent
Episode 519 | Author: Emilie Aries
How do you let your humanity shine through when your interviewer isn’t human?
Let’s face it: the AI evolution is here. We’re seeing the evidence and impacts of this all around us, from em dashes and search engine changes to hiring and onboarding processes. Maybe you haven’t stumbled upon one yet, but the AI interviewer is a thing!
Companies have been leveraging AI to review resumes and cover letters for years now, but now with agentic AI—technologies like ChatGPT that can prompt themselves and “decide” next steps on their own—are seizing even more hiring tasks from the human recruiter. What better way for a company to scale up, especially when they’re hiring lots of workers, than to have an AI agent conduct the first “face-to-face” interview for them?
If the thought of video chatting with a black screen is panic-inducing to you, you’re not alone. This simple three-step process will prepare you with the tools and confidence you need to ace the screening interview and get the job offer you deserve.
Hold onto your humanity
Unlike the automated resume scanners of the past, the AI agent you “talk” to isn’t just waiting for you to drop buzzwords. It’s ironic, but your robot interviewer will review all sorts of verbal and nonverbal signals—both the words you use and the way you deliver them—to determine whether or not you move on to the next round.
That means you need to uphold your shining personality and come across as a well-adjusted human as you answer generic AI-generated questions with none of the in-the-moment feedback we’re so used to getting from conversations. To get comfortable shouting your skills and passions into the void, wrangle a friend who’s willing to sit down with you, virtually, and start practicing.
Practice with a mock interview
First, have your friend sit on-screen across from you, and conduct a mock interview using questions you compiled from the job description. Get all that juicy non-verbal feedback in real time, just like you would in an “old-fashioned” interview.
Mock it up again, AI-style
Then, ask your friend to turn off their camera, and do the interview again. They’ll ask the questions just like last time, but they won’t respond to your answers. When this round is done, they can speak to how your demeanor and delivery changed. Did you stop smiling, quit talking with your hands, sound or look more like you were reading from a script? That’s hard to avoid when you don’t have another face to play off of, but these are things the AI agent will be noting.
Record and review
Since your AI interview will feel a lot like talking to yourself, step three is to let your friend get back to work and switch to recording your answers on your own. When you review the videos, look for those same tells—the facial expressions, gestures, and tone. Work on summoning up the enthusiasm you really feel for that potential job.
Like with any interview, you want to come across as warm and engaging. These steps help you transfer what probably comes naturally in a face-to-face conversation into a one-sided interview. Remember: practice makes permanent!
Fight AI interviewers with AI interview prep tools
Don’t let employers reap all the benefits of AI! There are some great tools out there for job seekers, too. Check out Google’s Interview Warmup, a program that lets you practice common interview questions and provides feedback on your answers.
You can also give Final Round AI a try. My favorite piece in their toolbox is the AI Mock Interview. It provides you with a transcript and feedback on things like filler words, body language, and content—all things your interviewer will be analyzing. It scores your performance and gives you targeted tips for improvement.
Final Round has a lot of different programs, but one I would not recommend is their Interview Co-pilot. It’s made to run in the background during your interview, listening to the questions and recommending answers in real-time. Not only does this product frankly defeat the purpose of interviews, but it also robs you of the opportunity to remain present. And more than once, viral videos of people using it only to come across as generic, robotic, and obvious reading show the potential downsides.
Lately, it feels like work is losing its humanity, one new tool at a time, but that doesn’t mean we need to become robots right alongside it. Whether you’ve decided to lean into this AI revolution or rail against it, it’s happening. Prepare yourself by adjusting your interview prep to match!
We’re all in this together! Share your AI interview experiences with other job seekers in our Courage Community on Facebook, or join us in our group on LinkedIn.
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
HIRED: a job search accelerator video course
The New York Times, “Welcome to Your Job Interview. Your Interviewer Is A.I.”
Harvard Business Review, “Are You Prepared to Be Interviewed by an AI?”
Josh Bersin, “LinkedIn Enters AI Agent Race With LinkedIn Hiring Assistant”
CBS News, “Your next job interview might be with AI. Here's how to ace it.”
Episode 361, Top Tips to Get Your Resume Past Applicant Tracking Systems
Learn tools and tactics
to land your best next job with HIRED:
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 519. I'm your host Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up and today we are talking about how to ace the interview, when your interview is being conducted by an AI agent.
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Perhaps you've been hearing all the buzz around agentic AI, which is a complex than necessary way of saying these are AI components or pieces of technology that can prompt themselves, right? Agentic AI basically means that it's got its own ability to decide what to do next. Like those large language models like, Chat GPT. It doesn't require you to prompt it. The AI itself can take initiative, can decide what direction to take a conversation in, and can really make its own judgment calls, for instance, it can predict the success someone might have in a particular job or role. That's why so many companies are using agentic AI as part of their screening process, their hiring processes, really to scale them up and to do them at a more efficient cost. Much to the chagrin probably of our recruiter friends who are listening.
There is big business behind agentic AI in hiring. Workday just announced that it acquired a company called Paradox, which is a candidate experience agent that uses conversational AI to simplify every step of the job application journey, particularly for high volume frontline industries. So if you need to hire 600 servers for an inauguration ball, let's say, this is the kind of technology that major recruiting operations are leveraging to make it so that you not only get screened by an AI who's scanning your resume and your application to at first even see if you're deemed worthy of a frontline interview, but then as a next step, that first interview is now being conducted by AI agents that use conversational AI, as according to Paradox.
Similarly, LinkedIn just rolled out its own piece of technology called Hiring Assistant, which estimates that it can offload 80% of the pre offer hiring process from human recruiters to this AI tool. I'll drop links to both of those news items in case you're interested in learning more. But bringing on AI technology and AI agents in particular is the trend in hiring and recruiting right now that we are going to see continue because of the cost savings that it offers to businesses and employers.
Now, for job seekers, including some of you who are listening, this means dealing with new levels of inhumanity in what can already feel like a soulless modern job search. I hear you if you are sharing your frustrations. I hear you if you are, you know, disappointed in the dystopian nature of the job search these days already, I'm afraid it sounds like things are only getting worse right now. You know that ATS systems, Applicant Tracking Systems, have been using bots to scan your resumes and your application materials for years now. And we've got podcasts on how to deal with that. I'll link to those related episodes in the show notes.
But increasingly, candidates report that when they log on to an interview, that very first screener interview, they're met with a faceless AI agent on the other end of the video call. Sometimes like, characterized by just a black box or sometimes by like a, an audiogram wave line that sort of animates the voice. But the irony of course, is that you need to have your camera on for those screener interviews, even when you're not being reciprocated because the person screening you isn't real. Now, according to a report in CBS News, these AI interviewers are run by an algorithm that quote, “reviews and judges the candidate's video submission based on verbal data”. So the words you use and how you deliver them both matter when it comes to acing that first round of interview with a robot. So how do we navigate this?
First of all, don't panic, but do practice. And like anything you're going to want to practice and how you want to play. So on these interviews with AI agents, you're not going to get the real time non-verbal feedback that you would from a normal human on the other end of the phone. So you've got to practice speaking into the void and getting comfortable doing so without losing your humanity in the process. Because the irony here is if you go stiff and act like a robot yourself, that's not going to go over well. You're not going to be coded as an engaging human by, ironically, the robot that's judging you. So you have to maintain your humanity and not go stiff as a board because you're nervous.
Here's a three step strategy for how to practice this kind of interviewing in an incremental way. First, ask a friend to hop onto a video call with you and do a mock interview using questions that you've developed based on the job description. At first, just have a regular conversation where you're getting your friends, non-verbal feedback in real time. Then do round two with your friend off camera. That way you can practice what it feels like to speak to a black box while maybe even seeing a mirror image of yourself along the way. And your friend can still be there to listen and give you feedback after the fact. So that if you do look or sound different when they're off camera, they can give you that feedback and really hold up that mirror to you in a supportive way.
And then the final step in this three part strategy is to practice completely on your own. Recording and reviewing without your friend there, but watching back the tape as you record your answers. Because that's what it's going to feel like to have to summon energy and enthusiasm all by yourself. Learn to speak into the little camera lens on your phone or computer like you would be to a good friend. And if it helps, you can even put a little smiley face on a sticky note and post it right next to your camera to help you keep that in mind. Whatever you do, don't lose your humanity along the way. Give yourself permission to have real facial expressions, not take yourself too seriously. Smile, relax, breathe, and use hand gestures like you normally would. It is uncomfortable at first, but practice makes permanent. So don't allow yourself to become a robot just because you're interviewing with one.
We all know that employers are using AI to screen candidates, but job seekers can use AI tools too. In fact, there's some new AI based technology that can help you prepare for the interview in particular .Google's got Interview WarmUp, a free AI based tool that you can use to help practice answers to common interview questions. It can help analyze your responses, identify keywords, and share common themes. And for an even more sophisticated suite of tools, check out FinalRoundai.com they have a variety of tools available, but my favorite is their AI Mock Interview, which offers transcription and analysis, providing detailed feedback on filler words, vocal tone, body language and content. It even provides AI powered feedback by scoring your performance and providing targeted improvement tips, including drafting ideal answer suggestions.
The one thing I don't recommend that you should steer clear from is their Interview Copilot tool, which is designed to essentially play in the background while you are having an actual interview. And it can actually listen in on the questions that the interviewer is asking you and provide you answers in real time. But every time I've seen this tool go viral, it's because someone's just reading off their screen in a particularly robotic way, or trying to kind of pretend like they're coming up with the answer when it's clearly some AI generated slop that they're just regurgitating. I don't recommend that particular use of the tool because it totally takes you out of the moment and turns you into nothing much more than a robot yourself. So bring your humanity to this process, even though it can feel like you're the only one doing so.
It's a brave new world out there, but I hope today's conversation can help you move in the right direction and take charge of your experience of the process. Whether you are fighting the future and sort of raising your fist in the sky with frustration, or you're leaning into it with curiosity and excitement, either way, it's here, it's happening. This is the time to radically accept these new norms and do your best to prepare for it without losing your humanity along the way. As the New York Times put it in a recent article about this very topic, quote, you might have thought artificial intelligence was coming for your job first. It's coming for your job interviewer. That future is here. So we humans got to stick together and help each other navigate it one step at a time.
For more guidance just like this and on every single aspect of the job search, from writing your first resume in a decade to negotiating a final offer of acceptance, you can check out HIRED, my on demand job search accelerator video course, which walks through the modern job search and gives you tons of step by step tactics and tools to land your best next job. Learn more at bossedup.org/gethired. And in the meantime, check out all the resources that I mentioned today, including links to lots of related articles and podcasts at bossedup.org/episode519 that's bossedup.org/episode519.
[OUTRO MUSIC IN]
And as always, let's keep the conversation going after the episode and in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook and in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. Until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
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