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Comment by stackskipton | Hacker News Reader

In our remote interviews, I've started pasting the question into meeting chat that I've already fed into ChatGPT. Mainly because some candidates do actually do better with reading and thinking but it's also just pure bait to paste into their open ChatGPT window. Since I've already got input on my side, if they start reading off ChatGPT output, they get a strike, two strikes and interview is ended.

However, I do believe onsite interviews is best solution but finance obviously screams about cost.

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I discovered a new tactic where you ask a vaguely worded question on a niche subject, such that any seemingly off the cuff comprehensive answer must be ChatGPT. Asking something outside the candidate’s declared experience or following up on experience with tech they spoke well to will also reveal discrepancies.

I'm pretty sure the temperature of even GPT4o-mini is not 0 so how would you know it is the something like you have. It would be hard to be reading an answer, it would feel awkward and probably obvious it itself. But I'm just saying that some people would have memorized answers to some standard questions (they apply to many places as you might know).

Yea, the newer models wouldn't catch this but there is enough candidates going to chatgpt.com and just pasting in the question.

As always, it's arms race and one I wish I'd didn't have to participate in.

Alternatively they might also use a different model that has different response traits.

it is surprising there isn’t some SaaS bullshit company that solves this problem. we have shit like Pearsons and whatnots when taking exams, I took few certification exams and it was like

- install this thing that takes over my machine

- 360 camera around to show my surroundings

- no phone/watch/…

One would think by now there’d be two Stanford grads with a SaaS shit taking care of this for $899/hr

Last interview I did it was obvious candidate was cheating. Gave him my cell and told him to call me, no speakerphone or bluetooth and hung up Teams meeting - never got a call :)

Even as we speak, scams are going on where pretend-employers are backdooring the computers of applicants that way.

I fear the only applicants who would agree are also the ones who can't be trusted with any employee access to your corporate resources.

a company would run this… Not your company taking over candidate’s computer, an intermediary that candidate and potential employer are using.

candidates are already using Slack/Teams/Zoom/… now they get to use Pouixy or whatever BS name someone in SF comes up with. guarantee you this will be a thing in 2025, some stanfords are on the case

If you (the company) send me a company laptop to use for that shit, sure, we can interview that way. It is the same deal with Teams and Zoom. None of that shit is touching my personal devices, it is strictly limited to the work machine.

have you ever taken a certification exam remotely from your own computer?

No.

you might be slightly more receptive to this idea if you have, the company administering the exam needs to ensure no cheating is happening so app starts, all your other apps are shutdown, you get a call through the app to show your surroundings with the camera on your laptop etc before exam begins. at no point in time did I find any of it intrusive or strange, I wanted to get the exam done remotely, they need to ensure that I wasn’t cheating

> so app starts

I assume this "app" is not open source, correct? Is is compatible with Linux systems? Can it run on non-FHS distribution?

> all your other apps are shutdown

I admit I am curious about this bit. Does it just start killing all other processes belonging to the same user ID? Or of all users (since you could get "assist" from process owned by an another user)? At least PID 1 needs to survive the slaughter, but it can be used to run arbitrary code to assist with the cheating. So how does it tell what is "an app" it needs to stop?

there is a video on this page showing overall experience - https://www.pearsonvue.com/us/en/test-takers/onvue-online-pr...

There's a much simpler solution. You do the interview in your office and watch them answer without typing the question in to chatgpt.

too expensive - no one is doing that anymore

How is it too expensive? It takes the same amount of time for the interview, and you presumably have a room available in the office to book for the occasional interview.

And it instantly filters out all the spam applicants and chat GPT cheaters.

is it more expensive than what we're dealing with now? have we even tallied the human talent cost?

Startup idea to truly solve this would be large network of onsite test / interview centers.

I had to do all my certs onsite in test centers in early 2000's. For one I had to drive 2 hours to take the exam.

Seems like those test centers used to be in every mid size city in the country.

too expensive mate… we live in year our Lord 2024 - no one is building 2000 buildings that will be vacant as everyone is working from home (or India…) :)

this requires a simple saas solution - someone’s working on this for sure already as it is already a big issue

I hear you, and yes old school solution sounds absurd, but I suspect interview cheating will be on par with game cheating. Even if you install kernel level cheat protection systems the game cheater's still find ways around them.

These guys already developed an invisible desktop app to help everyone cheat on remote interviews.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42348147

no question there will be cat&mouse here but even more incentive for some stanford grads to charge premium for “unbreakable quantum-proof interview experience” :)

I don't believe one needs a startup to solve that problem - there are already a bazillion certification paths for a bazillion tech stacks. The(?) problem is one of trust from the hiring org that the certs mean anything, and that's where the whole discussion devolves into one of (gatekeeping|but muh leetcode|our business problem is special|$other)

I meant a startup that provides onsite screening / verification of candidates for companies. Only pre-verifed candidates can apply to company jobs. If the candidate is not local, the company can use the test center to do a remote screen in an environment where candidate cannot cheat. Etc.

I just brought up certs because back in the day you could not take those test online due to cheating.

Now in the age of AI you can't do any type of testing remote, imo.

I half-way suspected that's what you were going for (testing-as-a-service) but my point still stands: it is a web-of-trust bootstrapping problem. For example, Otherbranch[1] exists, is a startup, and is trying to handle pre-screening candidates, but they seem to have very few companies that are currently using them. One would assume if they were solving a real problem then companies would be beating down their door to get real, verified, actual people and yet.

1: see https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=otherbranch.com - the folks spun out of Triplebyte

this ain’t about pre-screening at all, it is about solving a different kind of problem. if you have experienced it already, you haven’t interviewed anyone recently.

You are correct, I'm over here stuck on the applicant side, feeling like both sides of this transaction are suffering from the same lack of trust

I therefore fail to see how introducing another party that the hiring managers have to cede their trust to solves our mutual lack of trust

If your company (since your reply implies that you are at least "hiring manager adjacent") merely needs that testing center to start hiring people, I'm totally open to going on Monday and starting a company to provide that service. I even already have a 4k security camera system I can wire up the room to provide DVR access to your interview candidate's session

But my strong suspicion is that such a video camera enabled room for a fee is not, in fact, the obstacle to getting people hired

11 out of last 12 candidates interviewed read their answers from chatgpt or the like. always same scenario, video call, interviewer never makes an eye contact and obviously is reading answers. last one I gave my cell and told him to call me, no speaker or bluetooth on the phone and hung up Teams meeting - mate never called back :)))

this is a pandemic already and tool is needed to establish that interviewer is not cheating. prior to today’s tools at interviewer’s disposal this was not really a thing - today it is a huge thing

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