Amazon rolls out AI hiring software to automate job interviews | Hacker News Reader

Amazon rolls out AI hiring software to automate job interviews

usatoday.com

28 pointscebert23 comments

If I know there is no human in the loop in my hiring process, I will not apply.

However I am an (ostensibly) privileged software engineer. This article says that this will be used for the holiday rush. Contract/warehouse workers are often the most oppressed working class. It’s sad that this can be forced upon them.

My brother's cousin says anytime someone is hiring for this type of work (warehouse, stocking, other retail) and really needs people during a holiday rush, the interview is often nothing more than gathering data used to verify work eligibility, maybe a background check, maybe paperwork for you to get a drug test, and confirming you're available at the hours they need. In her opinion, she says it seems like its something they honestly could replace with an app and it wouldn't even really need AI at all.

There is nothing more dismal than going through an application process when they've already decided not to hire you. I've seen managers do this, and I've been interviewed and realized partway through they've already decided who they're actually going to hire (and it's not me).

I like the idea of being able to do interview calls at 8pm, but I'm scared they will just spam these to everyone and I'll spend countless evenings "interviewing" for jobs I'll never get instead of meeting with people I care about.

This is 100% going to happen unless governments start mandating something like mandatory tax / monetary compensation to applicants for participating in AI-led interviews.

If you're profit seeking company with no regard to the negative social externalities of your actions, why not just send out AI interviews to everyone the way some tech companies send leetcodes to everyone today? They could even build some feature to make the AI interviewer try to extract as much market information and good ideas out of you as possible and feed that data into their internal AI product ideation engine. You have to pay ball or else you don't get the job. (Btw if you pass the interview you have a 0.1% chance of being hired)

A good lawyer could probably turn this int a class action mill just by a little coach prepping and a few key words

I guess for a seasonal job, where maybe you don’t care as much about the human interaction aspects of the job I’d be okay with this.

If I ever got an AI interviewer at a company I was interested in working for long term, it would be dead on arrival. Interviewing is a two way street. Candidates glean info about their possible teammates and work experience from the interviewer, just like the interviewer gets a read on the candidate.

Also if I am having someone join my team, I’d want to get to know them first. I’m sure the goal isn’t to have this replace every interview panel but it feels icky to me outside of a seasonal job.

> Candidates glean info about their possible teammates and work experience from the interviewer

From everything I’ve heard about working in Amazon warehouses, getting interviewed by a faceless robot is probably giving an accurate impression of the work culture. Even for a seasonal job it feels disrespectful to the candidates.

While this is for seasonal, entry-level screening of hundreds of thousands of workers, as you say...

...I kind of think this is an improvement for a lot of cold applicants. HR talent acquisition teams can be terrible, and I surmise many would take their chances.

Then it would be fair game to have an AI answer the hiring AI questions. After all, they now require the use of AI on the job right?

Posting a question here for anyone on hiring panels - is AI tooling generally allowed during coding interviews now? Are coding interviews still a thing? Just wondering where the general landscape is today. I'm coming out of semi-IC-retirement, have deep knowledge and technical, but I've never been much of a competitive coder.

LLMs have been a game changer for me - allowing me to attempt the craziest and most hard things I could ever imagine and loving every minute of it (eg. making any Windows Forms application run on Linux/macOS, rewriting TradingView charts into a cross-platform wgpu backed native charting library lol).

Coding interviews are still a thing at pretty much all of the places they've historically been. I don't think it's clear yet how much that's going to change, especially since many people feel you do have to be a good coder to use LLM tools most effectively.

It will change, as most devs will naturally lose some of their ability to code manually right (I know I did, I can still fully read anything in many languages, but I know if you put me in a blank sheet right now, I might need a few minutes to recall), which mean a coding test might not be appropriate at that point. I believe we might have tests that are more about testing your "agentic skill" more than anything else.

I don't know, were coding tests as implemented ever really appropriate? I work on 90th percentile theoretical stuff, and there's maybe three times in my career that I sat down and coded an algorithmic puzzle from first principles without a reference solution to work off of.

Sadly, this will continue until we collectively stand up against it, but I don't hold much hope that we ever will.

but how? That can't really be illegal, else we would have to make illegal applying "online" altogether, so how exactly can it be fought?

By refusing to participate, but it only works if we all do it. As soon as an AI comes online during the interview process, disconnect. If _everybody_ did, they'd get the hint

(Actually, my great-grandfather was a coal miner in Tennessee. They also found ways to make the labor process humane)

It's noble but I highly doubt the average mommy that is in serious financial difficulty would participate.

It's a lawsuit waiting to happen anyway. It will use inflammatory language or ask invasive questions. Only a matter of time.

Of course Amazon, of all large tech firms, would be the first.

Hard pass. Their automated code screens before you even talk to a human were bad enough to deter me from applying, I will continue to not subject myself to their interview process.

How does a USA Today link end up on top of HN?

That’s just embarrassing.

I was part of an AI Hiring interview and it is actually pretty bad and the follow up questions were also the worst imaginable.

I was part of an AI Hiring interview and it is actually pretty good and the follow up questions were also top notch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com