I do not have a future in sales. I learned this last week when I interviewed for a job as a salesperson at a CRM software company that competes with HubSpot and Salesforce. To test my skills, they put me through a three-stage simulation in which I had to sell their platform.
My assessment began with a written exercise to judge my client prospecting skills. I did well enough, successfully picking out the best potential client from a list of profiles. Then I was put on the phone with that prospect and asked to pitch the platform. I fumbled so clumsily trying to sell him on features that, after three-and-a-half minutes, he finally said, "Look, you're not really getting into specifics here. I have to go now," then hung up. The final boss was a rep from procurement. She was cheerful and friendly, but I was so desperate to get out of that call, which I was also flunking, that I agreed to a discount I had no business offering.
The sting of failure was allayed by the fact that my interviewers were not human, but AI avatars -- dynamic voices on the other side of static images generated from a large language model -- and by the fact that I'm not trying to land a sales job. (If I wasn't before, I'm certainly not now.) My score? 323/600. But I was commended for raising no integrity concerns. I'll take what I can get.
As application volumes grow, AI-powered interviews multiply
Employers are increasingly using AI-powered interviews like these to vet the flood of candidates that pour in for any given role. According to applicant tracking system Greenhouse, the number of applications per role has nearly tripled since 2021, thanks to the ubiquity of AI tools that let job seekers multiply their applications with little effort. Greenhouse's customers received an average of 222 applications per role in 2024. Gem, another ATS, reports that recruiters manage 56 percent more open roles than they did three years ago.
Proponents of using AI to screen job applicants tout the technology's ability to vet more candidates than humans can asses on their own. If a human recruiter can screen a dozen applicants, an AI recruiter can screen thousands. "With AI, almost everybody can get a shot," says Tigran Sloyan, co-founder and CEO of CodeSignal, the technical assessment platform that simulated my sales interview. "Almost everybody can actually get to that interview stage, get an opportunity to talk about their skills, their experience, and have a better shot at getting a job they deserve versus just being locked behind their resume."
This is a plus for some job seekers as well, who are happy to know they're being considered for a position at all. Some say they like the convenience -- and lack of pressure -- that comes with talking to a bot instead of a person.
There are numerous other AI-powered voice agents like CodeSignal's. Conversing with simulated agents is much like speaking to a person. When I struggled to make a simple pitch, I could hear the AI-powered sales director get impatient. And when I agreed to slash the price of the software for the procurement rep, I could tell she was pleased.
And when I saw my subpar evaluation score, I felt better knowing that I embarrassed myself in front of an LLM, not a recruiter who might remember my name.
Dynamic video -- the next stage of AI interviews
AI-powered video interviews that mimic face-to-face conversations are the next step in the evolution of nonhuman job interviews. CodeSignal is developing one now, but Sloyan says the quality isn't market-ready. "I think in another 12 months, you will have highly hyperrealistic AI avatars that will be essentially indistinguishable from humans talking."
Some employers want to collect video of candidates interviewing for roles where the applicant's presence will matter on the job, like sales roles, and feel that it's only fair if there's a moving "person" on screen. "I think rightfully so," says Arsham Ghahramani, co-founder CEO of AI voice interview platform Ribbon.
Ribbon is piloting its video component with three customers, but they won't release it to the public "until it's literally perfect," Ghahramani says. He projects it will be ready by year's end.
I previewed four AI-powered video interviewers, two of them pre-market, and, for the most part, the experience wasn't nearly as polished as the voice interviews. Moving AI avatars are jerky, the voice doesn't sync with the lips, facial expressions often don't match verbal sentiments, and some look downright strange, with twitching eyes or unprompted cringing. One avatar, apropos of nothing, let out a little cry of desperation and made an odd, wincing face to match. I can only assume it had to do with my poor performance in that interview too.
"I think we've essentially cracked the voice experience. If you experience one of these interviews, you feel very comfortable. There's no creepiness there. You're on the right side of the uncanny valley," Ghahramani says. "But the video stuff isn't necessarily there yet."
One of the most realistic AI avatars I tested is made by Tavus. Final Round AI, an interview prep platform, uses Tavus's dynamic avatars for its mock interviews. CEO Michael Guan says there's a marked difference in how users engage during AI-powered audio-only conversations and how they engage with AI-powered video interviews. On average, video conversations last longer, he says, and users tend to persist through tough questions.
For instance, when users make a mistake in an audio-only interview, they often start the session over or skip the question. But, Guan says, "if there's an avatar smiling, waiting for a next response, the job candidates would tend to say, 'Oh, let's give it a try.'"
Whether it's wise to employ AI avatars to interview job applicants depends largely on your candidate pool, says Sloyan at CodeSignal. "If your candidates are the type of candidates that are going to be impressed by or excited by your embracing of technology, then it's likely a good thing for you." If an AI avatar creates impersonal distance, you might damage your company's reputation, he says. "It fully depends on who's your target audience and how do they perceive innovation, AI, technology."
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