AI is doing job interviews now—but candidates say they’d rather risk staying unemployed than talk to another robot

Success·HiringAI is doing job interviews now—but candidates say they’d rather risk staying unemployed than talk to another robotBy Emma BurleighBy Emma BurleighReporter, SuccessEmma BurleighReporter, SuccessEmma Burleigh is a reporter at Fortune, covering success, careers, entrepreneurship, and personal finance

Before joining the Success desk, she co-authored Fortune’s CHRO Daily , extensively covering the workplace and the future of jobs

Emma has also written for publications including the Observer and The China ject, publishing long-form stories on culture, entertainment, and geo

She has a joint-master’s degree from New York University in Global Journalism and East Asian Studies.SEE FULL BIO Job-seekers tell Fortune they’re outright refusing to do AI interviews, calling them dehumanizing and a red flag for bad company culture.FG Trade / Getty ImagesAI is replacing human hiring managers in job interviews—and candidates are pushing back

Despite being unemployed, fessionals told Fortune they’re refusing to take calls with bots, calling it an “added indignity” and a red flag for company culture

Still, stretched-thin HR teams say it’s the only way to handle thousands of applicants

The next time you get buttoned-up and sit down for a long-awaited job interview, you might not find a human on the other end of the call

Instead, job-hunters are now joining Zoom meetings only to be greeted by AI interviewers

Candidates tell Fortune they’re either confused, intrigued, or straight-up dejected when the robotic, faceless bots join the calls. “Looking for a job right now is so demoralizing and soul-sucking, that to submit yourself to that added indignity is just a step too far,” Debra Borchardt, a seasoned writer and editor who has been on the job-hunt for three months, tells Fortune. “Within minutes, I was , ‘I don’t this

This is awful.’ It started out normal…Then it went into the actual cess of the interview, and that’s when it got a little weird.” AI interviewers are only the newest change to the hiring cess that has been up by the advanced nology

With HR teams dwindling and hiring managers tasked to review thousands of applicants for a single role, they’re optimizing their jobs by using AI to top applicants, schedule candidate interviews, and automate correspondence next steps in the cess

AI interviewers may be a god-send for middle-managers, but job-seekers see them as only another hurdle in the intense hunt for work

The experience for some job-hunters has been so poor that they’re swearing off interviews conducted by AI altogether

Candidates tell Fortune that AI interviewers make them feel unappreciated to the point where they’d rather skip out on potential job opportunities, reasoning the company’s culture can’t be great if human bosses won’t make the time to interview them

But HR experts argue the opposite; since AI interviewers can help hiring managers time in first-round calls, the humans have more time to have more meaningful conversations with applicants down the line

Job-seekers and HR are starkly divided on how they feel the , but one thing is fact—AI interviewers aren’t going anywhere. “The truth is, if you want a job, you’re gonna go through this thing,” Adam Jackson, CEO and founder of Braintrust, a company that distributes AI interviewers, tells Fortune. “If there were a large portion of the job-seeking community that were wholesale rejecting this, our clients wouldn’t find the tool useful… This thing would be chronically underperforming for our clients

And we’re just not seeing that—we’re seeing the opposite.” Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers Social media has been exploding with job-seekers detailing their AI interviewer experiences: describing bots hallucinating and repeating questions on end, calling the robotic conversations awkward, or saying it’s less nerve-wracking than talking to a human

Despite how much hiring managers love AI interviewers, job-seekers aren’t sold on the idea just yet

Allen Rausch, a 56-year-old nical writer who has worked at Amazon and Electronic Arts, has been on the job hunt for two months since getting laid off from his previous role at InvestCloud

In looking for new opportunities, he was “startled” to run into AI interviewers for the first time—let alone on three occasions for separate jobs

All of the meetings would last up to 25 minutes, and woman- cartoons with female voices

It asked basic career questions, running through his resume and details the job opening, but couldn’t answer any of his questions on the company or culture

Rausch says he’s only open to doing more AI interviews if they don’t test his writing skills, and if human connection is guaranteed at some point later in the cess. “Given the percentage of responses that I’m getting to just basic applications, I think a lot of AI interviews are wasting my time,” he tells Fortune. “I would bably want some of a guarantee that, ‘Hey, we’re doing this just to gather initial information, and we are going to interview you with a human being [later].’” While Rausch withstood multiple AI interviews, Borchardt couldn’t even sit through a single one

The 64-year-old editorial fessional says things went downhill when the robotic interviewer simply ran through her resume, asking her to repeat all of her work experiences at each company listed

The call was impersonal, irritating, and to Borchardt, quite lazy

She the interview in less than 10 minutes. “After the third question, I was , ‘I’m done.’ I just clicked exit,” she says. “I’m not going to sit here for 30 minutes and talk to a machine… I don’t want to work for a company if the HR person can’t even spend the time to talk to me.” Alex Cobb, a fessional now working at U.K. energy company Murphy Group, also encountered an AI interviewer several months ago ing for a new role

While he’s sympathetic towards how many applications HR has to sift through, he finds AI interviewers to be “weird” and ultimately ineffective in fully assessing human applicants

The experience put a bad taste in his mouth, to the point where Cobb won’t pursue any AI-ctored interviews in the foreseeable future. “If I know from looking at company reviews or the hiring cess that I will be using AI interviewing, I will just not waste my time, because I feel it’s a cost-saving exercise more than anything,” Cobb tells Fortune. “It makes me feel they don’t value my learning and development

It makes me question the culture of the company—are they going to cut jobs in the future because they’ve learned robots can already recruit people? What else will they outsource that to do?” AI interviewers are a god-send for squeezed hiring managers While many job-seekers are backing away from taking AI interviews, hiring managers are accepting the nology with open arms

A large part of it comes from necessity. “They’re becoming more common in early-stage screening because they can line high-volume hiring,” Priya Rathod, workplace trends editor at Indeed, tells Fortune. “You’re seeing them all over

But for high-volume hiring customer service or retail or entry-level roles, we’re just seeing this more and more… It’s doing that first-stage work that a lot of employers need in order to be more efficient and time.” It should be noted that not all AI interviewers are created equal—there’s a wide range of AI interviewers entering the market

Job-seekers who spoke with Fortune described monotonous, robotic-voiced bots with pictures of strange feminized avatars

But some AI interviewers, the one created by Braintrust, distribute a faceless bot with a more natural sounding voice

Its CEO says applicants using the are overall happy with their experience—and its hiring manager clientele are enthusiastic, too

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