I’ll be hiring summer students soon. While discussing with a work colleague, she casually asked if any of my interviewees had used ChatGPT during an interview yet. Though not entirely shocked, I felt surprised she noticed. She told me it was really obvious because the candidate paused for some questions, then looked as though he was reading something. To be thorough, she plugged a similar prompt as the interview question into ChatGPT on her smartphone during the interview. Mere seconds later she had something pop up eerily similar to the candidate’s response. I was impressed with her detection skills and quick thinking to try out the interview question herself in ChatGPT.
A few changes have made this sort of practice possible. First of all is the wide-spread and easy-access to generate AI solutions, many of which are free. Secondly, many interviews are now virtual making it easy to mask this kind of activity. In my interviews, as with many, I allow the candidates time to take notes and reflect, if needed, before answering a question. It’s now an accepted practice to take notes digitally, rather than with pen and paper. It could be tricky to know if the notes are going directly into ChatGPT (or other) as a prompt!
To set up, the candidate would need to provide ChatGPT with their resume, job posting, and company website prior to the interview. This would probably ensure enough background and context for some polished and prepared sounding answers. For example, a common interview question is to ask candidates what they know about the company. This is easy question only requires the candidate to spend a few minutes reviewing the website. What I find interesting is hearing about which details stuck out to the candidate, or maybe sparked their interest. However, now I wouldn’t know if a candidate’s answer was a ChatGPT generated summary of the organization, or if they did the work themselves.
Is this a time saver? Or are they short changing them selves?
I can usually detect ChatGPT generated cover letters and resumes. However, I’m not confident about my abilities to spot this happening live in an interview. I suppose I’ll have to wait until a candidate makes it obvious. Then I’ll have something to watch for in future interviews.