How artificial intelligence and emerging technologies will transform job interviews

How Job Interviews will Change This Decade Introduction
The classic job interview has gone little changed in the past hundred years or more. While there have been some new innovations such as interviews by groups, or multiple interview rounds, and different forms of testing as part of the application process, the basic format of a hiring manager or HR person sitting across the table from a candidate has remained little changed, the other elements simply being additions or enhancements to the process. However, we are now in a period where technology is being introduced that will bring about more radical transformations in the hiring process, including the job interview process. This paper will examine what some of these changes are, and what they mean for job interviews in the future.
Some of the innovations have focused around emerging technologies such as remote communication, artificial intelligence, and maybe even things like robotics and virtual reality could have an influence, especially for particular positions where such things can make a difference in the evaluation process. The structure of this discussion will be to look at what changes might occur with these emerging technologies and examine some real life use cases that highlight these trends in their current form, and give life to visions of how these changes could manifest in the future. Influence of Artificial Intelligence Perhaps the most commonly used emergent technology in hiring today is artificial intelligence. While the definition of artificial intelligence is a little bit fuzzy, it would typically mean today the use of algorithms and complex computing processes to gather and process large amounts of information, in a such a way that mimics what a human would do. The appeal of artificial intelligence in hiring is fairly obvious. First, companies that have to sift through large volumes of hires can use AI or similar mass processing technologies to reduce or eliminate manual work, such as the initial screening of resumes. Computer programs have been able to do this for a while – think basic keyword searches for needed skills – but these programs are becoming increasingly sophisticated. AI can also be used to check job postings for potentially biased language, or to scan competitor websites to help companies match the benefits offered for similar positions at competitors. Automating high volume tasks not only saves time for recruiters, but it can also help improve the quality of hiring by virtue of standardized job matching. Net benefits including reducing the amount of manual work required in the hiring process, leading to fewer wasted interviews, reducing workflow disruption and lowering screening costs, sometimes significantly (Ideal.com, 2020).
Other uses that AI will have include things like voice analysis, not just to see if people are being honest but for things like sales roles, where certain tones of voice might be more associated with success in selling to particular client types. The use of AI of this type in the interview process specifically can actually help to remove human bias. Given a large enough data set, the interviewee’s voice can be verified as appropriate for a given role, using data rather than the subjective assessment of the hiring manager (Dattner et al, 2019).
AI is also used to help attract applicants, either in the way that positions are marketed, in the keywords that are used in the job descriptions, or by other means (Heilweil, 2019). The AI might know, for example, what schools have delivered better graduates to a large company over the past 20 years, and then use that information to target using LinkedIn or Facebook ads, thereby attracting students from those schools disproportionally. This would be an example of a positive use of AI – automating what would otherwise be a human process of identifying the people with the best educational background for success – or weeding out students who went to the “wrong” schools, if used in the reverse.
There are, of course, some challenges associated with the use of AI in recruiting. First, there’s the fact that AI requires a lot of data in order to be useful. Smaller companies might have to turn to applications that gather AI from a larger data set of all of their customers, but then that data might be less applicable. For example, some jobs sound similar but can be very different in different industries. Larger companies might have their own datasets, however, and can use their knowledge to finetune the way that data is processed and then use those datasets as a pathway to competitive advantage. Consider, for example, how many front line associates that Walmart or McDonalds hires in a given year. These companies will have massive data sets that can be used, where an AI might track what attributes in such a worker would be most associated with long tenure, high performance, promotions into management or whatever other variable that the company wants to focus on. So while the reliance on large data sets for AI to work its magic gives advantage to larger companies that have those data sets internally, smaller companies will be able to use external applications that give them access to large datasets as well, even if those datasets are not as perfect a fit.
Because all AI is still inherently designed by humans, it also comes with biases, and so there has to be checks on any AI that those same human biases do not find their way into the AI. A fairly common and obvious bias would be a data set that shows that, when hiring young woman and men straight out of college, that the men are more likely to have higher roles in ten years’ time. This data might be true, but could build in biases that create glass ceilings for women, and could also not take into account maternity – the data could show a gap in promotions during a ten year period but no gap for twenty years. If the pre-existing data has human biases in it, then those biases can then be adopted by the AI, so that those biases become part of the hiring system, to the detriment of the company that is using the AI. It will be necessary for the human resources department going forward to understand biases and other ethical implications of using AI in the hiring process. Robotics Another emerging technology for job interviews is robotics. This is an interesting field because it is basically applied AI, using AI that is encased in a robot format. Again, the benefits of this are really that the robot will be used to automate some aspects of the interview process. Consider a company that receives a lot of applications for some roles, but also wants to do a multi-stage interview process. Something like an engineer for Google, but it could even go back to something like a customer service role, say for Starbucks.
A robot might ask a series of questions, and then gauge things like microexpressions in order to formulate a more data-driven opinion (Pearlman, 2019). Consider the many ways that bias can creep into the interview process – everything from racism to much more benign biases like when the interviewer is on their eighth interview of the day is and just plain burned out and not giving the interviewee the same attention and energy as they did the first couple that morning. Robots don’t get tired, and can be programmed to evaluate the responses to the same questions, expressions and other criteria based on the way that a human interviewer would.
The use of robotics for this purpose is quite new. For example, Furhat Robotics just introduced a prototype last year, so there is a lot of refinement left before robotics can be deployed en masse to assist with the interview process. But as this technology is developed, it is increasingly likely that at least some of the interview burden will be taken on by robots, allowing human HR personnel and managers to focus of their time and attention on the higher value tasks on their plate (Savage, 2019). Virtual Reality Virtual reality has job interview applications both for companies and for interviewees. Interviewees, for example, can use VR applications to simulate interview conditions and therefore help prepare for interviews. There have been studies on using VR to help people with psychiatric disabilities prepare for interviews, which would help mitigate their disadvantages in the interview process. Furthermore, it is worth considering that VR can help a lot of other people who maybe don’t have as much formal training at job interviews to better understand the process, and what hiring managers and HR personnel are looking for (Smith, et al, 2014).
In the days of COVID, we are also learning that virtual reality can be a better means of doing interviews than, say, a Zoom meeting. VR provides a means of putting both the interviewer and the interviewee in the right setting, rather than the home-based setting that might otherwise be used. Virtual reality can be used to hire people from anywhere, especially if they are going to be working remotely anyway (Kolakowski, 2019).
One of the advantages of using virtual reality in job interviews is that it can mitigate the influence of discrimination, for example if the recruiters are seeing a VR person, that can remove the possibility of bias. But there are other benefits as well. In some roles, the job environment can be simulated, to get a better sense of how somebody might respond to different situations. Role-playing can be useful in hiring, and using virtual reality as part of the interview process can help make role-playing more effective (Beti, al-Khatib & Cook, 2018). Conclusions Emerging technologies open up many possibilities, and creative uses are being found in a wide range of fields, including in HR. Tools like virtual reality, robotics and artificial intelligence are being used to remove biases, automate routine tasks and otherwise solve challenges that the human resources profession faces. With respect to job interivews specifically, it is easy to see how the removal of bias can be beneficial, how creating simulations can be helpful for assessing skills, and how artificial intelligence can help an interviewer to evaluate candidates more effectively.
At present, the use of these technologies for job interviews is mainly speculative, outside of the realm of the mainstream. That said, the existence of such technologies is allowing human resources professionals to explore different options and uses. This has a couple of interesting ramifications for those in the HR profession. One is that this role, which has seen relatively slow adoption of new technology, is becoming increasingly reliant on technology. In the past twenty years or so, human resources has become much more of a tech job, and these emerging technologies are accelerating that pace.
The other ramification is that human resources professionals now need to be on top of the different challenges that they face, and be aware of how different and unique technologies are being applied to solve those problems. When one considers strategic human resource management, where HR is a key business function that can convey upon a company strategic competitive advantage, the ability of HR leaders to adapt to new technologies, to take technological risks and to seek out solutions before competitors do will all play an important role in ensuring that a human resources department makes meaningful contributions to the company going forward into the next decade.

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