When a job seeker named Conor recently applied for a content architecture position, something felt off right away.
For one thing, he got an offer for a virtual job interview just minutes after he applied, which seemed like a suspiciously quick turnaround time in today's beleaguered job market. Was there any way that a human had actually reviewed his application?
And when he logged in for the interview, he immediately realized he was talking to an AI system, not a human. It wasn't the first time this had happened to him during his job search, but this AI was particularly clunky: it asked overly generic questions, paused awkwardly after he answered them, and refused to provide even basic information about the role.
"Compared to other AI I had talked to, this was just not programmed with any company information, couldn't tell me the timeline of the hiring process, or about any benefits being offered," said Conor, who asked to be identified only by his first name since he's still on the job market, in an interview with Futurism.
He left the call confused and dispirited. And then, minutes after the "interview" wrapped up, he received a strange followup email from the company behind the AI interviewing system, a startup called Alex.
"AI interviews can feel unfamiliar, but they don’t have to be intimidating," read the message. "Our new candidate portal lets you take mock interviews with an AI interviewer. You can rehearse your answers, get more comfortable with the format, and sharpen your presentation skills — all on your own time."
Suddenly, Conor felt like he'd been used. Had the whole thing been a ruse? Had there even been a job in the first place, or had it been wasting his time with a fake listing — a "ghost job," in hiring parlance — designed to pull in users for a startup's new product by belittling them with a pointless interview?
Adding insult to injury, the email's link to Alex's "mock interview" service led to a blank white page plastered with the words "coming soon."
"It just feels like a new approach to a scam," Conor said.
He's right, but Alex turns out to be a multimillion-dollar startup founded by a Brown University dropout named John Rytel and a former Facebook AI employee called Aaron Wang.
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