A study, by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Gender Studies, published in the journal Philosophy and Technology, found that AI robot interviewers discriminate while making hiring decisions.
Initially, AI entered the recruitment arena to create a fairer, and faster way, to hire new staff members. This tech came out fighting with successes across sectors. Global companies such Amazon, Google, Starbucks, Hilton, Ikea, and many more are known for their use of AI in their recruitment processes. In fact, some research shows that 99% of Fortune 500 companies have adopted AI tools for recruitment purposes.
The benefits of AI recruitment software along with the boost in their use during the pandemic where in April 2020 46.6% of employees worked from home, led to an overall acceptance for being invited for an AI bot interview.
Even though many job seekers had an increase in job interview anxiety when being interviewed by a bot instead of a human, applicants also liked the benefits of the AI recruitment process: being able to choose your own date and time of the interview, short and snappy interview questions and the ease of being interviewed from their own home.
Do AI Robots Make Wring Decisions?
A large number of AI-powered software companies claim that the robot hiring managers will lead to a more diverse workforce and the hiring of staff that fit the culture of the company. Importantly, the sales pitches explain that AI won’t bring unconscious bias into the recruitment process, something humans cannot achieve.
The study by the University of Cambridge disagrees. The data found that minor details such as the interviewee’s clothes, lighting, and background influenced the interview outcome. The study also found that the AI bots favoured backgrounds with art or bookshelves, applicants who wore headscarves and judged applicants wearing glasses as less conscientious.
It seems apparent that interview technology hasn’t been effectively tested which will result in many changes over the next few years. In March 2020, HireVue discontinued the facial expression reading element of its recruitment algorithms after controversial concerns about AI robot assessment process and a complaint to the federal trade commission.
At the same time is clear that virtual job interviews are here to stay, with many believing that the evolution of recruitment will find job hunters involved in an interactive hiring process in the metaverse.
Chris Delaney
Chris Delaney is one of the leading job interview coaches in the country, helping career professionals to successfully pass job interviews. Delaney is the author of several job interview reference books including ‘what is your interview identity’
Times are changing in the world of work with an increase in remote working, workplace artificial intelligence, and the decline of low-skilled jobs. Changes are taking place, not just in the workplace itself, but in the recruitment of employees.
The pandemic, that led to the great resignation, and the increase of applicants per vacancy, which is at an all-time high, has created a demand for a new style of job interviews.
We are now in the midst of change, the evolution of the job interview.
The evolution of job interviews
In time gone by our ancestors, the hunters and gatherers, either hunted or gathered with evidence showing how these roles weren’t just determined by a person’s gender – women hunted and men gathered, and vice versa.
From a survey of over 170 ancient socialities, it was found that men, rather than women, were mainly employed as the tribe’s big game hunters.
By the time farming was commonplace, new jobs arrived. There were farm laborers, of course, who harvested the crops, but farming changed the hierarchy of job roles.
Farming created towns. People no longer needed to travel across great distances to hunt and gather, instead, tribes became villagers who sowed the seeds, domesticated wild animals, and yielded the harvest.
Towns created jobs. By the time ancient Egypt was well established, there was a need for skilled people. A bowl, axe, or pick had to be made by hand. Skilled laborers were required and could demand more payment for their skills (in ancient Egypt, payment was original made in beer and bread, and then copper coins were introduced).
As towns grew so did the demand for other types of jobs. Architects and engineers were needed to design buildings, and military leaders and soldiers were required to stop neighboring towns from attacking and stealing the crops. Doctors treated ill citizens and priests prayed that the crops wouldn’t fail.
These new job roles changed and created a hierarchy that led to a King overseeing the distribution of work and gathering of a tax, a percentage of the crops, to share among the non-food producing roles.
History of Job Interviews
The training of an employee on the job is known as an apprenticeship. Apprenticeships can be traced back to medieval times; a young person would be taught the skills of a trade at a young age. Often apprentices were family members, a son or daughter, this way a family became the experts in that trade.
Many family surnames are derived from their association with a trade:
Baxter = Baker
Bowyer = Made bows for archers
Fuller = Cloth worker
Hooper = Maker of hoops for beer barrows
Reeve = Churchwarden
Spencer = Despender of medicine
Thacker = Thatcher
Wainwright = Wagon repairer
Walker = Cloth worker
Families, especially those without children or with a growing business would take on other people’s sons and daughters as apprentices, creating job openings that people could apply for.
The industrial revolution, in the 1900s, changed the face of the world of work, for the first time hundreds and thousands of people worked together in one building or factory.
The introduction of the railways allowed skilled workers to search for job positions in other places than the area or village where they grew up.
The movement of labor and the demand for workers changed recruitment forever. 1917 saw the Woodworth data sheet – a personality test to screen WW1 recruits for potential shellshock.
By 1921 Thomas Edison had written a test, the first job interview, to evaluate the knowledge of job candidates. One test was Edison’s famous ‘soup test‘ Edison would give applicants a bowl of soup to eat while he observed if the candidate would add extra seasoning before tasting the soup.
Edison rejected pre-seasoning applicants because he didn’t want to recruit staff who relied on assumptions and was looking to hire employees who were more curious and would ask questions.
Current Job Interview Processes
Today most employers use a variation of the structured job interview. A structured job interview asks a set number of questions to each applicant and compares their answer to skills, qualities, and duties required for the advertised position.
In addition to the standard formal job interview, employers will also request applicants to attend on average 4 additional interview rounds (for high-skilled positions) which can include:
Psychometric testing – which has its findings in Woodsworth datasheet
Skill test – a practical test to evidence skill
Technical interview – a knowledge-based test/interview
Values interview – to find an applicant that will fit within the culture of the organisation
Traditionally, all job interviews were held face-to-face, with the exception of a telephone screening interview.
Just as the industrial revolution, with its big factory employers that required high numbers of staff and trains that could move skilled workers around the country, changed the face of employment in the 1900s, new technology is changing today’s world of work.
Artificial intelligence will soon be embedded in all job sectors
Remote working, allowing teams to be made up of staff from around the globe, is here to stay
Online applications create the highest number of applicants per vacancy that has ever been recorded
The decline in low-skilled jobs and growth in high-skilled job roles such as STEM
Virtual reality being used in recruitment
The Future of Recruitment and Job Interviews
2 million people apply for a job at Google each year.
The high number of applicants created a problem in the recruitment sector. Humans simply couldn’t handle the volume of applications.
The answer was to introduce artificial intelligence into the recruitment cycle. Within a short period of time, HR artificial intelligence is able to design a job advert, schedule interview dates, and deliver a live online job interview with a candidate before deciding which applicant is to be offered the position.
As with all technology, some original bugs were found. In 2018 Amazon ditched its application reviewing programme after it found that the system discriminated against women.
With 9 out of 10 companies now using some type of HR artificial intelligence in their recruitment processes, AI in HR is here to stay.
The future could see large numbers of staff, being recruited from around the globe, without any applicant having any face time with a human recruiter.
The interview process is changing
Human interviews may happen, but just not as you know it.
Is the face-to-face interview dead? Currently not. With two out of three employers favoring the face-to-face interview, there is still some way to go until all recruitment become automated.
Face-to-face interviews might not be face-to-face. The pandemic saw an increase of 67% of employers using virtual interviews with half of the employers saying they will keep on using the online interview process.
45% of employers agree that the virtual interview process is quicker and cheaper than conducting a traditional in-office recruitment process.
Virtual Reality Job Interviews
The evolution of hiring may see the traditional ‘ask and answer questions’ interview disappear.
The increase in virtual reality in the workplace will also see an increase in VR in recruitment.
The future of the workplace will be a mix of virtual reality, home working, and the physical workplace itself.
CNBC reported that: “A PwC report last year predicted that nearly 23.5 million jobs worldwide would be using AR and VR by 2030 for training, work meetings or to provide better customer service”
Virtual reality is already being used in recruiting. The British army uses VR headsets to show applicants what driving a tank would look like, KFC uses a VR “escape room” for their chefs, and the head of talent acquisition at Deutsche Bahn talked about the use of VR in recruitment: “within a matter of seconds can experience a job in a very real-life atmosphere” in CNN article.
Show and Tell
The virtual reality job interview will be about showing, not telling.
Current interview processes ask competency-based questions. The barrier here is that even a good answer doesn’t show the applicant’s decision-making processes, problem-solving skills, and how they work under pressure. It doesn’t take into consideration the applicant’s personality and how their temperaments would affect the wider team.
Virtual reality and augmented reality job interviews can put the candidate in a real workplace situation, working with (virtual) team members, and their many personalities, to complete job-related tasks. A surgeon, as an example, may have to perform an augmented reality surgery on a virtual patient creating the feeling of ‘real’ pressure.
A project manager might be asked to resolve a dispute between stakeholders, with the VR and AR characters re-acting to the applicant’s tonality, volume, assertiveness, and logic.
Virtual reality job interviews will be designed to stop deceitful job applicants from gaining job offers and to support employers to higher high-performing teams.
Chris Delaney
Chris Delaney is one of the leading job interview coaches in the country, helping career professionals to successfully pass job interviews. Delaney is the author of several job interview reference books including ‘what is your interview identity’
On 28th Oct 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebrand of Facebook to Meta, signifying to the world the importance of their investment into the Metaverse.
The Metaverse will be a crucial element in the future of hiring staff, requiring career professionals to understand what a Metaverse job interview will look like.
The Metaverse will be an interconnected online experience that merges work and life across a wide range of platforms, from VR headsets to AR implementations.
The Metaverse won’t just look like a virtual reality computer game where everyone communicates via their avatar, instead, it will be a mix of a physical and virtual world, with its own economy and users will be able to take their avatars and goods throughout the metaverse.
This video is an example of how the online and real-life workspace could interact.
Is the Metaverse a fad?
Skeptics say that the Metaverse could be a fad, and that Zuckerberg launched Meta as a ploy to divert attention from other issues.
No matter what the reasons were for Facebook to change to Meta, those who are looking at what is happening in the tech world know the Metaverse is coming and coming soon.
Facebook won’t own the Metaverse, instead, it will be open-source, just as one single website doesn’t own the internet.
Many large tech giants; Microsoft, Apple, and large gaming companies are investing tens of billions of pounds into the Metaverse. In a recent CBSNews article, they highlighted how tech companies have been working on virtual reality tech for several years:
Google Cardboard might be the most successful VR project in history
In 2015 Microsoft announced Holoens mixed reality glasses
During Zuckbergs Meta launch, he explained how the Metaverse could open up the global job market: “..giving people access to jobs no matter where they live..”
Verdict looked into the future of AR and VR, saying: “This could be just the beginning. While the AR market was worth a fairly restrained $7bn in 2020, Global Data estimates that it will generate revenues of $152bn by 2030.”
The article goes on to explain how workplaces will and are evolving into the virtual world: “One of the biggest trends in the AR and VR space in 2022 will be the use of immersive technology and VR in the workplace”
In an article on Reworked, they talk about the potential of VR in onboarding new staff: “VR has huge potential for the digital workplace as a training tool for remote workers and onboarding new employees”
This is because avatars will be able to mimic facial expressions, gestures, and body language.
It is the development of avatars that can mimic a hiring manager while testing the applicant’s competencies that will see a move to recruitment in the Metaverse.
While discussing online staff training, the Reworked article explains: “These VR modules can use video recordings or animations to simulate tense scenarios for managers to practice their handling and ability to navigate through the issue successfully.” This same tech could easily be adapted for an assessment job interview.
RCP mag, talking about Facebook and Microsoft, two tech giants who are keen to have a big presence in this future territory, said: “(Meta and Microsoft) just announced that they are partnering to integrate Microsoft Teams with Workplace by Meta (formerly Facebook Workplace), which will allow Teams users to live-stream video into Workplace groups, and to view, comment and react to meetings in real-time without having to switch between apps.”
Virtual Reality in Recruitment
In a recent article, Employment King said: “The metaverse will bring enormous opportunity to individuals who want to work from homes and employers will be able to test how the employee would work remotely (and in the metaverse) and collaboratively on projects.”
Virtual reality recruitment and training is already here.
Deutsche Bahn, the Berlin-based mobility and logistics company, in 2015 needed to hire 10,000 new employees. To help with recruitment, they would take VR headsets to assessment days and career fairs, allowing candidates to virtually observe a train electrician and engineer doing their job. The result was a massive increase in applications.
A Forbes article talking about AR and VR trends explained how Walmart used tech to train 17,000 staff in compliance and customer service. While going on to discuss the US Army’s deal with Microsoft to use Hololense technology in military training.
Metaverse Recruitment
Recsite design, in July 2021, discussed the increase in VR recruitment: “According to a study carried out by the Employment Law Advisory Services, 43% of companies that employ VR use it to help introduce new members to their existing teams.”
The British Armed Forces saw a 66% rise in applications after using a Samsung Gear VR headset to let candidates experience driving a tank.
Recruitment is as much about the applicant finding a suitable employer, as it is about an employer finding a suitable applicant.
The Metaverse will help applicants and employers find their match.
It is highly likely that future job fairs will be held virtually. Initially, in-person job fairs will use VR tech to allow future employees to view what it would be like to work at the organization by having them view the workplace with a VR set.
The natural evolution will be a live screen, via a VR set, of the workplace. Before long, the candidates will be meeting current employees, take part in a workplace walk around to better understand the company culture, and try out company benefits such as ‘cinema rooms’ or ‘skill training’ sessions all via the Metaverse.
Job Interviews Conducted in the Metaverse
It is predicted that staff recruitment, staff training, and staff onboarding will be some of the most commonly used functions, for employers, during the early days of the Metaverse.
Candidates, in the metaverse, will be able to ‘show off’ their competencies. Interviewees avatars can manipulate objects, create images, write and interact with other avatars.
Being able to physically move around (in the Metaverse job interview), applicants will demonstrate their skill set, from a retail candidate dealing with a simulated customer complaint to a surgeon demonstrating an operation in real-time.
Sounds farfetched? VR for training surgeons has been around for many years: “In 2009, a Halifax-based professor of neurosurgery, Dr. David Clarke, performed the first-ever virtual reality (VR)-based simulated surgery to remove a brain tumour”
Many recruitment processes, for high-skilled positions, have an assessment stage. Now, VR will take this one step further to help a hiring manager predict the job performance of a candidate through human and AI observation and interaction.
Scenario-based simulation exercises will test an interviewee’s skills and competencies, reducing any job interview deceit, white lies, or extensions of the truth, as increasing levels of complexity will be tested throughout the assessment, checking the level of each candidate’s abilities and knowledge.
Part of the recruitment process will be observed and assessed by humans, but as AVIs – Asynchronous Video Interview continue to be ever more popular with employers, AI bots will continue to play a large part in the hiring of new staff, reducing time and money employers spend on staff recruitment.
The 5 Stages of a Metaverse Job Interview
Much research is showing an increase in the number of stages of interviews for a high-skilled position, and the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the recruitment process.
The result of AI robot interveiwers, and the required interview stages to check the candidate’s suitability, will create a blended AI and human recruitment process in the Metaverse.
Metaverse Interview Stage 1
The initial interview stage is likely to be a short screening interview via an AVI – Asynchronous Video Interview AI bot.
Job applicants will enter the companies metaverse recruitment room and be given a short introduction to the AVI.
The AVI will last for around 15 minutes, and job candidates will be able to choose their own date and time to conduct the interview – ideal for career professionals applying from countries with different time zones.
The AVI will ask 3 job interview questions to check suitability. The questions will vary, but in the main, they will focus on the essential criteria for the job role.
During the interview, the AVI will ask each question in turn. Currently, interviewees have 60 seconds to digest the question before recording their interview answer which has a limited time capacity of 2 minutes.
As AVI technology advances, it is highly likely that the candidates will answer the interview question in real-time without a time limit attached to their answer.
Staff retention is a big issue for many employers, as younger generations don’t consider a job for life and are more likely to job-hop at a moment’s notice. The great resignation is evidence of this new attitude.
To improve staff retention, employers will focus part of the recruitment process on selling the benefits of the organisation to increase demand for the position, allowing the employer to increase the number of first-choice applicants accepting the position.
Stage two of the Metaverse interview will be a virtual walkaround of the organisation. The virtual walkaround will be miles away from a simple VR walk-through of an office. Instead, interviewees will be able to visit, in live-time, the employer’s Metaverse workplace.
The walk-through could consist of visiting work-stations, observing meetings, attending auditoriums, lecture halls, and checking out the company benefits: relaxation rooms to de-stress after a hard day in the office, or a creative space for generating ideas. Companies will also have game rooms and specialist areas of increasing skills such as a brainteaser room or access to hundreds of volumes of industry-related books, academic research papers, and company history.
The main focus of the walk-around will be to showcase the company culture and its values. Employers, by highlighting how they conduct business as usual, their vision, and current projects, can attract career professionals with a similar attitude, helping to create high-performing teams.
Metaverse Interview Stage 3
From an employer’s perspective, the recruitment process is designed to predict the potential job performance of each applicant, resulting in the hiring of the (potentially) best performing interviewee.
Currently, assessment centers use standardized tasks that gather relevant information about an applicant’s capabilities.
In the Metaverse the assessment stage of the interview will go one step further. Imagine, in the near future that a high proportion of work-related tasks are completed partly or fully within the Metaverse.
AI will be able to replicate a previous project in the Metaverse, including the personalities and potential reactions of team members. Interviewees will then be asked to complete the task which is assessed on two levels. Level skills and competencies, and level 2 how the applicant would fit (or not) within the current team.
Employers will be able to observe the interviewee’s actions, but also compare the outcome from the tasks with the actual outcome from the original completion of the task in real-life. It is this comparison that can help a candidate to stand out.
Tasks that will be assessed will be the main duty for the job role, and could include:
Project planning meeting for a project manager
An operation for a doctor
Customer service scenareo for a retail assistant
A high risk situation for an air traffic controller
The delivery of a lesson for a teacher
In the future, large employers won’t hire for a particular role. Instead, global companies will have a constant recruitment program, via the Metaverse, to search for and hire exceptional career professionals.
For these exceptional professionals, job roles will be created for them.
In the assessment stage of the recruitment process, the assessment of a task will increase in difficulty to test an applicant’s ability allowing the human resource team to find the right role for each successful applicant.
Assessment centers will test for:
Creative problem-solving
Leadership
Communication
Stress indicators
Values
Temperament
Industry knowledge
Strengths vs weaknesses
Attitude and work ethic
Metaverse Interview Stage 4
The first three stages of the Metaverse job interview will be designed to reduce the number of applicants who are put forward for a human delivered structured job interview.
A structured job interview, research shows, is currently the best predictor of an applicant’s job performance. This is because each candidate is asked the same interview questions in the same order with answers being marked against a specific scoring system on the interview scorecard.
The human interview will also be conducted in the Metaverse, as the Metaverse will be part of day-to-day life.
Some interviews will be conducted by the employer’s hologram or their avatar, depending on the job sector.
Interviewers are quite likely to receive an ’employability suitability’ report prior to the interview based on the previous rounds of interveiwers, created by AI big data program.
Applicants will be asked 8-10 job interview questions by a member of the human resource department – a trained interviewer.
Why did you choose that particular avatar and what does it say about you?
How do you decide what tasks to complete in the Metaverse and which duties to complete in the phyiscal work palce?
Give me an example of collaberating in the Metaverse?
What percenatge of your working week do you expcect to spend in the Metaverse?
How do you monitor your motivation and stress levels?
Give me an example of how you priotise Metaverse tasks?
How do you keep work orgnaised when working in the Metaverse?
What Metaverse ‘skills’ do you have?
Metaverse Interview Stage 5
The final round of job interviews will be only available to 5 successful candidates.
To be offered the position, the final job interview round will be conducted by the applicant’s future line manager – an expert in the job role/industry.
The interview questions will be focused on the business as usual tasks and the candidate’s sector knowledge.
Interview questions will include:
What do you expect the daily tasks to look like?
What is your approach to (task)?
Describe the theory for (task/process)?
Give me an example of doing (task)
If (problem) happned what would you do?
How you would you handle (X) situation)?
What would you prioritise first (X) or (Y) and why?
Give me an example of collaberating with stakholders?
The job interview process is evolving.
Over the past 12 months, there has been a significant increase in AVI – Asynchronous Video Interview and ATS – Application Tracking Systems with over 98% of the top fortune 500 companies using recruitment automated software.
And where large companies lead, small to medium size businesses follow.
Progress in creating recruitment tech that can be used in the Metaverse as well as applications for completing work-related tasks virtually is happening all the time.
It is clear then that the future of job interviews will involve the use of AR and VR technology.
Job Interview Coach and Author of ‘what is your interview identity’
Chris Delaney
Chris Delaney is one of the leading job interview coaches in the country, helping career professionals to successfully pass job interviews. Delaney is the author of several job interview reference books including ‘what is your interview identity’
