Why Interview Robots Undermine Candidate Experience
Technology should make hiring better. Faster, fairer, more efficient. But when it comes to one-way AI interviews – where applicants record answers to pre-set questions or interact with a robot instead of a human being – the reality is falling short. For candidates, it’s not innovation. It’s alienation.
Traditionally, interviews were two-way conversations. A chance for both sides to learn, evaluate, and decide. Candidates brought their skills, stories, and questions to the table. Employers brought their roles, teams, and vision. At its best, an interview was a mutual investment: time, attention, and interest on both sides.
But one-way AI interviews break that contract. Candidates pour time and effort into responding to a machine, with no idea if anyone on the other end is truly listening.
“Giving Everyone a Chance” Sounds Nice, But…
Many companies defend AI interview bots as a way to consider more applicants. But this is misleading. Just because a company can technically “interview” 1,000 people doesn’t mean those 1,000 interviews are meaningful. Only one person will be hired. The other 999 candidates will likely never hear from the company again.
All that effort, all those hours, just to be ghosted by an algorithm. And when every job application triggers yet another automated interview request, candidates quickly realize: this isn’t an opportunity. It’s a trap. A high-effort, low-reward black hole that values automation over authenticity.
Zero Effort from Employers = Zero Trust from Candidates
What makes this worse is the imbalance. With AI interview bots, employers don’t have to lift a finger to “interview” thousands of candidates. No real conversations. No scheduling. No human touch.
This lack of effort sends a loud message: we don’t value your time. If a company can’t invest even 15 minutes to speak with a candidate, how invested will they be as an employer?
This is the same reason one-way video interviews have largely failed over the last decade. They removed rapport, trust, and context from the process. AI screening is simply a colder, more scalable version of the same broken idea.
What the Interview Experience Says About the Company
An interview is often a candidate’s first real interaction with a company. It’s a preview of what it’s like to work there. If the experience feels robotic, impersonal, or dismissive, it signals something deeper: you are expendable.
When candidates feel like just another data point – just another voice speaking into a void – they lose confidence not only in the process but in the company itself.
“Of course, we should use AI in recruiting — but only if it enhances the candidate experience and improves the quality of the hire. Efficiency means nothing if we lose the human touch.”
— Steve Cadigan, LinkedIn’s First Chief Human Resources Officer
Are These Jobs Even Real?
Let’s ask the hard question: if a company can “interview” thousands of applicants without engaging with a single human being, is the job even real? Or is it just an experiment in pipeline building, employer branding, or AI training?
For job seekers, this dynamic is exhausting. And disheartening.
Respecting Time Is Respecting People
A good candidate experience doesn’t require hiring everyone. It requires honesty. If someone isn’t a fit, just say so. That’s better than pretending to offer an “interview” that no one ever reviews. Telling someone to focus their time on roles that better match their experience is more respectful than luring them into a hollow interaction with a chatbot.
Keeping the Human in Human Resources
Technology should enhance human connection, not eliminate it. One-way interview bots may sound efficient, but they’re eroding trust, damaging employer brands, and burning out the very talent companies claim to care about. If you won’t talk to your job applicants, don’t be surprised when they stop talking to you.
If you’d rather improve your conversations rather than remove them, book a demo or start a free trial of the Honeit communication and interview intelligence platform, purpose-built for recruiting, staffing, and RPO teams.
PS.. To be clear, AI is amazing for many things, such as polishing this article. 😄
