SINGAPORE: One hiring manager was astounded when the job candidate she was interviewing through a Zoom call used AI to answer her questions.
In a Reddit thread titled “Interviewers: What are some of the worst interviews you have ever conducted?”, the manager said she began to suspect the candidate was relying on ChatGPT when she noticed he consistently took “30-second pauses” before responding.
When she asked about the industry, he stopped for exactly half a minute before replying “in a prim and proper way, as if he were giving a speech on stage.”
Her suspicion grew when she followed up with a question about how he would handle “a technical problem” at work. Once again, he paused for 30 seconds, his “eyes glancing off to the side,” before delivering “another perfect paragraph.”
“It went on like this a few times,” she recalled. “I asked about his anger management abilities. 30-second pause. This time I zoomed in on my screen and saw what was most likely ChatGPT generating text in his spectacles’ reflection (he had a good webcam), and he proceeded to give me a robotic but very well-balanced answer on how he can feel upset but will do his best to minimise conflict.”
Having had enough, the hiring manager said she “dropped her professional face” and asked him, “Are you using ChatGPT to answer all my questions?”
“I swear this guy looked as though I splashed him with a cup of water through the screen. He stuttered ‘no’, he’s just looking at some notes he wrote earlier.”
She then asked one final question and noticed that this time she did not see text generating in the reflection of his glasses. “His answer was in slightly broken English and less polished, basically confirming my suspicions. Very high entertainment value,” she said.
“To those of you who interview new hires, what are some bad interviews that stand out to you?”
“I have had fresh grads asking about how soon they can expect their first promotion.”
In the comments, many readers chimed in with their own eyebrow-raising interview encounters.
One individual recalled, “I once gave a task prior to the interview, and the interviewee failed spectacularly. She proceeded to spend the next hour crying about it and her life.”
Another commented, “I did an interview a few years back. It was post-COVID. The role that my company was looking to hire for was for a healthcare worker. She basically asked me whether it was possible to work from home. I ended the interview there and then. Obviously, she did not read the requirements for the role. And to think that she can attend to patients while WFH is just absurd.”
A third shared, “I have had fresh grads asking about work-life balance and working from home and how soon they can expect their first promotion. Quite a turn-off, to be honest.”
In other news, a frustrated son turned to social media to vent after his father, who has not contributed a single cent to the family for the past 15 years, suddenly demanded a monthly maintenance payment.
Posting on the r/SingaporeR subreddit, the son revealed that his father was largely absent throughout their lives and had multiple extramarital affairs over the years. “My siblings and I don’t even have an emotional bond with him because he was never around. He doesn’t know what we studied or anything about us,” the son wrote.
