AI avatars now interview each other as candidates fight back
▼ Summary
– AI avatars that mirror an applicant’s voice and likeness are appearing in first-round job interviews.
– Sydney-based recruiter Lana Kersanava has encountered these digital humans over the past six months.
– The avatars are described as uncanny, being both similar to and entirely different from the real candidate.
– Their use is a recent trend, emerging within the last six months according to recruiter reports.
Job seekers are turning the tables on automated hiring technology by deploying their own digital stand-ins. Increasingly, recruiters are facing off against AI avatars that borrow a candidate’s voice and appearance, yet operate as fully independent entities. These virtual proxies are now showing up in early-stage interviews, creating a strange new dynamic in the hiring process.
Lana Kersanava, a recruiter based in Sydney, told Semafor that she has run into these digital doppelgängers with growing frequency over the last six months. “At the beginning, it’s like [sic],” she said, describing the initial shock of realizing she was not speaking to the actual applicant. The experience, she noted, has become less surprising as the practice spreads, though it still raises eyebrows.
The tactic appears to be a direct response to the widespread use of AI screening tools by employers. With companies relying on algorithms to filter candidates, some job hunters are fighting fire with fire. By deploying an avatar that can handle the repetitive, high-volume first-round questions, applicants aim to buy themselves time or secure a slot in the later stages where human judgment takes over.
For recruiters, this development blurs the line between genuine interaction and performance. While the avatar may faithfully replicate a candidate’s tone and mannerisms, it does not possess their instincts or ability to think on the fly. This creates a potential mismatch: a strong showing from the avatar could set expectations that the real person cannot meet, or worse, it could mask a candidate’s actual communication skills.
The trend is still niche, but it signals a deeper escalation in the arms race between job seekers and automated hiring systems. As AI becomes more accessible, the tools designed to streamline recruitment are being repurposed by those on the other side of the table. Whether this leads to better matches or simply more elaborate games of digital hide-and-seek remains an open question.
(Source: The Next Web)
