Employed Jobseekers Abandon AI Interview Processes, Survey Finds

Nearly three in ten jobseekers who already hold a job have pulled out of a hiring process because it included an AI interview, according to research by Use.AI reported by TechRadar. The survey covered people seeking work in the UK, US, Canada, the European Union and Latin America.

Among respondents who were out of work, only 14% left a recruitment process for the same reason. Use.AI said the gap between the two groups appeared in every region it studied, even though the exact percentages varied from place to place. The company surveyed 6,731 people in total.

The findings suggest that whether a candidate will sit through an automated interview depends on how much they need the job and what other choices they have. Use.AI pointed to financial security and alternative options as factors in that decision.

Matthew Freire, Managing Director of Use.AI, said employers already put effort into checking that their screening tools judge candidates fairly. In his view, they should take a similar interest in which applicants agree to enter those systems at all. He suggested that giving candidates a path to a human interviewer would let companies test whether the format itself shapes who stays in the running.

Automated filtering is now common at the start of the hiring process, with applications screened before a person sees them. Some employers go further and hand the interview itself to in-house or third-party AI interviewers, and some recruitment agencies use AI interviewers as well.

The setup can be awkward for applicants who read body language and facial cues. Building rapport with the people across the table is often part of a successful interview, and that is not possible when the questions come from software rather than a person. A conversational model can look polished and deliver prepared questions, but the exchange amounts to structured form-filling and says nothing about how well someone forms working relationships.

Dropping hiring specialists and experienced staff from interviews may cut costs at first. Use.AI's numbers raise the question of whether companies that rely on automated interviews lose candidates they would otherwise have hired.