When AI is your job interviewer

Summary

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Summary: The Indicator from Planet Money

Episode: "When AI is your job interviewer"

Air Date: November 3, 2025
Hosts: Adrienne Ma & Waylon Wong

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Overview

This episode explores the rising role of artificial intelligence in job interviews, focusing on new research about AI recruiters. The hosts discuss how companies like PSG Global are implementing AI bots to conduct first-round interviews at scale, and examine a University of Chicago study on the outcomes and implications of this technological shift. The episode includes a real demonstration of an AI interview, reactions from the study's lead economist, and a discussion on the impact of replacing human recruiters with AI in the hiring process.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Recruiter's Problem: The Leaky Funnel

• [02:28] Adrienne and Waylon introduce PSG Global, a recruiting company facing challenges with the traditional hiring process—especially in high-volume roles (e.g., call centers, warehouses, nursing).
• [02:56] David Koch (PSG): The recruitment process is like a leaky funnel—many candidates start, but only a few finish due to drop-off at every stage.
  • Quote (David Koch, 02:56): “The funnel is essentially number of candidates going in and number of candidates actually being placed...every step of the way, you lose people.”
• [03:23] Response times matter: Contacting candidates within 1 minute of application yields an 85% connection rate; after 15 minutes, it drops to 35%.
• [03:48] Recruiters spend excessive time just making calls, often to candidates who’ve lost interest or don’t respond.

2. The AI Solution: Meet Anna

• [04:19] Introduction to Anna, the AI recruiter bot engineered by PSG.
  • Anna conducts first-round interviews, allowing near-instant engagement with applicants at any hour.
• [04:43-05:37] Adrienne is "interviewed" by Anna in a demo for a call center job.
  • Anna asks about multitasking and gives positive feedback for empathy:
    • Quote (Anna, 05:37): “That’s a great approach. Having empathy for the customer’s situation can go a long way in providing excellent service.”
  • Adrienne humorously doubts his performance:
    • Quote (Adrienne, 05:43): “Yeah. So I’m not feeling great about making it to the next round, to be honest.”

3. The University of Chicago Study: Testing AI vs. Humans

• [06:06] Economist Brian Jabarian partnered with PSG to rigorously study Anna’s effectiveness.
  • Quote (David Koch, 06:19): “It took me three to four years basically in total to find a firm willing to partner with me.”
• [06:42] Experimental design:
  • 3 groups—human interview, AI interview, or choice between the two.
  • Human recruiters still reviewed transcripts/audio and made final hiring decisions.
• [07:10] Brian hypothesized candidates would dislike and underperform with the AI.

4. Shocking Results: Candidates Prefer AI

• [07:37] Contrary to expectations, 78% of job applicants opted for the AI interview when given a choice.
  • Quote (David Koch, 07:37): “When given a choice, 78% of candidates choose to be interviewed by an AI voice agent.”
• [07:52] Many felt AI would be “less judgy.”
  • Job seekers with Anna interviews reported roughly half the perceived gender discrimination versus human interviews.
  • Women were especially more likely to favor the AI.

5. Outcomes: AI Interviews Yield Better Results

• [08:20] Key findings:
  • Applicants via AI were 12% more likely to receive job offers, and 18% more likely to stay in the job at least one month.
  • Anna improved candidate performance in areas such as conversational interactivity and vocabulary richness.
  • Quote (David Koch, 08:52): “If you display a lot of like interactivity…or you display a high level of vocabulary richness, you increase your chances of getting a job offer.”
  • Candidates were less likely to use negative “back channel cues” (e.g., “mm,” “uh huh”) during AI interviews, leading to better outcomes.

6. The Why: The AI Effect

• [09:21] Anna may help candidates “be better versions of themselves”—potentially less anxious and more articulate.
  • Quote (Waylon Wong, 09:21): “It’s almost like Anna allowed people to be better, better versions of themselves.”

7. The Future: Industry Impact and Human Roles

• [09:32] PSG plans to roll out Anna in 80 countries and broaden her use across many job types.
  • This likely means fewer human recruiters will be needed for repetitive tasks, while remaining staff focus on analytical and meaningful work.
  • Quote (David Koch, 10:09): “The role of the recruiter is changing...it becomes a much more meaningful job, I think.”
• [10:19] Dozens of competitors are developing similar tech—the AI interview is rapidly becoming the new normal.

8. The Human Side: Adapting to AI

• [10:32] Anecdotal reflections on whether people need to strategize differently for robot interviewers.
  • Quote (Adrienne Ma, 10:32): “You know, there’s been all this talk about how AI is too sycophantic.”
  • Quote (Waylon Wong, 10:35): “Yeah, it’s always sucking up, but I—”
  • Quote (Adrienne Ma, 10:36): “Feel like now we have to study up on how to suck up to machines.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• David Koch (02:56):
  “The funnel is essentially number of candidates going in and number of candidates actually being placed right and every step of the way, every step in the process, you lose people.”

• Anna, AI recruiter (05:37):
  “That’s a great approach. Having empathy for the customer’s situation can go a long way in providing excellent service.”

• David Koch (07:37):
  “When given a choice, 78% of candidates choose to be interviewed by an AI voice agent.”

• Waylon Wong (09:21):
  “It’s almost like Anna allowed people to be better, better versions of themselves.”

• David Koch (10:09):
  “The role of the recruiter is changing and I think it’s a positive change. It’s going to get more difficult, but it becomes a much more meaningful job, I think.”

• Adrienne Ma (10:32):
  “You know, there’s been all this talk about how AI is too sycophantic.”
  (On learning to “suck up to machines.”)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:28] – The recruitment funnel problem
• [04:19–05:37] – Live AI interview demonstration with Adrienne
• [06:06] – University of Chicago study setup
• [07:37] – Surprising result: Most opt for AI
• [08:20] – AI increases job offers and retention
• [10:09] – How recruiter roles and the industry are changing

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Conclusion

In this episode, The Indicator delivers a punchy, insightful look into AI’s growing role in hiring. Far from dehumanizing, AI interviews may actually help applicants feel less judged, perform better, and stick with new jobs. While the rise of AI tools like Anna could mean fewer human recruiters handling rote tasks, the human element is likely to become more meaningful and analytical. With competitors ramping up similar technology, your next first-round interview might just be with a bot—and you might even prefer it.

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Transcript

[Adrienne Ma]

Npr. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma.

[Waylon Wong]

And I'm Waylon Wong. In the world of work, is there anything more stressful than a job interview? You know these high stakes encounters that can determine the course of your financial future, whether you land your dream job or have a job at all.

[Adrienne Ma]

Now imagine how stressed you'd feel if they told you your job interview will be conducted by AI like it or not. More companies are actually starting to do this, and the results of a new study suggest that it might not all be bad news for workers.

[Waylon Wong]

So today on the show we dig into that study and Adrian gets grilled by an AI job recruiter named Anna.

[Adrienne Ma]

Will I get the job?

[NPR Announcer]

Meh.

[Waylon Wong]

We will find out after that break.

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[Adrienne Ma]

Solutions is a company that specializes in recruiting. A company you might call if you need to hire a lot of, say, call center agents or warehouse workers or nurses, but don't have a lot of time.

[Waylon Wong]

David Koch works for psg, where his title it's a very fancy one, chief of Transformation and innovation. Though funnily enough, his metaphor for recruiting is is a very analog piece of technology, a funnel. And it's like a leaky funnel at that.

[David Koch]

The funnel is essentially number of candidates going in and number of candidates actually being placed right and every step of the way, every step in the process, you lose people.

[Adrienne Ma]

So typically, PSG posts a job online, a bunch of people apply, and the ones that seem promising are contacted by a recruiter for an interview. David says this is where the funnel starts to leak.

[David Koch]

You know, it's one thing attracting talent, and it's one thing identifying talent. The next step is you have to get them on the phone.

[Adrienne Ma]

And the more time that passes after a candidate applies, the harder that is. David says if a recruiter calls an applicant within one minute of applying, there's an 85% chance of them actually connecting. But if just 15 minutes go by, that connect rate drops to just 35%.

[Waylon Wong]

And that's why recruiters end up spending hours a day just dialing and redialing the same numbers.

[David Koch]

The amount of time they're spending just trying to connect and how much they actually talk to someone is crazy. And then those that are connecting too very often are like, I'm not interested.

[Waylon Wong]

I feel like if David were an actor in one of these made for TV infomercials, this is a part where he would look directly into the camera, distraught, and he would say, there's gotta be a better way.

[Adrienne Ma]

Yeah. And so what did they end up doing? They brought in a robot, of course.

[Anna (AI Recruiter)]

Hi. Hi, Adrian. This is Anna, the AI recruiter from tp, calling to discuss the customer service representative role you recently applied for. Is this a good time to talk?

[Adrienne Ma]

Yes, it is.

[Anna (AI Recruiter)]

Awesome. Just a quick heads up.

[Adrienne Ma]

So this is their AI interview bot that they developed called Anna, and to show me how it worked, they had Anna interview me for a call center job.

[Anna (AI Recruiter)]

Can you describe a situation where you had to manage multiple competing demands while handling a customer call?

[Adrienne Ma]

Are you talking about, like, multitasking?

[Anna (AI Recruiter)]

Yes, that's exactly what I'm referring to.

[Waylon Wong]

Nice one, Adrian. Stalling for time. Vamping.

[Adrienne Ma]

Thank you. I handled it just like a real interview because I'm often interviewing or having conversations with people.

[Anna (AI Recruiter)]

I'm listening. Please go on. How do you handle multiple tasks or interviews?

[Adrienne Ma]

Yeah, sometimes things come up in the conversation where it's going pretty well, don't you think?

[Waylon Wong]

I think so.

[Anna (AI Recruiter)]

Could you think of any advice you might give to someone who is just starting out in this role?

[Adrienne Ma]

I guess I would say try to imagine yourself in the other person's shoes and have some empathy for what a person might be going through when they call.

[Anna (AI Recruiter)]

That's a great approach. Having empathy for the customer's situation can go a long way in providing excellent service.

[Adrienne Ma]

Yeah. So I'm not feeling great about making it to the next round, to be honest.

[Waylon Wong]

No, I thought that was a good answer. Anna said it was a good answer.

[Adrienne Ma]

Nailed it.

[Waylon Wong]

A plus. So PSG Global has this new technology, and the problem was they didn't have the data to prove Anna could do the job as well as a human. So they turned to an economist at the University of Chicago named Brian Jabarian.

[Adrienne Ma]

Yeah, and coincidentally, Brian had been looking for a company just like this. Like one that was trying to use AI at a broad scale and importantly, willing to give him access to detailed data on how it was going.

[David Koch]

It took me three to four years basically in total to find a firm willing to partner with me.

[Adrienne Ma]

Were there any companies that just, like, laughed in your face when you approached them with this idea?

[David Koch]

Well, most of them even didn't reply.

[Waylon Wong]

But then, then PSG said yes, because it really wanted to know what effect Anna would have on the recruiting process.

[Adrienne Ma]

To test these questions, Brian devised an experiment where job candidates were split into three randomly assigned groups. The first group would go through the normal interview process with a human. The second would be assigned to an interview with Anna, and the third would be given a choice. Human or AI, whatever they preferred. Now, importantly for all the job applicants, a human recruiter would still review the transcript or the audio from the interviews and make the actual decision of whether or not to offer a job.

[Waylon Wong]

Brian's hypothesis was that Anna would not do as well as a human. And you can imagine why, right? Like, who among us actually enjoys calling up a business just to get that automated voice that is like, why don't you read me a 16 digit number and I'll, you know. And then you're just like, operator.

[Adrienne Ma]

And yet, Brian says, after running this experiment on some 70,000 interviewees, it was.

[David Koch]

Quite shocking or, like, surprising. Which is, when Given a choice, 78% of candidates choose to be interviewed by an AI voice agent.

[Waylon Wong]

Given a choice, 78% of people chose AI. Who would have thunk?

[Adrienne Ma]

I was also very surprised to hear this. And one explanation seems to be that people felt the AI would be, for lack of a better term, less judgy. And in fact, Brian says job applicants who interviewed with Anna were about half as likely to report feeling discriminated against based on their gender compared to those who interviewed with a human. And interestingly, women were also more likely than men to choose the AI over the human interview.

[Waylon Wong]

But the surprises went even further. Brian also found that people who went through the AI interview process were 12% more likely to get a job offer and about 18% more likely to start and stay in the job for at least a month. So it seems like Anna was better at interviewing than the human recruiters. Of course, the next obvious question is why? Brian says when he analyzed the interviews, he noticed some patterns that people who got interviews tended to display certain, what he calls linguistic features.

[David Koch]

If you display a lot of like interactivity, you have a lot of back and forth, or you display a high level of vocabulary richness, you increase your chances of getting a job offer.

[Adrienne Ma]

On the flip side, if a candidate used a lot of so called back channel cues like mm, uh huh, that decreased their chance of getting an offer. And here is the kicker. Candidates interviewed by Anna did better on all these measures compared to those interviewed by a human.

[Waylon Wong]

Okay, so putting this all together, it's almost like ANA allowed people to be better, better versions of themselves. And Brian says the psychological aspect of all this is definitely worth more study.

[Adrienne Ma]

And as for the company psg, you can imagine that having a recruiter that can work 24 hours a day and be infinitely replicated, that is seemingly less prone to human bias and pretty good at its job to boot, is a big freaking deal. And you would be right. David Koch at PSG says they plan to roll Anna out in 80 countries and use it to recruit for a lot of different kinds of jobs. And while it will definitely mean the company hires fewer human recruiters, David says the ones who remain will get to spend more time on analytical tasks and a lot less time just dialing numbers.

[David Koch]

The role of the recruiter is changing and I think it's a positive change. It's going to get more difficult, but it becomes a much more meaningful job, I think.

[Waylon Wong]

By the way, David says there are dozens of competitor companies developing technology like Anna, so maybe sooner than we think we're robots will be interviewing us for jobs.

[Adrienne Ma]

You know, there's been all this talk about how AI is too sycophantic.

[Waylon Wong]

Yeah, it's always sucking up, but I.

[Adrienne Ma]

Feel like now we have to study up on how to suck up to machines like no. This episode was produced by Cooper Katz McKim and engineered by Debbie Daughtry. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Cait Concannon is our editor and the indicators of production of NPR.

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