Paper résumés, trick questions, in-person job interviews: Hiring is going old school to escape AI slop

[u/Choobeen]

https://www.businessinsider.com/hiring-process-ai-paper-resumes-in-person-job-interviews-2025-8

[u/SAugsburger]

I can't imagine paper resumes coming back in any meaningful way. You can keyword scan 100 resumes in the time it takes to skim 1. I have heard of some orgs bringing back in person interviews. Some of it is too many are cheating on interviews whether through AI tools or just having somebody feed them answers. There are some tools that claim to prevent cheating, but they obviously aren't free and I have had a few external recruiters outright tell you how to cheat them. Cheating an in person interview would be considerably harder. There is some drawback though that you reduce the applicant pool for in person interviews. Some applicants that aren't as eager may not bother if they need to burn PTO to do an interview.

[u/spribyl → u/SAugsburger]

You can still do virtual interviews at a nearby hotel or rental office or the like. Of course the employer would need to realize that too.

[u/aelephix → u/spribyl]

Actually this sounds like a good business opportunity. A proctored facility for attending remote interviews. The proctor joins the beginning of the interview, introduces and verifies the persons identity, and they have to use the facility equipment. The interviewee can optionally bring a laptop with an HDMI port, but it needs to be visible behind them next to a whiteboard and its screen is always shared. They can even make it a nice electronic whiteboard that shares as a second screen.

I swear every interview is 10 mins of the interviewee granting screen share permissions to zoom.

BRB, pitching to shark-tank.

[u/SAugsburger → u/aelephix]

I already saw a recruiter that already has used paranoia of cheating as a way to sell their services in that they ask the applicant to do the interview in their local office where the applicant can't easily cheat. It could work for national recruiting firms that have offices in every major metro area although might not be practical to interview candidates that aren't near an office.

[u/thatguy9684736255 → u/aelephix]

There was recently an article I read about a business in China where people go and pretend to work and they pay for it. I think that was more to do with being embarrassed though.

[u/2074red2074 → u/SAugsburger]

Yeah but I can't get an AI to submit 100 paper resumes in an hour. Going back to paper means it takes a modicum of effort to apply to the job, so they'll only get 50 applicants instead 400,000.

[u/SIGMA920 → u/2074red2074]

And I can't trivially drive out to every place I want to apply to or get a decent return on mailing a resume even locally despite that I'll happily drive out that long for an in person interview.

We have the internet now, hiring locally only means you're limiting your options because of your own failings whether you set the application filter too sensitively and it's throwing out perfectly capable candidates or whatever else is the issue.

[u/SAugsburger → u/SIGMA920]

Even ignoring the limitations of only hiring local going back to paper would limit your applicant pool even more. A stamp almost costs a dollar these days. Many world be willing to spent a ~$1 to apply for a dream job if that were the only way to apply, but a lot of applicants that aren't desperate won't bother applying for a company requiring them to print it out and mail it like it is 1985 when they can apply to dozens with a fraction of the effort. Driving to drop off a resume in many cases would cost even more just for the gas nevermind any additional costs of driving or the opportunity cost for the wasted time. A lot of higher tier applicants would never apply even if they were local and otherwise would consider applying for your company. If the goal is to only interview people who are desperate that's a good direction to go. If you're trying to hire higher quality people maybe not. Then again if you know you can't afford most of the applicants maybe that makes sense.

[u/Astralglamour → u/SAugsburger]

There's also faxing...

[u/2074red2074 → u/SIGMA920]

The issue is people are applying through AI now. They are getting flooded with applicants, then their AI filters it down to let's say 20 applicants, and then most of them just set up the bot to apply to anything and everything so they don't actually want that job, and the whole thing is now a giant clusterfuck.

[u/SAugsburger → u/2074red2074]

Even before AI many were scatter shot applying. It just made ATS that normally had enough hurdles to deter scatter shot applications no longer protected from excessive number of casual applicants.

[u/2074red2074 → u/SAugsburger]

Before AI people were applying for jobs that they wouldn't be willing to work? Why? I understand applying to dozens and only going to the interviews for the best, but why would people waste time applying to a job they wouldn't work even if they get a call back?

[u/SAugsburger → u/2074red2074]

For jobs that didn't require you to do much more than include a resume? Absolutely. Any type of easy apply job on LinkedIn, Indeed, etc. would get plenty of applicants that weren't serious. Many didn't even fully read the job description and treated it like those that rage swipe on profiles on Tinder and then only read the job description for those that they "matched" with.

Some that required a meaningful number of questions in an ATS would remove those non serious applicants from the pool before AI bots, but increasingly AIs can jump throw those so that moat isn't as effective anymore.

[u/morgrimmoon → u/2074red2074]

Because in many places, it's linked to unemployment benefits. For example, here in Australia you have to apply to at least 5 new jobs a week. But maybe there's only 3 new jobs in your field that you're qualified for and willing to put the effort in. So you do 3 good job applications for the jobs you actually want, then 2 half-arsed rubbish applications for something you don't stand a chance for, because if you DON'T you don't get to eat that week.

[u/2074red2074 → u/morgrimmoon]

We're talking about people applying to hundreds of jobs a day, not five a week.

[u/SIGMA920 → u/2074red2074]

Which is an issue of AI and overly aggressive application filtering driving AI usage on the applicant's side more than an issue of the internet ruining that.

As per usual lately. Still not a reason to demand paper resumes because someone can't use filtering software properly.

[u/2074red2074 → u/SIGMA920]

If everyone else is using aggressive AI filtering and has no plans to stop, that's kind of the only solution, isn't it?

[u/SIGMA920 → u/2074red2074]

Making so that instead of the shitshow only getting a small amount through, no one gets through.

That's why that will never happen. Going from some to none is not viable.

[u/Expensive_Finger_973]

I hate the general concept of trick questions. No one is going to face a scenario in 99.9% of realistic jobs where the task put in front of them is the result of someone actively looking to make them screw up by presenting the problem in weird ways.

I hate how making the experience as stressful as possible for the person being interviewed is just part of the job hiring process so much of the time.

[u/mjzimmer88 → u/Expensive_Finger_973]

LOL Oh... I thought three trick questions were to trick an AI. Like "why is it better when a car has two steering wheels?". Something that an AI will just try to answer like "it's good to have a backup" while a person would go "wtf all cars have one steering wheel"

[u/APeacefulWarrior → u/mjzimmer88]

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I'd do.

Although in that case, a human applicant could also potentially show off esoteric knowledge that a "general" AI wouldn't have, like talking about how movie cars sometimes have two steering wheels so that a stunt driver can do the actual driving while the actor acts.

[u/erwan → u/mjzimmer88]

Sure, maybe some crazy applicants will have an AI do the whole interview for them, but the problem is applicants who use an AI as support, especially for coding exercises.

[u/zoopz → u/erwan]

You mean for prep? How is that a bad thing?

[u/erwan → u/zoopz]

Not for prep, but during the interview itself some candidates will have a LLM solving the coding exercise and also giving explainations for them to read.

I know it's common to use AI on the job, and I certainly do so, but currently I don't know how to evaluate a candidate who is using AI in a one hour interview.

[u/zoopz → u/erwan]

O, ok. I didnt have that image in my head. Yea, that seems complicated.

[u/Temujin_123 → u/Expensive_Finger_973]

I've done probably 100-200 interviews of engineers at a Fortune 100 company. I have avoided "trick" questions. However, I try to find questions to code something up that people generally know how to do but likely haven't had to code up yet.

A great example is writing code to turn an integer into English words (e.g., 1234 => "one thousand two hundred thirty-four". It's "simple" but has gotchas, trade-offs (memory vs algorithm complexity), opportunity for recursion, string logic stuff, etc. But it's not a "trick" question.

I've seen people melt down and not get anywhere near solving it (e.g., you break it into tuples then add magnitude words like thousand, million, billion, etc). I had one (one of best engineers I worked with) who got it right away and solved it using recursion.

[u/anonymousbopper767 → u/Temujin_123]

That’s a leetcode problem so whoever answered it probably happened to study it.

Also IMO recursion is a bad way to code anything from poor readability.

[u/SAugsburger → u/Expensive_Finger_973]

Trick questions aren't remotely new either. The cliche of the pressure cooker interview isn't either although depending upon the company being able to handle pressure might be important.

[u/erwan → u/SAugsburger]

Yes, I remember the "why manholes are round" question allegedly from Microsoft in the 90s, which doesn't tell anything about the interviewee but makes feel the interviewer feel smart because he knows the answer. (Also the usual answer is bullshit because square manholes exist).

[u/chigunfingy]

If I run into an AI trying to interview me… I move on. Interviews are a two way street. If you all do not care enough about candidates in the hiring process to actually interview them you clearly are a company that probably undervalues your workers wherever you can. Which is a pass from me.

[u/knotatumah]

Yet this entire ai-slop problem started exactly because the hiring process is broken with automated filters now being augmented by ai and ai interviews. So people now shotgun ai-generated resumes and cover letters because spending an afternoon tailoring a few resumes is a waste of time when the rejection rate is so high.