Squid AI

With chatbots, the technical interview is now open book. Let's discuss! Two months ago, when my tech founder husband, Kyle Russell, decided to exit his startup, he began hunting for a product-manager role. Fearing the dreaded technical interview, Kyle hit the books harder than a high-school junior studying for the SAT. In the world of recruiting software engineers, product managers, and other tech talent, the technical interview is a candidate's first step. It's a coding test done in person or at home using a shared screen designed to test a candidate's grasp of the fundamentals. Kyle borrowed a copy of Gayle McDowell's "Cracking the Coding Interview" — required reading for tech job hoppers. He spent hours daily leafing through test-prep websites like LeetCode and working through sample questions on ChatGPT. The chatbot served as a tutor, helping him get unstuck on confusing algorithms. I wondered if candidates could use chatbots in technical interviews, as Kyle had practiced. Software developers are already using these tools to ship better products faster. Was it so taboo for candidates to speed through a test with an assist from #ChatGPT or #GitHubCopilot? Being a tech reporter, I asked around. It turns out Silicon Valley is engaged in a raucous debate over the use of artificial intelligence in technical interviews. A survey of two dozen founders, executives, recruiters, and venture capitalists points to wildly different approaches from company to company and a growing divide between early adopters and keepers of the status quo. "Despite the increased adoption of AI within companies," said Tammy Han, the head of talent at Emergence Capital, "the sentiment around using AI as a tool in technical interviews has not caught up yet." For my latest in Business Insider, I get into the two sides of this debate, the influence of Big Tech on industry norms, and why some candidates are dropping out of the process after they learn a company bans chatbots from the interview. The goal was to make this article a helpful resource to founders, recruiters, talent partners, human resources, and anyone who's ever spent hours and hours studying on LeetCode or HackerRank, as my husband did. Kyle actually got an amazing job without having to do a technical interview. I'm embarrassed to admit he got a job faster than it took me to write this! https://lnkd.in/gNRMFiui