What is an AI interview?

Why teams use AI interviews

A role with a public apply link can draw hundreds of applicants. A recruiter can phone screen a handful. The rest are filtered on the resume alone, which favours people who write resumes well over people who do the work well.

An AI interview gives every applicant the same first conversation at a time that suits them, and gives the team a transcript to read instead of a recruiter's notes.

How a good AI interview works

• It follows a plan: sections, what each must cover, and a time budget, approved by a person before any candidate sees it.
• It asks the same things of everyone on the same plan version, which makes answers comparable.
• It follows up when an answer is vague, so a memorised definition does not pass.
• It ends when the plan is covered or the time is spent.
• It tells the candidate beforehand what is recorded, what an AI reads and who decides.

Common pitfalls

• Letting the AI reject candidates automatically. Many hiring laws expect human review, and the AI's view is evidence, not a verdict.
• Scoring tone, accent or facial expression. None of these predict engineering ability, and some are restricted by law.
• Free-form interviews with no plan, where each candidate gets different questions and the results cannot be compared.
• Scores with no evidence behind them, which nobody can check or defend.

How SynergicHire runs AI interviews

The screener follows the approved plan, which stays on the server: the candidate never sees it and nothing they type can change it. Candidates type or speak and can switch at any point. When a section calls for it, a whiteboard or a TypeScript code workspace opens beside the conversation, and the server reruns their tests rather than trusting the browser.

There is no camera-based proctoring and no facial or emotion analysis. The assessment cites real answers, drops any score it cannot cite, and recommends rather than decides.

Questions