7 ms·

I recently conducted an interview for a position on my team and noticed that whenever I asked a question, the person being interviewed would give me a decent re

I recently conducted an interview for a position on my team and noticed that whenever I asked a question, the person being interviewed would give me a decent reply. But then whenever I asked a followup, the person started every followup answer with something like "I apologize if my responses are not meeting your expectations". About halfway through it clicked that this person was just typing whatever I asked them into ChatGPT and then reciting me the answer :(

wkat4242 3y ago
You do interviews over chat??? I've never seen that. Weird of the person to just pipe in ChatGPT but conducting an interview without video is also weird IMO.
- goatlover 3y ago
  Also weird that they just repeated back exactly ChatGPT. How lazy can you be?
  - jojobas 3y ago
    You'd be surprised. After all, if we were not lazy we'd be still digging the ground with our bare hands. "How do I get X while doing less work" is a kind of laze that defines human.
    - lukifer 3y ago
      The engineer’s three virtues: Laziness, Impatience, Hubris https://wiki.c2.com/?LazinessImpatienceHubris https://wiki.c2.com/?LazinessImpatienceHubris
      - hef19898 3y ago
        laziness can be a good thing! Real lazy people put in a lot of effort to achieve the same outcome working less!
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        Sounds as though you've read the page before.
        WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
        Procrastination too. I've had things go off the rails because procrastination wasn't allowed to manifest opportunities.
    - red75prime 3y ago
      > "How do I get X while doing less work" And we'd still be using neanderthal tools if everyone just copy-pasted previous work.
  - sn41 3y ago
    Reminds me of Ron Burgundy!
    - cromulent 3y ago
      Absolutely. Reminded me of Chris Pratt's famous P&R flu scene ad lib "Leslie, I typed your symptoms into the thing up here and it says you could have network connectivity problems".
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Many years ago I had someone copy and paste two pages from an Oracle manual, complete with formatting, in response to an e-mailed screening question about MySQL that required a one line answer. It was just an initial screening where we had relatively low expectations and halfway expected a lot of people to search - letting a few too many people through was ok, we just wanted to whittle down the pool. But after that we realised the screening worked even better when we input random sentences from the answers into Google and used it to weed out the people who were not just dishonest enough to give a verbatim answer from somewhere without disclosing it, but who very often did so in ways that meant they got it horribly wrong. E.g. another example was the guy who copied and pasted a forum post. Not only was the answer wrong, but it was followed on the forum by a large number of responses from other people explaining why it was wrong.
- derealized 3y ago
  Automattic does this. https://automattic.com/how-we-hire/ https://automattic.com/how-we-hire/
  - LordDragonfang 3y ago
    Y'know, that's surprisingly on-brand for the company that owns tumblr, a website full of socially anxious introverts who would rather perish than make a phone call.
    - derealized 3y ago
      That's me! https://imgur.com/a/Zbv5da8 https://imgur.com/a/Zbv5da8
    - Kiro 3y ago
      Anyone who does not choose death over picking up the phone is a true psychopath.
- thenewarrakis 3y ago
  No, it was over video. The person was verbally reciting whatever ChatGPT gave to them. Their answers were verbally "I apologize for any inaccuracies, blah blah blah".
  - djur 3y ago
    They were typing in your questions? That must have been pretty slow and obvious.
    - thenewarrakis 3y ago
      Typing during an interview is pretty common since many people (interviewers and interviewees alike) take notes during interviews, so the typing alone didn't stand out as unusual.
    - shagie 3y ago
      There's a button on ChatGPT in my iPhone app that allows me to switch it to microphone mode rather than needing to type it. An off screen tap and you can get the results. I'm sure that some people have hooked up the whisper model so that it can tap a desktop audio out and feed ChatGPT too.
    - jozvolskyef 3y ago
      I once concluded an interview with a candidate who was rather conspicuously engaged in clandestine typing, subsequently rectifying their previously incorrect answers. I suspected they were resorting to Google, given this was before ChatGPT came out. Much to my surprise, they ended up landing the job.
      - metadat 3y ago
        They got hired even though you said "no"? That sounds extremely unusual, typically employers of SDE types are cautious this way.
        jozvolskyef 3y ago
tayo42 3y ago
How are people like this getting interviews and my resume goes to some black hole...
- eru 3y ago
  There probability of getting an interview might still be lower than your probability.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I assume they just send out a million resumes. If you do thing correctly you might have a 10x chance, per resume sent, or getting an interview. So they send 100x as many. This is possible because they are putting in 1/1000’th of the effort.
sublinear 3y ago
Interviews are more of an art than a science. I try to keep it conversational and open-ended. If I sense something amiss, my opening is simply for them to tell me about themselves with no further context or direction. Normal candidates will start asking me what I want to know as they trickle out the things they're most proud of. They'll ramble for a bit and then eventually I will pull on some threads they gave to get the ball rolling. Bad candidates will either freeze, start reading their resume to me, not talk about work, or just start saying nonsense. Maybe all of the above. I give an extra shot to those who freeze by giving them a nudge, but I wrap it up immediately with the rest.
- l33t233372 3y ago
  I’m wondering how differentiate: > “ start reading their resume to me […] or just start saying nonsense” From: > “ trickle out the things they're most proud of. They'll ramble for a bit” Generally rambling and nonsense are similar, and resumes contain trickles of things that people are most proud of.
  - sublinear 3y ago
    "Reading their resume" means not giving me more info beyond what's literally in their resume. Example: "Oh well I've worked with React before. It was an interesting project. It was for an ecommerce project. (endless silence after)" "Start saying nonsense" means they're just making things up. Example: "So yeah I've used git before. It's a cool programming language. It reminds me of C. I love programming."
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      I’m always mildly confused by the question. Makes me wonder if you read my resume. Still, I ask the question in more or less the same way during interviews. How people respond is more interesting than what they respond with.
      - sublinear 3y ago
SgtBaker 3y ago
Did you not ask "Why are you sounding like chatGPT, are you actually reading straight off the prompt?" Interviews go both ways
- dahhowl 3y ago
  The point being? As an interviewer you want to avoid being confrontational with your candidates. It's not helpful if they're good candidates, it's not helpful if they're bad-faith candidates like this one (they might be looking for some slip up on your side which makes the interview "illegal" and cause for them to sue your company), it's not helpful if they're simply not fit for the job (but in good-faith) as you don't want to make them feel bad they're not fit for the job. If you already understood that they are not giving satisfactory answers, or like in this case they're just reading off the chatgpt answers, best to just keep gathering more proof to your decision not to hire them (by asking them more questions which can highlight your reasons) and finish the interview with the good ol' "we'll let you know."
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    "If you were a Henry VIII-style character but in the film Trainspotting, how would you describe an n-tier architecture capable of serving 50 requests per second?" Edit: I had to. Here's a small excerpt: Scalability: Allow the architecture to grow in strength and size.
  - pharrington 3y ago
    There are worse things than feeling bad about not being fit for the job. One of them is falling into perpetual confusion and self-doubt because you got ZERO feedback as to why you didn't get the job. Deliberately holding back information that would help the other person achieve their goal is deception, despite your good intentions. Be more honest.
  - cutemonster 3y ago
    I wonder if / think that that way of thinking, applies to many areas in life? At least that's how most people go about dating, is it not (no one says "oh you're just pretending to be such a successful man / good looking woman but you're just making things up)
lvncelot 3y ago
Heh, it's the Earpiece Conversation trope[1] in real life. [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarpieceConversation https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarpieceConversa...

wkat4242 3y ago

You do interviews over chat??? I've never seen that. Weird of the person to just pipe in ChatGPT but conducting an interview without video is also weird IMO.

goatlover 3y ago
Also weird that they just repeated back exactly ChatGPT. How lazy can you be?
- jojobas 3y ago
  You'd be surprised. After all, if we were not lazy we'd be still digging the ground with our bare hands. "How do I get X while doing less work" is a kind of laze that defines human.
  - lukifer 3y ago
    The engineer’s three virtues: Laziness, Impatience, Hubris https://wiki.c2.com/?LazinessImpatienceHubris https://wiki.c2.com/?LazinessImpatienceHubris
    - hef19898 3y ago
      laziness can be a good thing! Real lazy people put in a lot of effort to achieve the same outcome working less!
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Sounds as though you've read the page before.
      - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
        Procrastination too. I've had things go off the rails because procrastination wasn't allowed to manifest opportunities.
  - red75prime 3y ago
    > "How do I get X while doing less work" And we'd still be using neanderthal tools if everyone just copy-pasted previous work.
- sn41 3y ago
  Reminds me of Ron Burgundy!
  - cromulent 3y ago
    Absolutely. Reminded me of Chris Pratt's famous P&R flu scene ad lib "Leslie, I typed your symptoms into the thing up here and it says you could have network connectivity problems".
- vidarh 3y ago
  Many years ago I had someone copy and paste two pages from an Oracle manual, complete with formatting, in response to an e-mailed screening question about MySQL that required a one line answer. It was just an initial screening where we had relatively low expectations and halfway expected a lot of people to search - letting a few too many people through was ok, we just wanted to whittle down the pool. But after that we realised the screening worked even better when we input random sentences from the answers into Google and used it to weed out the people who were not just dishonest enough to give a verbatim answer from somewhere without disclosing it, but who very often did so in ways that meant they got it horribly wrong. E.g. another example was the guy who copied and pasted a forum post. Not only was the answer wrong, but it was followed on the forum by a large number of responses from other people explaining why it was wrong.
derealized 3y ago
Automattic does this. https://automattic.com/how-we-hire/ https://automattic.com/how-we-hire/
- LordDragonfang 3y ago
  Y'know, that's surprisingly on-brand for the company that owns tumblr, a website full of socially anxious introverts who would rather perish than make a phone call.
  - derealized 3y ago
    That's me! https://imgur.com/a/Zbv5da8 https://imgur.com/a/Zbv5da8
  - Kiro 3y ago
    Anyone who does not choose death over picking up the phone is a true psychopath.
thenewarrakis 3y ago
No, it was over video. The person was verbally reciting whatever ChatGPT gave to them. Their answers were verbally "I apologize for any inaccuracies, blah blah blah".
- djur 3y ago
  They were typing in your questions? That must have been pretty slow and obvious.
  - thenewarrakis 3y ago
    Typing during an interview is pretty common since many people (interviewers and interviewees alike) take notes during interviews, so the typing alone didn't stand out as unusual.
  - shagie 3y ago
    There's a button on ChatGPT in my iPhone app that allows me to switch it to microphone mode rather than needing to type it. An off screen tap and you can get the results. I'm sure that some people have hooked up the whisper model so that it can tap a desktop audio out and feed ChatGPT too.
  - jozvolskyef 3y ago
    I once concluded an interview with a candidate who was rather conspicuously engaged in clandestine typing, subsequently rectifying their previously incorrect answers. I suspected they were resorting to Google, given this was before ChatGPT came out. Much to my surprise, they ended up landing the job.
    - metadat 3y ago
      They got hired even though you said "no"? That sounds extremely unusual, typically employers of SDE types are cautious this way.
      - jozvolskyef 3y ago

tayo42 3y ago

How are people like this getting interviews and my resume goes to some black hole...

eru 3y ago
There probability of getting an interview might still be lower than your probability.
bee_rider 3y ago
I assume they just send out a million resumes. If you do thing correctly you might have a 10x chance, per resume sent, or getting an interview. So they send 100x as many. This is possible because they are putting in 1/1000’th of the effort.

sublinear 3y ago

Interviews are more of an art than a science. I try to keep it conversational and open-ended. If I sense something amiss, my opening is simply for them to tell me about themselves with no further context or direction. Normal candidates will start asking me what I want to know as they trickle out the things they're most proud of. They'll ramble for a bit and then eventually I will pull on some threads they gave to get the ball rolling. Bad candidates will either freeze, start reading their resume to me, not talk about work, or just start saying nonsense. Maybe all of the above. I give an extra shot to those who freeze by giving them a nudge, but I wrap it up immediately with the rest.

l33t233372 3y ago
I’m wondering how differentiate: > “ start reading their resume to me […] or just start saying nonsense” From: > “ trickle out the things they're most proud of. They'll ramble for a bit” Generally rambling and nonsense are similar, and resumes contain trickles of things that people are most proud of.
- sublinear 3y ago
  "Reading their resume" means not giving me more info beyond what's literally in their resume. Example: "Oh well I've worked with React before. It was an interesting project. It was for an ecommerce project. (endless silence after)" "Start saying nonsense" means they're just making things up. Example: "So yeah I've used git before. It's a cool programming language. It reminds me of C. I love programming."
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    I’m always mildly confused by the question. Makes me wonder if you read my resume. Still, I ask the question in more or less the same way during interviews. How people respond is more interesting than what they respond with.
    - sublinear 3y ago

SgtBaker 3y ago

Did you not ask "Why are you sounding like chatGPT, are you actually reading straight off the prompt?" Interviews go both ways

dahhowl 3y ago
The point being? As an interviewer you want to avoid being confrontational with your candidates. It's not helpful if they're good candidates, it's not helpful if they're bad-faith candidates like this one (they might be looking for some slip up on your side which makes the interview "illegal" and cause for them to sue your company), it's not helpful if they're simply not fit for the job (but in good-faith) as you don't want to make them feel bad they're not fit for the job. If you already understood that they are not giving satisfactory answers, or like in this case they're just reading off the chatgpt answers, best to just keep gathering more proof to your decision not to hire them (by asking them more questions which can highlight your reasons) and finish the interview with the good ol' "we'll let you know."
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  "If you were a Henry VIII-style character but in the film Trainspotting, how would you describe an n-tier architecture capable of serving 50 requests per second?" Edit: I had to. Here's a small excerpt: Scalability: Allow the architecture to grow in strength and size.
- pharrington 3y ago
  There are worse things than feeling bad about not being fit for the job. One of them is falling into perpetual confusion and self-doubt because you got ZERO feedback as to why you didn't get the job. Deliberately holding back information that would help the other person achieve their goal is deception, despite your good intentions. Be more honest.
- cutemonster 3y ago
  I wonder if / think that that way of thinking, applies to many areas in life? At least that's how most people go about dating, is it not (no one says "oh you're just pretending to be such a successful man / good looking woman but you're just making things up)

lvncelot 3y ago

Heh, it's the Earpiece Conversation trope[1] in real life. [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarpieceConversation https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EarpieceConversa...