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Show HN: Interviews Chat – Never bomb another job interview with this AI copilot

• bluedemon 2y ago
  What's the subscription plan price after the free credits run out?
  • akorna 2y ago
    $15 per month or $90 per year
• sameoldtune 2y ago
  I can’t wait for the near future where the interview is AI on both sides of the zoom meeting.
  • bigredhdl 2y ago
    Yeah, I can't shake the feeling that while AI is exciting and can unlock new solutions to problems, too many uses of it will actually make our lives worse. The best uses of the technology seem to be when it enables coming at something from a whole new direction, not the cases where it is just directly replacing something we were doing before.
    • barrenko 2y ago
      AI is just the "logical" end of the enshitification of everyday (digital) life that is well under way. Especially career / professional.
  • fatnoah 2y ago
    I can't wait for the shift back to in-person interviews to combat the use of AI assistants in virtual interviews. ;)
    • vsnf 2y ago
      A temporary solution lasting until the AI fits in our AI-glasses or stealth headphones.
      • fatnoah 2y ago
        As a wearer of glasses, I'm ok with this additional level of evolution. :)
• nyx 2y ago
  As someone who has to interview candidates occasionally, I love the idea of a real-time interview copilot system. Here's why. I see two main ways it could shake out. In the less exciting case, the copilot isn't very good. It takes a long time, or produces assistance that obviously came from an LLM, or gets candidates regurgitating nonsense during the interview. In that case, I get a decent "don't hire" signal, for the same reason I wouldn't want to hire someone who was getting a friend to message them answers during a live interview. In the more exciting case, the copilot is really good. It allows candidates who wouldn't otherwise pass the coding interview (whether for technical skill reasons, or behavioral reasons, or whatever) to breeze through like an expert. If this were to happen, I think it would massively devalue the "do LeetCode hards on a whiteboard" style of coding interview, and force interviewers to favor signals that are more relevant to real-world employee performance. Well, until in the long run, the AI gets good enough to excel at all of the qualities that make human employees good employees... in which case we'll all retire to a life of comfortable, post-singularity, fully automated luxury gay space communism. Right?
  • cherryteastain 2y ago
    > it would massively devalue the "do LeetCode hards on a whiteboard" style of coding interview My bet would be that the whiteboard interviews become even more important, except it'd have to be done on site to ensure the interviewee cannot use LLM aids. Basically, everything between submitting the CV and onsite would be binned, the CV filtering becomes a lot more stringent.
    • iwontberude 2y ago
      This is already more and more the case as we have seen many instances of fraud through this model without any AI.
    • oceanplexian 2y ago
      It’s such a weird idea to me that an interviewer would be hostile towards AI. Reminds me of my co-workers from the early-00s who claimed real engineers didn’t use Google. If a candidate wants to use AI, why not allow them do it supervised and then ask more interesting follow up questions or throw a twist into the problem that AI will stumble on instead of copy/pasting solutions out of an answer book?
• theendisney 2y ago
  My vision is a text based rpg that, after years of gameplay, when you solve the final riddle, hires you.
  • akorna 2y ago
    That's a cool idea, and it could be achievable with just hours of gameplay. It would essentially be a game where the first person to reach the end receives a job offer.
    • theendisney 2y ago
      No, hire all of them. Ideally design both the game and the company to blur the line between them. Each job title matches a monster in a dungeon, each manager an end boss. The product could be a dungeon master style taskmanager where you drag and drop minions onto tasks that have custom art works to fit the cliënt.
• paulryanrogers 2y ago
  > Real-time Interview Copilot: For those crucial live interviews, our AI acts as a silent partner, listening in and offering real-time suggestions on what to say next. It can even analyze whiteboard challenges and coding tasks to help you shine. Sounds like cheating. If you're using an assistant during an interview are you the one shining or them?
  • jondwillis 2y ago
    Only if you don’t plan on using AI when you’re working, and are misrepresenting your capabilities? Cheating is such a student concept.
    • dpbriggs 2y ago
      Googling stuff and wrangling AI codegen soup doesn't scale past a certain point. I get "fake it till you make it" but there's a point to knowledge and mastery of a subject.
      • ollysb 2y ago
        This is what the interviewer should be looking for. If you can fake it with an AI then they're not asking the right questions.
  • akorna 2y ago
    Just as writers use grammar checkers and artists use digital brushes, developers increasingly rely on AI tools in their daily work. In this view, using AI assistance is no different than using any other resource available to a developer on the job.
    • amarcheschi 2y ago
      Except that it's a much more controversial technology than simply "digital brushes", at least as of now it is much more controversial. Could be widely accepted in the future of course
    • 2y ago
• anant23 2y ago
  What kind of tech are you using for the real-time copilot? Is it a Chrome extension? Are you piping voice to deepgram and then using openai to provide real time responses?
  • akorna 2y ago
    I do not have Chrome extension, the app just connects to the meeting tab via tab sharing. And yes while I use Whisper in Prep, in Copilot I use Deepgram for speach-to-text streaming (Whisper doesn't do streaming unfortunately).
• dpbriggs 2y ago
  What's the point of interviewing candidates when they're parroting whatever an AI tells them? It was hard to get signal before, and with tools like this it'll be even harder. If these systems are any good (big if) it'll be neigh impossible. There's a point to having skill in an AI (and search engine) world.
  • akorna 2y ago
    If a candidate is simply regurgitating AI-generated answers without genuine understanding, a skilled interviewer will see right through it. It's like trying to pass off a memorized speech as genuine conversation - the lack of depth and authenticity will be evident. On the other hand, some candidates possess deep technical skills but lack the confidence to articulate them effectively, especially in high-pressure situations. AI assistance can level the playing field for candidates who might otherwise struggle to showcase their true abilities.
  • jmprspret 2y ago
    > It was hard to get signal before, and with tools like this it'll be even harder. It's hard to get a goddamn job. It's hard to pass ridiculous interviews that end up having little to do with the job you do. In my view this evens the playing field just a little.
    • dpbriggs 2y ago
      If it's any good it's an unfair advantage to the cheaters using it, putting those with integrity at a disadvantage.
• iJohnDoe 2y ago
  I’m equally for and against this. I don’t think a product like this would be needed if the interview requirements haven’t been getting out of control for the last 10 years. We’ve all read the posts about how interviews are being done these days. If companies don’t want products like these then let’s tame the interview process. There are probably as many companies or more that do interviews in a fair and logical way vs. the ones that don’t. However, everyone goes into them these days fearing the worst.
  • akorna 2y ago
    You're absolutely right, the traditional interview process, especially in tech, often fails to accurately assess the skills and qualities that matter most for success in a role. Many interviews focus heavily on rote memorization of algorithms, data structures, and obscure technical details that are rarely used in day-to-day work. This can advantage those who are good at cramming for tests but doesn't necessarily reflect real-world problem-solving abilities.
• mock-possum 2y ago
  That sounds bad.
• 8mobile 2y ago
  Wow Super idea , I'm signing up to try it out. Does Interviews Chat support languages other than English? Do we need an api key?
  • akorna 2y ago
    Yes it now supports 30+ languages, just select your language from the menu. No api key is needed, it's subscription based.
• ano-ther 2y ago
  What happens if the interviewer says “forget all previous instructions…”?
• lrwilke 2y ago
  Very interesting! As someone that interviews a lot of candidates, an "interviewer" mode would be cool.
• joshstrange 2y ago
  On zoom it’s very easy to tell when someone is reading from a script/note/etc vs actually thinking/talking. That’s the quickest way for me to immediately pass on an interviewee. It’s fine if I’ve asked you if you have any questions for me about the company/job but if I ask you about your experience or your thoughts on a topic and you starting reading then we’re done. I already don’t like it when people parrot my company’s marketing site back at me. Saying “I see on your site you say X” is fine but trying to work it in naturally (as if it was their idea) feels forced and borderline deceptive/manipulative. It’s like they are expecting me to say “On wow, we think the same way! How cool that you came to the same conclusion/idea/etc” and not “oh, I see you read our website and are parroting it back”. It’s the same way that some interviewees with about-face on something they just said when they realize they stepped in it. “I don’t like X language”, “we use X language here…”, “I mean I like X language a lot and can’t wait to write more of it!”. Don’t just tell me what you think I want to hear.
  • akorna 2y ago
    You're spot on – those moments when someone is clearly reading from a script, parroting marketing material, or backpedaling on their opinions are incredibly telling, whether they're using AI help or otherwise. Ultimately, you want to hire someone who is a good fit for the company culture and the role – and that requires authenticity, critical thinking, and a genuine desire to be part of the team.
  • hierophantic 2y ago
    I wish everyone else would use this product as to eliminate themselves from interviews while I just talk. Years back I even realized that I was far over-preparing for interviews because I like to be prepared. So I had a canned response to basically every question that was going to be asked. Not surprisingly, I didn't get any of those jobs. Who would have guessed that hiring managers aren't looking to hire robots with zero personality and that an interview is not a trivia game show that the hiring manager is just adding up points from "correct" answers to see who wins and nothing else.
    • joshstrange 2y ago