AI IN INTERVIEWS: USE IT TO PREPARE, DON’T USE IT TO PERFORM

Never thought we’d have to say this, but apparently we do. If you’re using AI to answer questions during a live interview — don’t.

Use AI to prepare. Use AI to research organisations. Use AI to practise interview questions. Use AI to organise your examples and reflect on your experience. But don’t use AI to do the interview for you.

Because at that point, you’re no longer presenting your capability — you’re presenting generated capability.

There’s a broader question here that we probably need to start discussing more openly: where do we think the ethical line sits?

Using AI to improve your preparation is no different to using a mentor, doing mock interviews or researching likely questions. Using AI to generate answers in real time during a selection process is something else.

Most employers would reasonably assume the person they interview is the person who will show up to do the work. That doesn’t mean employers expect perfection. Nobody knows everything. Nobody expects candidates to recite ideal answers. But they do expect the thinking, judgement, communication and examples to belong to the candidate.

Because interviews aren’t just assessing whether you can produce an answer.

They’re assessing:

• How you think

• How you make decisions

• How you communicate

• How you reflect

• How you deal with uncertainty

• How you respond when things move off script

And there’s another uncomfortable question underneath all of this. If you can’t explain how you would approach the work without AI in an interview setting — how are you planning to do the job?

To be clear, this isn’t an argument against AI at work. Most organisations increasingly expect people to use AI tools well. But there’s a difference between using AI as part of your workflow and relying on AI to substitute for capability you’re claiming to already have.

If the role requires stakeholder engagement, leadership, service design, case management, strategy, communication, problem solving or judgement — those moments don’t arrive with a thirty-second pause button and a generated answer.

The strongest candidates don’t have perfect responses. They talk honestly about what worked. What failed. What they learned. What they’d do differently now. They can answer follow-up questions naturally because they’re speaking from experience, not prediction.

Particularly across social impact, not-for-profit and purpose-driven organisations, authenticity still matters. Trust matters. Integrity matters.

And if employers can’t trust that the interview reflects your actual capability, it raises a difficult question- what exactly are they hiring?

Preparation is smart. Research is expected. Practice is encouraged. But the interview itself should still be yours.