This was a pretty interesting process, but I have some suspicions (see at the end). The traditional recruiter screen was replaced with an AI screen, so that was interesting. I'd never done one before, but it was every bit as impersonal and robotic as you'd expect. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't as good as a true in-person interview where you can build rapport. I made it past this screen and met with the hiring manager. They were very kind and it went well, but at the same time they seemed pretty disinterested and sort of going through the motions. There didn't seem to be much real intent behind any of the questions. But I did well enough to move on to the next round, which was a time AI skills assessment. Part 1 was a conversation with an AI product marketing manager to test my ability to get the right information for content. Part 2 was to write the intro to a blog post and then a landing page for a gated content asset. I had 45 minutes. I thought it was fine? I didn't make it past this point. I thought I did pretty well, but I'm obviously aware that there's strong talent across content marketing and that most likely I just wasn't quite as impressive as others. However, given that CodeSignal is an AI company and their whole offering is built on using AI to streamline interviews, I can't help but wonder if this is just an opportunity for the company to train their AI systems on internal interviewing data. Even if they are ultimately going to hire someone for this role, I do wonder if they're prolonging it to get as much data as they can to train their models. Of course, this is all pure conjecture. I don't have anything to back it up, and it's likely that I'm mistaken. But between the fact that this role has been open for more than a month and that the hiring manager seemed to be going through the motions rather than genuinely wanting to understand my skills and work history, it did give me a strange impression.

You have an interview with an AI, which is awkward and dehumanizing. But it's their platform, so I figured "okay." A month went by with no word, and I received a second assessment for the job and was asked about my age right off the bat, which is not only illegal but also sealed the deal for me. I dropped out of the process from there. If I'm never going to speak to a human, much less be treated like one, it's not the job for me.