Ask HN: How do you deal with obvious AI assistant usage in interviews | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with obvious AI assistant usage in interviews

I've been interviewing for technical candidates in my current role, and I'm seeing what I believe is a relatively high rate of AI assistants/overlays during interviews. The role I'm hiring for is a Sr. Release Engineer, and even (what appear to be) qualified candidates are showing up obviously reading from prompts. I say obviously for two reasons:

1. I can SEE them reading. Their eyes go back and forth, and it's clear they are reading.

2. They NEVER stop talking. Normally getting answers out of engineers requires a legitimate question with a sound purpose. I'm getting _immediate_ answers with well thought out, multi-point rationale.

So...I'm rejecting all of those candidates the instant I detect it. How are everyone else doing this?

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I'll go the opposite direction: if your Sr Release Engineer will use AI assistants (Claude Code, etc) on the job, let them use it in the interview.

The best interviews test critical thinking and problem-solving, not recall. AI makes generating solutions easier, but it also makes validating those solutions harder. That validation skill is what _actually_ matters now. Focus on that. "How do you validate that your solution is correct?" is a great next question.

I also don't think it's wrong to say, "I know you're using an AI tool, that's fine, but I'd like you to answer _this_ question without it. I'm trying to determine whether you can validate whether an AI is giving you good information."

But today? The toothpaste is out of the tube, my friend. AI assistants are ubiquitous in 2026. Pretending otherwise isn't a strategy that's going to lead you to success. Instead, it's just filtering out candidates who've adapted to modern tooling. And isn't the ability to adapt to change one of the best qualities of an engineer?

My advice: learn to interview people who use AI well. You'll hire someone who knows how to leverage it effectively, rather than actively selecting against people who do.

(And if you're asking "absurd questions" to catch AI users, you're just wasting everyone's time. Ask real problems and evaluate how they approach solutions, with or without assistance.)

I only end up with absurd questions if I am nearly positive the candidate is using one of these tools. I was proven right too - I asked a candidate if he'd ever chopped down a tree with an axe. He said no immediately, and then proceeded to give me a solid woodsmans explanation for how to do just that. I stand by what I did.

I guess my question to you would be: does it matter if they're using AI? I don't think anyone in 2026 would criticize a candidate for using a calculator, and Googling syntax and so on hasn't been forbidden in any interview I've had in over 10 years. AI is just another tool, an increasingly ubiquitous one.

Why play games? Just say "Are you using AI to answer these questions? It's OK if you are, but that will change the types of questions I ask." And honestly, maybe that just reveals that we've been asking the wrong questions all along.

I'd bet that still to this day, most interview questions test recall (of XYZ) and recall is what LLMs are best at. "Explain the difference between X and Y" or "what would you do in scenario Z" are search queries now. A lot more streamlined than individual google searches people would patch together from their search journey...

If I'd ever be doing a hiring spree, I'd give them a real problem. Put them in a position to think out loud. Not "what's the answer" but "walk me through how you'd approach this." Probe the reasoning. When they hit a fork, ask why they'd go left instead of right. Ask about tradeoffs they see. The best/real candidates will naturally say "I'd need to know more about X before deciding" because they're actually thinking through it.

IMO acknowledging the lack of information (without coming from a place of uninformed/non-experienced) almost impossible to fake with an overlay. LLMs always have an answer. Good engineers know when they don't.

Be polite. Answer questions. Conclude the interview. Reject the candidate.

To be clear, I have started asking absurd questions, and seeing what the reaction is. Those using AI assistants never balk at these.

When I do interviews, I don't ask so many technical questions. They all can read. If they don't know it now, they can read it later. They can read it from a book, from google search result, or AI. What I usually look for is the good basis and proper mindset. Analytical thinking, curiosity, good communication skills. People who likes challenges. I read it once in an article: AI amplifies. It amplifies the success of the good teams/people/companies. It amplifies the failure of bad teams/people/companies.

If you can detect good basis, their skills, knowing how to use AI, will help them be more productive and give better quality

Just to clarify - i should have said this originally - it's not about the use of Cursor or Claude at all. I mean that they were using something that was listening to the conversation, and then automatically spitting out something for the candidate to say. I'm all for the tools and yes, it's an expectation that you will be not just familiar with, but a power user of tools like Cursor and Claude. I object only to what seems like "cheatware" for the whole process of the interview.

Candidates are also not themselves in these scenarios - IRL interviews show that immediately.

In person interviews

If that’s too expensive then maybe you should just have more AI agent adoption so you don’t need to hire third rate developers.

Maybe the problem goes deeper than just using an AI assistant, so candidates don’t really have a choice anymore.

Are you telling them upfront that AI usage is forbidden? If not it's fair game.

I haven't said anything about use of AI during the interview. However, the difference between using an AI tool like Claude or Cursor to help you reason about and develop a solution to a problem, and using something like ParakeetAI to listen to your call and provide you a script to speak is huge - it completely removes the thinking from the interaction. You can tell by how the candidate doesn't pause to contemplate the question, and from the overly polished answers delivered.

Since I'm the hiring manager, I'm looking for someone who is being genuine in the interview, and the AI cheaterware is a bridge too far, especially since it wasn't intended to be deeply technical - why cheat on a behavioral screen? You AI'd your way into the reject pile and made fool of yourself in the process.

Are you asking pretty standard questions? It's possible they prepared for what they're likely to be asked ahead of time and have scripts to help them not forget.

I've done that before A.I., gone through lists of interview questions on a Google Search (or what I remembered being asked in previous interviews) and thought about how to answer them with the benefit of time to think about it, and even wrote it out so I wouldn't forget. I might only take a brief moment to scroll to the corresponding question (or close enough to that question) and answer (some people might prepare so much they can just respond instantly and not refer to something they prewrote, too).

If I don't do this, I will forget, and will stumble and awkwardly pause in the interview (I still do this sometimes, I don't always prepare that much for interviews, it can be a pain and I might not be given enough time to do it).

The preparation is not unlike a politician or a talk show guest (or especially a comedian) when they go to an interview. Have stories and talking points preplanned, and make sure they go into them and how to say it.

Using A.I. might be the more likely scenario nowadays, but are we really going to assume that people who can give a good and confident answer must be terrible candidates now? That used to be considered a positive thing in interviews (granted, I don't always come across as well polished myself, so I may benefit if less polished becomes what's desired now).

I'm not sure if it's fair game, but I recommend to say it explicitly at the beginning of the interview, so everyone is in the same page.

If I think this happening I'll ask them to close their eyes.

they'll just click the "close eyes" filter button soon enough

What's this?

I think that's a joke. You know how you can apply filters with different backgrounds etc.

Instead there would be a filter where it looks like you have closed your eyes.

Honestly, just start asking them about the bugs you once introduced in prod. AI can’t replicate that panic.

"Tell me about a time you did XYZ at one of your previous jobs."

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