HackerRank’s AI interviewer offers a glimpse into what job interviews could become

Chakra represents a bet against the kind of technical assessment business HackerRank spent years building. Its traditional product largely tested whether developers could solve coding problems correctly. Nonetheless, Ravisankar believes AI has made HackerRank’s earlier model less useful to measure engineering ability.

Ravisankar compared the transition internally to Apple moving from the iPod to the iPhone, as the old product still has value, but the new one represents where the startup believes the market is headed. “Chakra is going to be the headline,” he said. “It’s going to be the way that we’re going to move forward.”

However, giving AI a deeper role in evaluating candidates raises a different set of questions, particularly around how much of a hiring decision companies should delegate to an algorithm. Ravisankar told TechCrunch that Chakra is designed to score candidates rather than make the final hiring decision, which remains with humans.

AI, Ravisankar said, can handle more structured parts of an interview by consistently applying criteria set by an employer, while human interviewers can spend more time determining whether they actually want to work with a candidate and answering questions about the company, team, and role.

“AI is way less biased than humans, if you tune it properly,” Ravisankar said, arguing that an AI system can be instructed to follow the same rubric for every candidate rather than being influenced by factors such as a candidate’s background or education.

Applying the same criteria consistently, however, does not necessarily make an AI system free of bias. Automated hiring tools can inherit or amplify biases from the data, models, and criteria used to build them, prompting regulators to scrutinize their use in employment decisions.

The use of AI in hiring is already drawing regulatory scrutiny. New York City, for instance, requires employers using certain automated employment decision tools to subject them to an independent bias audit and provide notice to candidates before using them. Ravisankar acknowledged that hiring is a regulated area and said complying with such requirements is part of what HackerRank has had to build for.