Internal docs reveal how Google is shaking up its interview process with AI

AI is changing how Google employees work — and how Google hires them.

The company has been testing several AI-related changes to its hiring process for software engineers, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider.

These changes, which Google has been rolling out in phases throughout this year, include allowing the use of AI in coding interviews and permitting interviewers to use Gemini to give candidates feedback.

Many engineers are also now expected to show some degree of AI fluency as a bare minimum, the documents show.

In May, Business Insider reported that Google was piloting ways to integrate AI into the interview process with a small handful of orgs.

This included a new “code comprehension” interview in which candidates are assessed on AI fluency and prompt engineering.

Candidates can also use Google’s Gemini AI as an assistant during the interview.

The new formats have since been rolled out more broadly across the company, according to the internal documents.

However, a spokesperson said they were still considered to be in the pilot phase for now. “We’re piloting updates to our interview process for software engineers, including evaluating for AI fluency, to be more reflective of how our teams are operating,” Brian Ong, vice president of recruiting at Google, told Business Insider in a statement.

Like other companies, Google is adapting its hiring process to keep pace with the huge transformation AI is having on software engineering.

As developers increasingly rely on AI coding assistants, hiring companies want to know how competent they are with these tools.

In April, Google said that three-quarters of new code created at the company is generated by AI and reviewed by humans, a trend that has since continued across the tech industry.

Google has said that its employees are increasingly using the company’s own Gemini models to both improve other Google products and to build the next generation of Gemini.

The documents say that for some roles, including software engineering, AI fluency and AI product integration are now used as measures of a candidate’s abilities.

A Google spokesperson said that AI fluency is a requirement for all software engineering jobs, while AI product integration is required for most roles outside entry-level positions.

Google is also piloting the use of Gemini for interview transcription and note-taking in some job interviews conducted via the company’s videoconferencing platform, Google Meet, one document shows.

Google wants to speed up the feedback process using AI, too.

The same document states that Google is working to enable interviewers to use Gemini to draft role-tailored feedback.

As Google builds out this new interview system, employees were told they may be asked to participate in some of the pilots — but were warned against using AI tools to generate their own interviewing “solutions.” “Do not use GenAI or LLMs to create your own standalone solutions or agents for hiring or interviewing use cases,” the document states, referring to large language models.

Contact this reporter via email at hlangley@businessinsider.com or Signal at hughlangley.01.

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