Meta to Allow Job Candidates to Use AI During Interviews, Unlocking A New Frontier in Tech Hiring

Meta has officially started testing a radical change in its recruitment process by allowing job candidates to use AI assistants during technical interviews – a decision that breaks with the Big Tech tradition and signals what could be the next border of hiring integrated into AI.

The pilot program, indicated for the first time by 404 Media and confirmed by Business Insider, is nicknamed the “interviews compatible with AI”. According to a recent internal article, Meta is developing a new type of coding interview where candidates can use AI tools because they tackle problems in real time, imitating the environment supported by the AI in which they would work as a meta engineers.

“This is more representative of the environmental environment in which our future employees will work and also makes cheating based on LLM less efficient,” said post.

This bold experience marks a new summit in the way AI is woven in hiring, not only behind the scenes, but in the hands of the candidates. While sectors companies have integrated AI to automate certain parts of the recruitment process – including cutting the curriculum vitae, the correspondence of candidates and skills assessments – allowing an AI during the interview itself is a significant difference in current standards.

Meta seems to question the obsolete idea that external assistance during interviews constitutes a cheating by allowing candidates to use AI in real time. Instead, the company recognizes AI as a legitimate tool – a bit like a calculator for a mathematical test – that qualified workers should know how to use effectively.

“We are obviously focusing on using AI to help engineers work daily, so it should not be surprising that we test how to provide these tools to the candidates during the interviews,” said a Meta spokesman.

Meta’s move occurs even if the other major players in technology remain cautious, even hostile, to the use of AI during job interviews. Amazon would have asked internal recruiters to disqualify all captured candidates using AI during the interview process. Anthropic, the IA security research company behind Claude, initially imposed a prohibition similar to the use of AI by candidates, to reverse its decision in the midst of repression.

So far, no other major Big Tech company has adopted the use of AI during interviews like Meta now – and it is not difficult to follow if they will follow suit.

Allow candidates to access AI during interviews naturally reaps the debate on what constitutes cheating in the hiring process. Meta seems to argue that if engineers rely on AI tools in their daily work, it is only logical to assess them in this same context.

Instead of banning AI, the company works to ensure that its interview system is testing to what extent the candidates collaborate with AI, judging them on their judgment, their design of entries and decision -making rather than memorization by heart or problem solving in the void.

This change is perfectly part of the long -term vision of the CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the role of AI in software development. During an appearance in January on the Joe Rogan experience, Zuckerberg predicted that in 2025, AI tools would be able to operate as intermediate level engineers, capable of writing code and helping complex tasks.

“Probably in 2025, we, in Meta, as well as the other companies that work there mainly, let’s have an AI that can actually be a kind of intermediate level engineer that you have in your business that can write code,” he said.

Internally, Meta has already started to deploy AI to rationalize its recruitment operations. According to internal documents, the company uses AI to automate coding skills tests, generates interview prompts and associates candidates with roles of employment faster. But the last movement – leaving the AI in the candidate’s hands – marks a turning point.

Although many can see a use of AI in interviews as a red flag, especially since concerns increase on equity, ethics and transparency in hiring, others consider that the approach is revolutionary.

However, Meta’s experience can push the industry to reconsider if resistance to AI in interviews is durable – even productive – in a world where coding, design and engineering are increasingly carried out in partnership with smart machines.