Elon Musk’s xAI cofounder calls out cheating interviewee—and now employers are outing the AI tools being abused by savvy job seekers

With most interviews today conducted virtually, bluffing your way through the job interview has never been easier.  

Instead of stumbling through tough interview questions, hopeful new hires are sneakily typing them into AI and then reading responses from the side of their screen, as one tech CEO recently revealed on X.

Greg Yang, one of 12 co-founders at Elon Musk’s xAI venture, said a “candidate tried to use Claude during the interview, but it was way too obvious.”

caught someone cheating in my interview today, for the first time (that I know of)

I wasn’t even mad. Just very curious how do people cheat in interviews these days

So we had a nice chat at the end where they taught me all the tricks.

The most surprising thing: a rando Chinese…

— Greg Yang (@TheGregYang) October 7, 2024

The former researcher at Microsoft Research insisted in the post that he “wasn’t even mad.” Instead, Yang used the opportunity to ask the candidate and, subsequently, X users how people cheat in job interviews nowadays—and the responses were pretty eye-opening. 

The job seeker in question revealed that prior candidates are giving their peers a helpful heads-up and leaking the interview questions they were asked on websites like 1point3acres and Cscareers.

“Blind in contrast is not a good place to find interview questions because the users are too adversarial to each other,” he shared, before asking employers what they’ve seen.

The new AI company in town, xAI, has recently gone on a hiring spree for AI tutors skilled not just in English, but also in Hindi, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.

Fortune has reached out to Yang for comment.

Job seekers are using an ‘interview copilot on steroids’

Many employers commented on Yang’s post, which attracted over 2.4 million views, echoing his experience of candidates turning large language models into teleprompters in interviews and appearing “smart in bursts.” 

Riece Keck, a tech headhunter and the founder of MindHire, complained it’s “turning into a real problem.”

“I’ve been seeing this a lot as a recruiting firm owner,” he wrote, adding he’s resorted to “looking at where they’re looking during an interview and seeing if there’s any pause on their reply.”

“Have seen it all,” another user added. “The best is when they’re clearly reading off the screen and mispronouncing words as they go.”

“The most blatant cheating I saw from an interviewee was they had their camera fixed at their face, but they were clearly stalling and typing questions and looking up answers,” commented another. “Very brazen, it was in front of a panel of about seven people.

One employer highlighted how using AI went horribly wrong for one interviewee who was asked to do a coding test.

“Candidate used an online text editor and did quite well on the initial question,” the user explained. “However when I asked for a simple refactor they could not produce any sensible code. Then their text editor started spewing out emojis and they couldn’t stop it!”

An interviewer commented that they use http://interviewmonkey.ai—or an “interview copilot on steroids”—to get real-time answers to technical problem-solving questions. 

Meanwhile, a manager warned others that he’s caught people cheating by using the website Leetcode and is considering abandoning questions that get leaked onto the website. 

Recruiters are cracking down on AI cheating 

People who’ve job-hunted recently have probably quickly found out that getting hired is no longer as simple as submitting a résumé followed by an in-person interview or two. 

Job seekers today are often expected to prove they’re the perfect fit for the role through seemingly endless rounds of interviews, aptitude tests, and presentations. 

It amounts to hours of prep and work without the guarantee of a job at the end of it—and for those unemployed and interviewing with multiple companies, it can feel like a full-time job.

So it’s no wonder job seekers are trying to outsmart the lengthy process. However, recruiters are catching on and cracking down. 

Hiring managers shared on Yang’s post the extensive ways they’re sussing out whether a candidate is cheating in virtual interviews from asking them to share their screen to asking scenario based questions. 

One employer even said he now asks the candidate to ask him questions about the job: “If they can’t adequately question you, they probably don’t have enough experience.”

Many admitted they’ve resorted to ditching online interviews entirely—or, at the very least, for the final round. 

Just last month, Deloitte announced it’s bringing back face-to-face interviews in the U.K. to clamp down on Gen Z grads and apprentices using AI to cheat their way into the company.