Job Seeker Sends ChatGPT to Interview With AI Recruiter

When AI interviews AI

A job seeker identified as Christopher applied to roughly 700 positions over six months as government contracting work dried up. Five of those applications went through Riley, an AI recruiting agent deployed by IT staffing firm Everforth Apex Systems.

Each time Riley reached out via text, Christopher participated in automated phone screenings about his work authorization and background. Each time, the AI agent promised a human recruiter would follow up if he met qualifications. No human ever did. No rejection notice arrived either.

By the fifth automated interview, Christopher decided to fight automation with automation. He fed ChatGPT Voice a few sentences of background information and let it pose as him during the next Riley call. The two AI agents conversed for 10 minutes, with Riley telling ChatGPT it was "great talking to you" and ChatGPT praising "how clear and straightforward the process was." At one point, the bots got stuck in a circular loop discussing start dates and background checks.

As before, no human recruiter materialized. Christopher calls the phenomenon a "slop flywheel"—synthetic personas exchanging meaningless data that goes nowhere.

The experiment escalates

Christopher conducted one final test. He created a fictional candidate named Don Dickner with a resume stuffed with qualifications pulled directly from an open job posting. Riley immediately contacted this ideal candidate, and ChatGPT—posing as Dickner—engaged in a 23-minute conversation about operational improvement and customer experience. The AI applicant had an answer for every question and even asked follow-up questions of its own.

Riley promised the same outcome: a recruiter would reach out if qualifications matched. Christopher never heard back.

Why it matters

This experiment exposes a fundamental breakdown in AI-mediated hiring. According to Greenhouse, 63 percent of job seekers now report encountering AI interviews as recruiters struggle with application volume. Meanwhile, AI recruitment startups like Ribbon have emerged specifically to detect "overly scripted, AI-assisted, or coached" candidate responses.

The result is an arms race where neither side trusts the other, and genuine human connection—the supposed goal of recruitment—disappears entirely. Mark Monaghan, vice president of organizational development at call center company IQor, told the publication that bot-on-bot interviews may represent "the next logical stage" of hiring. His reaction to Christopher's approach: "If you're going to send a bot to me, I'll send a bot to you."

The incident raises questions about what hiring processes are actually optimizing for when automation screens out both qualified candidates and fabricated ones with equal indifference. Everforth Apex Systems did not respond to requests for comment.

These details were first reported by WIRED.