The AI Arms Race: Why Companies Are Bringing Back In-Person Interviews
Artificial intelligence has so profoundly reshaped the job-hunting process that many companies are reintroducing a “retro” element — in-person interviews, reports The Wall Street Journal.
In recent years, virtual interviews became the norm, driven by the rise of remote work and employers’ desire to accelerate hiring. Yet recruiters note a growing trend of candidates exploiting AI to cheat — for instance, receiving covert prompts during technical interviews.
On rarer but more troubling occasions, AI tools have enabled fraudsters to impersonate applicants, securing jobs as a means to steal data or money.
In response, companies are returning to offline meetings. Cisco and McKinsey now incorporate at least one in-person stage at various points in the hiring process, while Google this year revived face-to-face interviews for certain roles to assess key skills, such as programming.
“We want to make sure we have at least one round of in-person interviews to validate a candidate’s fundamental knowledge,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on Lex Fridman’s podcast.
This is especially relevant for development and engineering roles, where real-time coding tasks have become too easy to complete with AI assistance. “It’s come full circle,” remarked Mike Kyle of Coda Search/Staffing.
According to Kyle, the proportion of employers requiring in-person meetings has surged from 5% in 2024 to 30% in 2025.
This marks an unexpected phase in the AI arms race: overwhelmed by a flood of applications, employers turned to software to filter resumes en masse. Candidates, in turn, began leveraging AI to automate applications and craft personalized CVs.
Emerging deepfake technologies now allow not only the fabrication of a more qualified persona but also the orchestration of large-scale fraud schemes. The FBI has warned of thousands of North Koreans posing as Americans to secure remote work in the United States.
In a Gartner survey, 6% of job seekers admitted to participating in “interview fraud,” and the firm predicts that by 2028, a quarter of all candidate profiles worldwide will be fake.
McKinsey introduced a mandatory in-person meeting before extending an offer 18 months ago. Initially, it served to gauge a candidate’s rapport-building skills — crucial for client-facing roles. Now, the surge in AI-enabled deception has only reinforced the practice.
“From fake applications and bots to AI prompts during interviews — we see it all,” noted McKinsey partner Blair Cecil.
As mistrust intensifies in the hiring process, strong candidates sometimes lose opportunities due to fraudsters’ activity. Companies are seeking ways to detect deception — from closely analyzing video behavior to employing digital identity verification and deepfake detection tools.
In June, Greenhouse announced a partnership with Clear, while Cisco is testing biometric identification.
Sometimes, simply offering an in-person interview is enough to make a candidate vanish. “There have been times when, after that, the person just stopped responding,” said Cisco HR Director Kelly Jones.
