The Rise of the 1 am Job Interview

凌晨一点的求职面试兴起

When Tim Millard received an email about interviewing for a media relations job in January, six months into his job hunt, he assumed he’d speak to a human. When he was instead instructed to record himself answering a series of questions on camera, he felt a familiar pang of resignation—one that had followed him throughout the job hunt. 今年一月，在求职六个月后，蒂姆·米拉德（Tim Millard）收到了一封关于媒体关系职位的面试邮件。他本以为会与真人对话，结果却被要求录制视频回答一系列问题。他感到一阵熟悉的无奈——这种感觉贯穿了他整个求职过程。

“I figured, I have to do this if I want to be considered for the job,” Millard tells WIRED. So, that evening, the Atlanta-based communications and marketing expert tidied his living room and set up his laptop. The email had left the timing for the interview open-ended, and he figured he might as well get it done as soon as possible. “What else was I going to do at 9:30 at night?” “我想，如果想获得这个工作机会，我就必须这么做，”米拉德告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志。于是那天晚上，这位常驻亚特兰大的传播与营销专家整理好客厅，架设好笔记本电脑。邮件中没有规定面试时间，他心想不如尽快完成。“晚上九点半，我还能干什么呢？”

The questions were pretty standard for the role. How would Millard pitch a story to the media? How would he cultivate relationships with local journalists? But the setup was bizarre. He sat in front of his laptop, watching as a question popped up on the screen. He had roughly half a minute to think about his response. 面试问题对于该职位来说相当常规。米拉德会如何向媒体推介报道？他将如何与当地记者建立关系？但这种形式非常怪异。他坐在笔记本电脑前，看着屏幕上弹出的问题，大约有半分钟的时间来构思回答。

“Once the 30 seconds was up, ‘ding!’ Now you have two minutes to record your answer,” Millard said. “It felt so out of this world.” “30秒一过，‘叮！’现在你有两分钟时间录制你的回答，”米拉德说，“这感觉太超现实了。”

Millard received an automated rejection email in March. But the experience unknowingly wedged him into a trend currently reshaping the modern job search. As automated video interviews and AI become a bigger part of the recruitment process, so do late-night interviews. 三月，米拉德收到了一封自动拒信。但他无意中参与了一项正在重塑现代求职方式的趋势。随着自动化视频面试和人工智能在招聘流程中占据越来越大的比重，深夜面试也随之兴起。

Arsham Ghahramani said that he noticed the late-night interview trend almost immediately after he cofounded and launched Ribbon, a company that makes voice-AI recruitment software. Twenty-four percent of Ribbon’s AI interviews take place between 10 pm and 2 am local time, according to data from the more than 500 companies that use the service. For his manufacturing clients, that figure jumps to 35 percent. 阿尔沙姆·加拉马尼（Arsham Ghahramani）表示，在他联合创立并推出语音AI招聘软件公司Ribbon后，几乎立刻就注意到了深夜面试的趋势。根据使用该服务的500多家公司的数据，24%的Ribbon AI面试发生在当地时间晚上10点到凌晨2点之间。对于他的制造业客户，这一比例更是高达35%。

“This is a genuinely new option for people,” Ghahramani says. Many parents can’t sacrifice 30 minutes until the clock strikes 10 pm. Same for employees paid hourly, or those who are tied up working their current jobs on a noisy factory floor or kitchen. “Some people are very constrained in their options of when they can interview and how they can interview.” “这对人们来说是一个真正的新选择，”加拉马尼说。许多父母在晚上10点之前根本抽不出30分钟。按小时计薪的员工，或者在嘈杂的工厂车间或厨房里忙于当前工作的人也是如此。“有些人对于何时面试以及如何面试的选择非常受限。”

Ribbon isn’t the only platform charting the rise in late-night interviews. Hiring platform Greenhouse says that roughly 15 to 20 percent of candidates interviewed by its voice agent now schedule an interview at night. Ribbon并不是唯一记录到深夜面试增长的平台。招聘平台Greenhouse表示，目前约有15%到20%的候选人选择在夜间进行语音代理面试。

Ophir Samson, who became head of Greenhouse’s voice AI division when the company acquired his startup in May, tells WIRED that he doesn’t think artificial intelligence should replace human interviews. Which is good, because applicants are currently extremely skeptical of AI interviews. 奥菲尔·萨姆森（Ophir Samson）在今年五月公司收购其初创企业后，担任了Greenhouse语音AI部门的负责人。他告诉《连线》，他认为人工智能不应取代人类面试。这很好，因为求职者目前对AI面试持极度怀疑态度。

While a Greenhouse survey in May found that nearly two-thirds of job applicants have been interviewed by an AI agent, up 13 points over six months, most people aren’t particularly excited about this development. Thirty-eight percent of American candidates told Greenhouse that they had withdrawn from a hiring process rather than be interviewed by an AI. Another 12 percent said they’d drop out if an AI interview was required. 虽然Greenhouse五月份的一项调查发现，近三分之二的求职者曾接受过AI代理面试，比六个月前上升了13个百分点，但大多数人对这一进展并不感到兴奋。38%的美国候选人告诉Greenhouse，他们宁愿退出招聘流程也不愿接受AI面试。另有12%的人表示，如果必须进行AI面试，他们会选择放弃。

One of the major stressors for applicants is the lack of transparency on how the footage will be used. Can AI reject them outright because they fail to say a certain buzzword? 求职者的主要压力来源之一是视频资料的使用缺乏透明度。AI会因为他们没说出某个流行词而直接拒绝他们吗？

While different employers and services vary, the typical AI or automated video interview is evaluated using a rubric that varies from job to job. A welder might be asked about certain technical skills or certifications in a Ribbon interview, Ghahramani says, while a sales role might include an “enthusiasm” score. AI analyzes footage of the interview to evaluate how well the candidate fits the rubric, and assigns them a score. The score is passed along to the recruiter, along with footage of the interview—though, realistically, many of the interviews go unwatched by humans. 虽然不同的雇主和服务有所不同，但典型的AI或自动化视频面试是根据针对不同职位制定的评分标准进行评估的。加拉马尼说，在Ribbon的面试中，焊工可能会被问及某些技术技能或证书，而销售职位可能包含“热情”评分。AI会分析面试视频，评估候选人与标准的契合度，并给出一个分数。该分数连同面试视频一起传给招聘人员——尽管实际上，许多面试视频根本无人观看。

Samson describes Greenhouse’s approach to the AI interview as a sort of résumé add-on, a tool that can identify high-scoring candidates who would have otherwise been lost in the deluge of applications. He doesn’t see the AI interview as a choice between human and robot, but a choice between being ghosted and improving the chance of actually speaking to a human interviewer in the next round. 萨姆森将Greenhouse的AI面试方法描述为一种简历补充，一种能够识别高分候选人的工具，否则这些候选人可能会淹没在海量的申请中。他认为AI面试不是在人类和机器人之间做选择，而是在“被无视”和“增加进入下一轮与真人面试官对话的机会”之间做选择。

“It’s a shitty time to be a candidate,” Samson says. “Your résumé goes into a black hole. You’re competing with thousands of candidates that are all using AI to write their résumés. So, good candidates can’t stand out.” “现在做求职者太糟糕了，”萨姆森说。“你的简历进入了一个黑洞。你正在与成千上万同样使用AI撰写简历的候选人竞争。所以，优秀的候选人无法脱颖而出。”

That assessment seems to be in line with Millard’s experience. A year after losing his job, he’s still searching. The process has been so emotionally devastating that it inspired Millard to write a one-man show, After Careful Consideration, which debuted at the Atlanta Fringe Festival in May. 这一评估似乎与米拉德的经历不谋而合。失业一年后，他仍在寻找工作。这个过程对他造成了巨大的情感打击，以至于他创作了一部独角戏《经过慎重考虑》（After Careful Consideration），并于五月在亚特兰大边缘艺术节（Atlanta Fringe Festival）首演。

When Millard signed on for his late-night interview in January, he wasn’t marveling at the convenience. He just wanted to get “this godawful thing done.” 当米拉德在一月份参加那场深夜面试时，他并没有感叹其便利性。他只是想尽快完成“这件该死的事情”。

“In today’s job market,” Millard says, “it feels like if you are going to scream, you’re going to scream into the void. And nobody is going to hear you.” “在今天的就业市场上，”米拉德说，“感觉就像如果你想尖叫，你只能对着虚空尖叫。而且没有人会听到你的声音。”