Meta to Let Candidates Use AI During Job Interviews

In a recent development, Meta has announced that it will let candidates use AI assistants in job interviews, including some coding job applicants.

According to the internal Meta communications, the company has also invited its present employees to participate in a “mock AI-enabled interview.”

Meta’s move signals a broader trend in Silicon Valley, where tech giants are increasingly expecting software engineers to use AI in their jobs.

The company is looking for employees who can effectively collaborate with AI tools, marking a shift in the required skillset for coding roles.

Earlier this month, Meta’s internal message board posted that “Meta is building a new kind of coding interview where candidates get to use an AI assistant. This is more like the environment that our future engineers will be working in, and also makes LLM-based cheating less viable.”

“If you’d like to have a mock AI-assisted interview, please register on the sheet. Questions are still being worked out; feedback from you will influence the future of interviewing at Meta” post Further read.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has explicitly stated it several times during publicly released podcast interviews that he is not only encouraging the company’s software engineers to utilize AI in their work, but he is also anticipating that AI will soon take over the coding world.

Meta’s AI-Powered Coding Vision

Zuckerberg is forecasting that in 2025, AI will be able to match the level of a mid-level engineer who can write code, and allow human engineers to do more creative work.

• In the next 12 to 18 months, he expects most of the code for AI projects to be written by AI itself.
•  This change will allow human engineers to be preoccupied with high-level guidance and innovation problem-solving, as AI takes care of more repetitive coding work.

 

Effect on Recruitment and Interviews

•  AI-powered interviews are already being experimented with by Meta, where candidates can employ AI assistants during coding interviews.
• Zuckerberg has envisioned “vibecoding,” where engineers control AI coding agents instead of coding themselves.
• Other firms, such as Anthropic, have been slower to follow, with some even prohibiting AI use during interviews.³

Concerns and Controversies

• Veteran software engineers are concerned that future generations of coders will be too dependent on AI tools, not having the ability to decode AI-written code.
• Certain AI tools claim to enable candidates to secretly use AI in coding interviews, indicating the controversy surrounding this topic.
• Zuckerberg’s AI-driven engineering vision makes one wonder about the future of human engineers and the competencies they’ll require to thrive.