Job interviews have moved from in-person to Zoom, and at least one AI company is now moving to Google Docs.
Interviewers are finding new and creative ways to protect candidate exams from online fraud, AI, or just plain old sweet talk. Winston Weinberg, co-founder and CEO of AI legal tech startup Harvey, told the Access podcast that he uses shared documents.
“It’s very, very helpful to be able to create samples very quickly and go back and forth with the projects that you create,” Weinberg said.
Mr. Weinberg said he has interviewed candidates who are good at “explaining things,” but “have a hard time” when it comes to writing answers to direct questions.
Going back and forth on issues set in Google Docs is “a really good indicator of how well we can work together,” he said.
Harvey has raised more than $500 million since its founding in 2022. Lawyers from eight of the 10 most profitable US law firms use the platform, and the company was last valued at $5 billion.
The company has also grown to about 350 employees, many of whom have passed the Google Doc test. The company said Mr. Harvey has adopted this interview style for all recent executive hires.
“In my experience, this is the best way to separate a good interviewer from a good operator,” Weinberg wrote in a statement to Business Insider.
“Talent density” is one of the popular phrases in the tech industry this year, as CEOs look to reduce the size of their teams and increase efficiency. Identifying top talent may require employing unconventional interview techniques. Stripe abandoned whiteboard interviews for computer-based tests and open-sourced staff interview questions, according to the company’s former chief technology officer.
AI fraud tools are also disrupting the technical interview process, with some tech companies returning to in-person interviews to verify candidates’ veracity.
Weinberg said on the podcast that the problem with hiring for non-engineering roles is “people who are very good at talking but bad at executing.”
“To me, what this means is they’re going to ask a billion one-on-one strategy questions,” he says.
Weinberg suggested starting the interview process asynchronously, since most of the company’s work is done asynchronously.
“The reports I use most often are asynchronous,” he said. “Otherwise, we’re going to have 17 strategy meetings to do something.”
