The AI interview round: what it is and how to pass it

You applied for a job, and the next step is not a person but a link: record answers to your camera, talk to an AI voice, or type into a chat box. Plenty of people meet this with no idea what is on the other side:

“I have never appeared for an AI first interview and this is my first time”

Reddit, r/artificial

“Is it fully technical like notebook style code, or open ended qna with an AI avatar?”

Reddit, r/artificial

This guide answers from the vendors’ own candidate pages: what each format looks like, how HireVue, micro1, Mercor and Sapia say answers are scored, whether a person watches, whether it is real or data collection, your rights, and how to prepare. At the end, an honest note on where PiriPiri AI fits: mostly as practice before these rounds, and in the human interviews that come after.

What does “AI interview round” mean?

An AI interview round is a screening step run by software instead of a person, so an employer can hear from many applicants without booking a call with each. It comes in three common formats:

In an Indian campus drive or lateral hiring, “AI round” can mean any of these, or an online test watched by proctoring software (a program that monitors your webcam or screen for rule breaks). The invitation tells you which, so read it twice.

What does a HireVue interview look like?

HireVue’s own candidate FAQ gives the numbers below, with several minutes to respond to each question. You can use a computer, tablet or phone, at any time before the deadline, and if your connection drops you can pick up where you left off with the same link.

Practice questions come first. Do them every time: they let you check your camera, sound and timer without anything counting.

Preparation time and answer limits are set by each employer. The University of Colorado Boulder, which uses HireVue, tells applicants they will typically have one minute of preparation time before recording each answer; others give more or less. Retakes vary too. HireVue’s 2025 explainability statement says its AI-scored interviews allow multiple attempts at each question, but also that the candidate experience is configurable by the employer. So one employer may give you retakes and the next one take only. Check the screen before your first real question.

How is a HireVue interview scored, and does a human watch?

It depends on how your employer set it up. The FAQ says plainly that “not all Hirevue interviews have an assessment added.” Without an assessment, HireVue is simply a way to record answers for people to watch later. The University of Colorado Boulder, for example, says its hiring team reviews all its HireVue interviews and uses no AI to evaluate them.

When an AI assessment is added, HireVue’s 2025 AI explainability statement describes three steps. Your speech is turned into text by a transcription system from a company called Rev.ai. A language model reads that text. Then your answer is scored for the skill the question was designed to test, based on how expert human raters judged answers to similar questions. The statement says “our AI relies only on what is said by the candidate” and that it does not assess facial expressions, body language, your background and surroundings, or tone of voice.

That was not always so. HireVue used to analyse faces. According to SHRM’s report from February 2021, the company discontinued facial analysis in March 2020 and announced it in January 2021, saying “visual analysis no longer significantly added value.” Older articles about HireVue reading your expressions describe something it says it removed years ago.

People stay in the loop in a few places. The FAQ says candidates in the top group move on to person-to-person interviews, and hiring decisions are made by people. The explainability statement adds two details that matter to you:

• If an answer does not contain enough content to score (it was too short, the speech was not clear enough to understand, or the microphone failed), it is not scored by AI and is flagged for a person to review instead.
• For AI-scored interviews, candidates who opt out of AI evaluation do the same interview, and recruiters rate their answers by hand on the same scale. If you want that, ask your recruiter how to opt out before you start.

One Fishbowl user, early in their job search, posted that HireVue interviews seemed to be scored by AI. Some are, some are watched by a person, and some get both. The invitation or consent screen usually says which, and in some places it must (see the rights section).

What do Mercor and micro1 AI interviews look like?

Mercor

Mercor publishes detailed candidate help in its talent docs. An AI interviewer asks questions specific to the role, records your answers, creates a transcript and evaluates you for the listing. Most interviews take about 20 minutes. Some are technical and go deep into your past work; others test language or reasoning, and some include a whiteboard.

What else the docs say:

• Practice: a free practice interview, as often as you like, not shared with companies.
• Setup: a computer, working camera and microphone, full face visible, a quiet room, headphones if you have them. Chrome is recommended; Firefox is not supported. Some interviews require full-screen sharing.
• Pauses: long silences can prompt the AI to cut in. If it interrupts you while you are thinking, you can tell it you were not finished.
• Language: English unless the listing says otherwise, with captions on by default.
• Retakes: up to three across related applications. Hiring managers can see how many you used, and Mercor says retakes are meant for technical issues. Ending too early marks the attempt “Interview too short”, and that retake counts too.
• No other route: Mercor says the interview cannot be done by chat, by phone or with a person instead.

micro1

micro1’s interview guide describes an on-demand conversation with its AI recruiter, Zara. It lists open technical questions about your chosen role, scenario questions about how you think and communicate, a coding challenge for technical roles, and a human data exercise for annotator roles. You get a result straight away and can ask for feedback if you do not certify. It suggests choosing one core skill and rehearsing with its Interview Prep tool first.

micro1’s public interview guide does not give a retake rule or explain how answers are scored. One Fishbowl user wrote that they failed a micro1 AI interview and were later invited to take it again. That is one person’s report, so treat your first attempt as your only one. If something broke on their side, write to support@micro1.ai.

What is a Sapia chat interview?

Sapia’s candidate explainer describes a text interview: five to seven typed questions about how you behave at work, sometimes with a few multiple-choice ones added. There is no camera. It is not timed, you are not penalised for taking longer, and you can save and come back. Its help article advises 50 to 100 words per answer. Its two pages give different maximum lengths, so go by the cap the answer box shows you.

Sapia says every candidate is assessed on the same attributes, drawn only from their answers, and that gender, age and race are not used. It also says answers must be your own, and that it checks for plagiarism and can detect text from generators like ChatGPT. To do well, write real situations, what you did and what happened, in plain sentences.

What is the AI interview round at Infosys, Virtusa and similar companies?

Many people search for “infosys ai interview round” and “virtusa ai interview round”. We could not find a public description from either company of what that round contains, and candidate reports online describe different things for different roles and years. Be wary of any video that claims to know exactly what “the” Infosys AI round asks.

Instead, read your invitation for these details:

1. The platform name, which tells you which section of this guide applies.
2. Recorded or live, and whether there is coding.
3. Camera, microphone, screen sharing, and any special browser to install.
4. Time limits, number of questions, retakes, and whether a laptop is required.

If anything is unclear, ask your placement cell or TPO if you came through campus, or reply to the recruiter. Asking how a round works is normal.

How do you prepare for an AI interview round?

Practise talking to a camera that gives nothing back

The odd part is the silence. A person nods and smiles; a recording screen does nothing, so people rush, ramble or stop early. Practise that condition: record yourself answering ten common questions, about 90 seconds each, without stopping when you stumble. Watch two or three back to spot filler words and where answers drift. HireVue’s FAQ suggests placing your video window near the top centre of the screen so you seem to look at the camera; try that in practice too.

Learn the clock before it starts

Know three numbers before the first real question: the preparation time, the answer limit and the number of retakes. The practice questions and the instruction screens normally show them. If you have two minutes, aim to finish in about 90 seconds, so a slow start does not cut off your result. Use the preparation time to pick your story and jot three or four cue words, not to write a script you will then read.

Set up the room and the computer

• Laptop plugged in, other apps and notifications closed, phone on silent.
• The browser the platform recommends (Mercor names Chrome), updated.
• Microphone tested with a short recording you play back. Headphones help on live AI interviews.
• Light in front of you, not behind. A plain, tidy background.
• If full-screen sharing is required, close anything private first.

Answer in a clear structure

Expect behavioural questions: “Tell me about a time you…”. The STAR order works well here: the situation in one or two sentences, your task, the actions you took, and the result. Say “I” for what you did, not “we”, and give a number when you have one.

When an AI scores your answer, HireVue says it reads the whole answer in context rather than hunting for keywords, so stuffing in words from the job description will not help much. A complete, specific story will. The behavioural interviews page has more on building those stories.

Speak so the transcript gets you right

One Fishbowl post asks how reliable AI interviews can be when the system does not capture what the candidate actually said. It is a fair worry, because a scorer that reads a transcript can only judge what the transcription caught. HireVue’s statement reports that in its US English testing the transcription got under 10% of words wrong on average (a human typist: about 5 to 10%). A 2022 version of the same document reported 12% for Canadian speakers and 22% for speakers from China. These are the vendor’s own test averages, not a forecast for you, but some words can come out wrong, more for some accents.

So use a headset or a microphone close to your mouth, keep a steady pace, finish the ends of sentences, say numbers clearly, spell out an acronym the first time, and never talk over a live AI interviewer.

If something clearly went wrong, tell the company in writing straight away. If English is your second language, our page for non-native English speakers has more on this.

Technical questions in AI rounds

micro1 lists a coding challenge for technical roles, and Mercor has technical interviews with a whiteboard and suggests keeping pen, paper and a calculator ready. Your spoken reasoning is how the reviewer follows your thinking, so restate the problem, give the simple brute force first, then improve it and state its cost. Read the rules for outside help first: Mercor does not allow using AI language models to evaluate code. For practice, see the one-week coding interview plan.

With a live AI interviewer

Talk rather than go silent: Mercor says long pauses can prompt the AI to cut in. If it cuts you off, say you had not finished and carry on. If a question is unclear, ask it to repeat; if that fails, answer the part you understood and say so.

Is an AI interview real, or just data collection?

“Actually an interview or data training session?”

Reddit, r/sales

A fair question, with two parts. The first is what the job is. Some AI interviewers belong to companies whose business is data for AI models. Mercor describes itself as “organizing human intelligence to power the AI economy”, and micro1 calls itself a “data lab to train frontier models”. Many roles they hire for are expert work on AI models, and micro1’s own guide lists a human data exercise for annotator roles. So the job itself may be AI training work. Read the listing to see what the work actually is.

The second part is what happens to your recording. Here is what each vendor says:

• Mercor: recordings and transcripts of official interviews are kept to evaluate you and recommend your profile to employers. It says it does not sell this data or use it to train AI models. Practice interviews are not shared, and you cannot download your recordings.
• HireVue: your data is kept for the period the employer chose and then deleted. You can ask for deletion at any time, but the employer decides, so send the request to the company, usually through your recruiter.
• Sapia: the personality report you receive is not shared with the employer.

How to check the job is real

The US Federal Trade Commission’s job scam guidance says honest employers never ask you to pay to get a job. It also suggests searching the company or recruiter’s name with words like “scam”, “review” or “complaint”, and describing the offer to someone you trust. Also find the same role on the company’s own careers page, check the email comes from its real domain or a known platform, and do not send bank details or ID documents before a written offer you have verified.

What rights do you have in an AI interview?

That depends on where the job is based as well as where you live. Two US laws show what is possible and are worth knowing.

Illinois. The Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act has applied since 1 January 2020. For a job based in Illinois, an employer that asks you to record video interviews and uses AI to analyse them must, before asking, tell you that AI may be used, explain how it works and what general characteristics it uses, and get your consent. It may not use AI to evaluate applicants who have not consented, may share your video only with people needed to evaluate you, and must delete it within 30 days of your request, including copies held by others.

New York City. Local Law 144, enforced since 5 July 2023, covers automated tools that substantially help employers screen candidates for jobs in New York City. The city’s consumer protection department explains that such a tool may not be used unless it had a bias audit within the past year and a summary of the results is posted publicly. Candidates who live in the city must be told 10 business days before, including what it assesses and how to request a reasonable accommodation. Complaints go through 311.

Accommodations anywhere. HireVue’s FAQ says you can ask your recruiter or the hiring team for accommodations, and that you may be able to get the questions in advance or take the interview another way. Its explainability statement shows an example “Request Accommodations” button that gives extra time where the employer has set it up. Ask before you start, not after a bad attempt.

Can HireVue detect AI, or see your screen?

HireVue’s candidate FAQ describes recording your video answers through your camera and microphone. It does not say it records your screen or records during preparation time. That is not a promise that it never does, and employers can add other assessments with their own rules. If your setup does not make clear when recording starts, ask the recruiter, and until then act as if the camera could be recording.

The bigger point is that nobody needs to see your screen to notice reading. A recorded answer can show your eyes moving across lines and the flat rhythm of read-out text, and a recruiter can watch it again. HireVue’s FAQ says flatly that there is no course that will help you “game” its assessment. If the rules say no outside help, follow them. Our guide on whether interviewers can tell you are using AI covers what gives people away in more detail.

Where does PiriPiri AI fit with AI interview rounds?

PiriPiri AI is a desktop app for macOS and Windows built for live, two-way interview calls with a person. During the call it listens to both sides (your microphone and the interviewer’s audio from your computer), transcribes them, and drafts a short answer on a small floating overlay from the CV, job description and role you added. Most AI rounds are not that kind of call, so honestly, by format:

• One-way recorded video (HireVue and similar). It is not built for this. There is no live interviewer audio to hear in the usual way, questions often appear as text, and your answers are recorded and may be watched more than once, so a recruiter may notice you glancing at a prompt. Do not use it in the recorded round. Use it before, to practise: ask a friend to interview you over Zoom, Google Meet or Teams with PiriPiri AI running, then read the saved transcript afterwards. It shows how your spoken answers come out as text. An AI scorer also reads a transcript, though its own may differ. PiriPiri AI does not run mock interviews on its own; you need someone to ask the questions.
• Live AI interviewer (Mercor, micro1). Technically it can hear the AI’s questions like any other call audio. But the platform’s rules come first. Mercor’s usage policy does not allow using large language models to compose your responses, and some of its interviews require full-screen sharing. On those, do not use it. Where the rules are unclear, ask before the interview, not after.
• Chat interview (Sapia). There is nothing to hear, and Sapia says it checks for AI-written answers. Not a fit.
• The human rounds after. This is what it is for. If you go blank, press Answer now (Cmd+Shift+Enter on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+Enter on Windows) for a prompt from your own CV, or Analyze screen (Cmd+Shift+Space, or Ctrl+Shift+Space) to read a coding question off your screen.

No meeting bot joins the call, and it works with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex and others. The overlay asks the operating system to leave it out of screen capture, so it does not appear when you share your screen or record in the usual way. On Windows 10 (version 2004) and later the window is removed from captures. Developer documentation for this setting notes that some newer Mac capture tools may still pick such windows up, so do a test call with a friend on the exact app first. On a Mac, hearing the interviewer needs macOS 14.2 or later, and speech recognition is English only. It cannot give you experience you do not have, and reading its drafts word for word sounds rehearsed. Some employers and some places have rules about recording calls or using AI help, so check those before you use it. Setup details are in how to use it.

Questions people ask

Where to go next

Whatever the format, strong answers come from preparation, so start with how to prepare for an interview. Have an answer ready for some version of “tell me about yourself”, a common way to start. If you want more practice on your own first, see the free AI interview practice tools.

PiriPiri AI costs about $2.50 an interview, paid in one-time packs that never expire, so no subscription is required. Every new account starts with 3 free sessions, so you can try it in a practice call before your first live interview. See pricing, prices in India and the refund terms.

Keep reading

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