#595 How to Answer AI Questions in Job Interviews

Sarah Ellis (0:00)

Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper (0:01)

And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis (0:01)

And this is the Squiggly Careers Podcast, where every week we borrow some brilliance from letters, objects, people, places, something we've read.

Those ones feel like a very standard episode now. Just a book. That's not enough. I'm actually looking forward to a book episode. I've not done a book episode for a while. And what we try to do is turn that curiosity into useful action for you and your career.

Helen Tupper (0:24)

So today we are borrowing brilliance from our listeners. It's exciting.

Sarah Ellis (0:30)

I'm not sure I'm friends with it based on what we're about to have to do.

Helen Tupper (0:33)

Okay, let us just explain this.

So quite a lot of our listeners have been in touch. We have WhatsApp groups. We have LinkedIn conversations with people about interviews and what they're having to prepare for in interviews and what advice we've got for them.

And it's particularly around the context of AI, AI in interviews. And so we went out and asked our audience, what questions about AI are you getting asked in interviews? And we, we, I am going to put those questions to Sarah to see how she would respond. Now, the reason we think this is useful for you is AI is having a much bigger impact, both on the experience of the interview, which I would love to talk about a little bit, and then also the what you're, what you need to be prepared to answer in an interview. And I think it is much better to be informed about this than being in an interview and thinking, ugh, that noise, that internal noise, I don't have an answer to this. But if you, even if you are not going for an interview right now, like I don't know, I don't know where my next interview is, I still think these questions that I'm going to put to Sarah are actually just useful questions to ask yourself, to be honest. Like if you haven't got answers to these questions, I think you might be missing a trick with what I could do for you right now.

Sarah Ellis (1:52)

And I would say having done some interviewing, which I definitely prefer to, what I'm about to have to do, which is be interviewed. I have been asking some questions about AI.

How do you use AI in your leadership? How has AI changed how you work? And people don't find them that easy to answer.

Helen Tupper (2:11)

Interesting.

Sarah Ellis (2:11)

And so I also wonder, and you'll probably hear the same from me today. I'm not saying that you're now going to hear some incredible case today. But I then wonder whether if you have got good answers, that helps you to stand out.

Because actually, I think people are really interested in, you know, specifically, like, what does this look like to you? You having a point of view on this. And I think if you haven't, it's such a, it's having such a big impact on our work. It feels like a real miss. But then I was actually quite surprised having done some interview. And I was like, oh, people maybe weren't as, I don't know, clued up or experimenting, perhaps as much as I would have imagined. And that was both proper interviews, but I've also been doing some like listening boards with people of loads of different ages. And I've had the same experience, like very mixed. Sometimes people blow me away when I ask about AI. And then sometimes people are like, oh yeah, just don't really, just don't really use it. I'm like, oh wow.

Helen Tupper (3:05)

I feel like I should caveat as well. Before I interview Sarah with these questions, I think it is unlikely, unless you are going for a job where, you know, like it's got AI in the title kind of thing, that level, I think it's unlikely that you're going to, I'm going to ask Sarah for back to back questions about AI. And I don't think that's going to happen, but I think you should be prepared to answer.

Sarah Ellis (3:24)

There'll probably be one, right?

Helen Tupper (3:25)

Yeah, there'll probably be one in every interview. These questions have come from our listeners.

Sarah Ellis (3:29)

Yeah, so they have actually been asked.

Helen Tupper (3:30)

Yes, in fact, let me give credit to those people. So I put a request out on LinkedIn as of what, you know, what questions are you being asked? And Ed, Edeje, Amy, Karen and Yojesh all came back with, these are things that I have been asked that I, you know.