Glossary
Conversational AI interview
A conversational AI interview is an interview the applicant takes on their own time, in which an AI asks spoken questions, listens to the answers and asks follow-up questions, much as a human interviewer would.
A conversational AI interview is a kind of asynchronous interview: the applicant takes it whenever they like. It adds the part that one-way video leaves out, which is someone asking “what happened next?”
What the follow-ups add
Take this exchange from an interview for a customer support job:
Question: Tell me about a time you handled a complaint that had been passed up to you. Applicant: I handled a lot of complaints like that at my last job. I’m good at calming people down. Follow-up: Can you pick one and walk me through it? What was the customer upset about, and what did you do first?
The first answer is general. The follow-up gives the applicant a second chance to show real experience. That’s fairer to them and more useful to you. In a one-way video, the general answer is all you’d get.
What it produces
Most tools produce a recording, a transcript (a word-for-word written record) and some kind of assessment. The useful ones rate each skill separately and explain their reasoning, ideally quoting the words from the transcript that support each rating. A single overall number with no explanation is hard to trust and harder to defend.
Follow-ups versus fixed questions
Follow-ups mean no two interviews are exactly the same. That clashes with the idea of a structured interview, where everyone gets identical questions. There are two ways to handle it. You can keep the main questions fixed and use follow-ups only to ask for more detail. Or you can turn follow-ups off for jobs where exact comparison matters most. LessRounds offers both: AI-led interviews with follow-ups, and scripted interviews where the AI reads your questions word for word.
What to check before using one
- What is scored? Only the words of the answer, or also faces, voices and expressions? Judging faces and voices adds little and raises real fairness concerns.
- Is there evidence? Can a reviewer see why each score is what it is?
- Who decides? The AI should prepare the shortlist. A person should decide who moves on.
- Are applicants told? Before it starts, they should know an AI is running the interview and that it’s recorded.
- How does it handle language? Accents, grammar and switching between languages shouldn’t lower a score unless the job truly needs that skill.