What to ask a candidate about AI
Spring hiring season. One question separates people who use these tools well from people who have simply used them, and it is not a technical question.
Interviewing for almost any office role now involves some judgement about how a candidate works with these tools. Most interviewers either avoid the subject or ask which tools the person has used, and neither tells you anything.
Why the tool question is useless
Everyone has used them. The answer is a list, the list is the same list, and it correlates with nothing you care about.
What distinguishes people is not exposure but judgement: knowing when the output is wrong, and knowing which tasks are not worth delegating.
The question that works
Tell me about a time it gave you something wrong, and how you noticed.
A candidate who cannot recall an instance has either not used these tools on anything that mattered, or has not been checking. Both are useful to know.
A candidate who describes a specific case — a figure that looked plausible but was not, a summary that dropped the one clause that mattered — is telling you they read the output rather than forwarding it. That is the entire skill.
The second question, for more senior roles
What in your work would you not use it for?
You are listening for a reasoned line, not a cautious one. « Anything a client sees without me reading it » is a good answer. « I prefer to do things myself » is not, and neither is « nothing, it is fine for everything ».
What to say about your own company
The candidate is assessing you too, and this is now a subject on which they will form a view. Say plainly which tools are used here, that reporting a bad result is expected rather than embarrassing, and whether use is expected, permitted or tolerated — the 11 August distinction.
Candidates who have worked somewhere with no stated position will notice that you have one. In a tight Swiss labour market, that is a small and genuine advantage.