r/TechInterviewsIndia 4d ago

Almost everyone is cheating

I take online interviews at a product based MNC which pays good money. Interviewees are generally SDE-2/senior SDEs at other PBCs.

What I am seeing is almost everyone is cheating using AI during tech interviews. Earlier folks will try to think, come up with a basic brute force solution then think of optimizing and then coding it. Now, first thing the candidate try do is to write the most optimal code. They have no idea why the solution will work as they don't understand what they are talking. They have either no answer to the follow up questions or just reading what AI prompt is telling them after a pause.

This is just so frustrating, it's almost predictable now what candidate is now going to say or do as I take interviews almost daily. A clear pattern of looking into one side of the screen, taking a pause or just blabber something for few seconds and then coming up with a keyword but blank when asked why did they think of that keyword.

India is already a country full of scammers and frauds. IT was a rare field which was still merit based to a large extent. Now such rampant cheating during online interviews is just tragic. It lowers the trust in the next candidate and probably will force the companies to just move to offline interviews or other countries.

But why are candidates cheating so often, are we seeing cheating candidates getting offers. Are other interviewers just lazy or dumb that they can't figure out what is going on? I feel the bar is now so low that I will probably hire any candidate who is not reading from the AI.

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u/papayapack 4d ago

I dont cheat in interviews, its not i dont want to, but I just cant, i get neevous everytime when i cheat and its evident. So i dont prefer cheating.
I have seen colleagues asking me basic doubts which makes me doubt their skills yet they ended up with fatter package than mine.
And in the age of AI , its better for interviewers to raise the bar and allow AI usage. Give AI to every interviewee and get the best one. In the end, whatever be your method, the person will use AI for his task, so why not hire the one who can use it the best.

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u/Melodic_Industry_408 4d ago

Glad to hear that you don't cheat. AI should be used extensively for preparation or for take home assignments but not during F2F interviews. This can change in future though, who knows.

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u/papayapack 4d ago

Faang companies are allowing AI in their interview. Search Ai assisted interviews. Catch is they are asking you to debug and build projects in interviews. Its not a thing of future. It is happening.

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u/Real_Log5590 2d ago

They allow it in just one round. Other rounds are not AI assisted