What it felt like when I was interviewed by an AI assistant

Giselle Au‑Nhien Nguyen recounts her experience being interviewed by an AI assistant for a sessional kindergarten role after completing the first year of a master's in early childhood and primary teaching. She describes a disembodied voice greeting her, a solitary video window, and an abrupt disconnection when she briefly paused to think - an action normally acceptable in human interviews. The AI's answers recycled material from the job ad and directed any real questions to a human manager; it closed by saying her video would be reviewed. Feeling demeaned and unsettled, she withdrew her application, received no acknowledgement from the organisation, and found industry peers equally shocked that a human‑centred profession was outsourcing recruitment to a machine.

She argues that using AI for hiring in caring professions is dehumanising, lazy at best and negligent at worst, and raises risks of discrimination and labour erasure, especially against the backdrop of Australia’s childcare crisis. Specific details - the booting for pausing, the regurgitated responses, AI‑generated staff photos on the organisation’s website, and the silence after her complaint - underscore her wider concern: replacing interpersonal recruitment with automated screening strips dignity from applicants and signals troubling shifts in how work that depends on human connection is valued. She insists on better practices for children, educators and job‑seekers.