Welcome to double standards games, corporate edition.
So, here’s the deal: Goldman Sachs, a multinational investment bank and financial services company, is warning job applicants not to use ChatGPT, Google, or any external help during their interviews.
In an email sent to college students applying for jobs, the bank basically said: “Kids, memorise everything, don’t even think about asking AI for help.”
Meanwhile, they’re swimming in AI themselves.
AI for company, but not for potential employees
Goldman Sachs has been shouting for a long time about how generative AI will revolutionise productivity.
They’ve even built their own internal AI assistant to help employees write emails and translate code. They’ve rolled out AI tools across multiple departments.
And they even outsource interviews to HireVue — an AI-powered platform that scans candidates’ answers and decides who’s worthy of the next round and who isn’t.
So, let’s recap:you’re trying to find a job, you’re extremely nervous about it, but you’re not allowed to Google your interviewer’s name. But Goldman Sachs? They’re using the most advanced bots to judge you.
“We want to hear your voice,” says the company
And these interviews aren’t exactly a piece of cake. Applicants get only 30 seconds to prepare and two minutes to respond to one question. No pressure, right?
“We want to hear from our applicants in their own voice,” said spokesperson Jennifer Zuccarelli, according to Fortune.
Basically, the company is requesting loads of originality, while asking artificial intelligence to judge candidates.
But wait, there’s more
And Goldman isn’t alone in this double standard championship.
The creators of AI chatbot Claude (a company called Anthropic) recently wrote in a job posting: “We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system.” So, in short, the company that makes AI doesn’t want you to use it.
Amazon? Same thing. They’ve told recruiters to disqualify anyone caught using AI during the interview process. Meanwhile, Amazon invests billions into AI and encourages their staff to lean hard on the tech to speed up workflows.
Hypocrisy much?
All things considered, let’s be honest, there’s a tonne of hypocrisy here.
You apply to a bunch of jobs, and their descriptions are written by AI. And you never hear back from most of these applications.
When they reply to you, some HR folks, guided by a fancy HR-specialised AI system, ask you what motivates you to sell AI systems and why you’re passionate about this field. And all your answers get dissected by increasingly advanced bots.
Meanwhile, you’re supposed to shut off your phone and throw your laptop out the window when you talk to them. It seems it is not about work ethic or fairness, but about control.
While you have to show up with your lesson learned (literally) and at most a Nokia 3310 on you, they get to use every AI tool in the world.