A tech firm’s recruitment experience has turned heads online after it interviewed 450 candidates out of 12,000 applicants and hired no one.
The reason being, most candidates used AI tools like ChatGPT to generate code they couldn’t explain.
The company had posted openings for junior backend, frontend, and QA roles, with salaries reaching up to Rs 20 lakh.
Despite allowing AI usage during the process, it found that many candidates pasted AI-generated solutions without understanding time or space complexity or even basic logic. In the company’s words, most were “vibe coding.”
More than 10,000 candidates were filtered out based on weak resumes or mismatched skills. But even among those shortlisted, the pattern was clear. While the code looked good, the minds behind it had little grasp of what they submitted.
The irony is striking. For years, job seekers have pointed fingers at AI for stealing employment. At the same time, tech firms themselves are known to lean heavily on automation to cut costs.
But this case flips that narrative. Here, job applicants turned to AI as a shortcut, not realizing that faking knowledge using AI would backfire.
This situation reveals something deeper. AI is no longer just a job threat from the employer’s side. It has also become a tool for job seekers to bypass learning.
But when even basic explanations are missing, it exposes a gap not in AI’s capabilities, but in human understanding.
The company is now considering a new approach, possibly using quiz-based filters before interviews.
As the hiring landscape evolves, both companies and applicants must rethink how AI fits into the process — not as crutches, but as a tool to build on real skill.
Source – https://www.m9.news/technology/chatgpt-backfires-badly-tech-firm-rejects-12000-job-applicants/