“You are Enough”: One Candidate’s Experience with an AI Interview
Studies on candidate experience link the interview screening process to offer acceptance, retention, and even whether or not someone will ever to your company again. Yet for many candidates, that critical moment still feels unstructured, subjective, and luck-based.
Before he ever met Talent Llama’s AI interviewer, Julian had spent months in the usual loop of Zoom calls, phone screens, and “quick chats” that all blurred together, each with a slightly different script, scoring rubric, and recruiter mood.
As he later put it, “Practice in an interview instance does not make perfect. You can do them over and over, and they will always be different, with different scoring and even potentially biased outcomes.”
That lived reality shaped exactly how he walked into an AI-led first screen for the first time.
Walking into the AI interview
When the Talent Llama invite arrived, Julian was curious but cautious. It was the first AI interview he’d ever done, and there was a natural spike of nerves. At the same time, there was less of the heavy, personal pressure that comes with a live recruiter on the other end of a call.
“To be honest, I was a little bit nervous because it was the first AI interview that I’ve ever done, but there was also a part of me that was weirdly calm because I knew there wasn’t as much pressure to impress a real human interviewer or recruiter.”
Julian already used tools like Gemini and ChatGPT in his day-to-day life, so once the interview started, the nerves immediately lifted.
The interface was deliberately simple: press a button, speak, and watch the words appear on screen as the AI transcribed in real time. No awkward pauses while someone on mute typed. No guessing whether an answer had landed.
“Immediately, I felt very calm, and at the end of the screen, II could ask questions back to the AI interviewer, which was really interesting. We had a really great chat.”
Instructions were direct. The pacing moved forward without rushing. Questions flowed in a way that felt more like a conversation than a rigid script.
“The instructions were very clear… the pacing was great. It felt almost human-like, honestly. I could see my answers as I was speaking, which gave me an immediate understanding that it had heard what I said, which was really reassuring.”
Seeing his own words appear on screen gave him a sense of relief that didn’t exist in most live screens. Talent Llama’s AI had heard him. Nothing was getting lost in shorthand notes or half-remembered impressions.
Control, timing, and pressure
The stand-out difference wasn’t just the AI; it was the control the process gave back to him.
Instead of organizing his morning around a fixed 9 AM recruiter slot, Julian built his own runway into the interview. On Thursday, he left home for coffee, came back, took a shower, ate breakfast, and only then chose to begin. The interview started when he was ready, not when someone else’s calendar demanded it.
“I was able to sit there in clothing that was comfortable for me, in an environment that was comfortable for me, and at a time was comfortable for me.”
Inside the interview, that same sense of control continued. The AI would ask a question, then wait. Julian could think. There was no urge to blurt out a half-formed answer just to fill the silence.
“I didn’t feel the pressure to answer the recruiter within five seconds of being asked a question…you have a little bit of time to think.”
Because nobody was watching his face or reading his body language, the performance layer of interviewing dropped away. He didn’t need to worry about charm, small talk, or “vibe.” The only thing that mattered was what he’d actually done and how he talked about it.
“I didn’t have to try and impress anyone with anything other than my skills and experience.”
For Julian, that flexibility felt bigger than convenience. It looked like access. He could see how this would work for candidates who were already working full-time, juggling kids, or trying to keep a job search quiet.
“This is game-changing for everyone, including for people who already have a job and are trying to get another job… They could do this interview at 10 PM after the kids are asleep. It’s at your own pace and I think that’s truly game changing.”
Depth first, then the “human” round
Julian went into the first-round AI interview unsure what to expect, so he prepared for both: a light, high-level screen and the possibility of a deeper dive. What he actually got was closer to a second-round conversation in most other processes.
“There were some really great questions in there that I would normally expect in a second round interview. Usually the screening is super high level. This process let us go deeper upfront in a really simple way.”
That flipped the usual pattern. Instead of saving the deeper substance for rounds two, three, and four, the AI screen did the heavy lifting on skills and experience upfront.
By the time he reached his second round with his future manager, the foundational work was already done. They didn’t have to spend most of the call rerunning the same competency checklist.
“Getting those deeper questions out of the way upfront meant the second interview could actually be about getting to know my future manager. I’d already covered most of the customer success processes with the AI, so the later rounds felt much more human.”
The AI round didn’t remove the human element; it made the later human conversations worth having.
Fairness, bias, and being heard with an accent
Julian’s view on fairness in hiring was built on years of human-led screens. Recruiters are people. People have good days and bad days, unconscious preferences, and emotional noise that candidates never see but always feel.
“When you’re speaking to a human recruiter, you don’t know what type of day they’re having, we are emotional creatures at the end of the day… so by the AI not having any of those feelings or emotions, it actually means that it can treat us more fairly because it’s judging us exactly the same way… there is no fluctuation.”
One thing he noticed quickly: the system wasn’t analysing his voice for tone or polish. It was focused on the content of his answers, namely the skills, examples, and experience themselves.
“It’s purely just the facts, skills and experience that it takes from what you say. As an Aussie interviewing in the US, sometimes recruiters couldn’t understand my tone or accent (true story!), whereas the AI just took it all in without a second thought.”
For an Australian interviewing in the US market, that mattered. He was used to having jokes fall flat or phrases misheard. With the AI, the accent was just data, transcribed and processed, not judged or misinterpreted.
The system also created deliberate second chances. When an answer wasn’t complete enough, it didn’t silently penalize him. It slowed down, re-asked, reframed, and gave him space to land the point properly.
“If the AI felt like I didn’t answer the question fully, it would actually dive deeper into specifics that I’d said. So it really gives everyone the chance to make sure they give the best answer they can, which I found really beautiful.”
To Julian, that behavior felt like fairness in action: not everyone nails a question on the first try, especially during interviews, and the process acknowledged that.
Scale, legitimacy, and walking the talk
At no point did the AI screen feel like a “lesser” round. For Julian, the fact that Talent Llama used its own product to interview him actually boosted its legitimacy.
“This is the company’s bread and butter. Talent Llama is all about the AI interviewer, so for me, it was a really, really positive experience.”
He was clear that even outside of an AI company, seeing this kind of process would shape how he viewed the employer.
“If I was applying for a different company that wasn’t an AI-based company… it would show me as a candidate that this company is forward-thinking and embracing new technology, and I would actually be more inclined to apply.”
On the employer side, he didn’t sugarcoat the reality of scale. A thousand applicants and a two-person HR team is a math problem with one outcome: most people never get seen.
“If you have a thousand applicants and you are a team of two HR people, there is no way you could screen every single one… Whereas with Talent Llama, all one thousand of them could go through the process, and it could be done in a matter of days, not weeks… it then surfaces top candidates for those recruiters and gives them so much time back in their day.”
Later, after going through the process as a candidate, Julian joined Talent Llama as Head of Customer Success. The product that screened him became the product his team now helps customers roll out.
“I applied for a company that does AI interviews, and so they ran their interviews with their own product, and that was really empowering… It made me have a lot more faith in the company because I got to experience it firsthand and see exactly what it’s like for candidates.”
That first-hand experience is now part of how he talks about the product with customers: not in theory, but from lived candidate reality.
What he’d choose next time
At the end of the first screen, Julian was in the same position as any candidate: no guarantees, no early spoilers. What was different, however, was how he felt walking away. He believed the interview had captured his skills and experience cleanly, without getting distorted by timing, mood, or misread tone.
He later received the offer, accepted the role, and now sits on the other side of the table, responsible for the success of the same product that once evaluated him.
When asked whether he’d choose this kind of interview again, there was no hesitation.
“100%, not a doubt in my mind, I would say that this is something that we should get used to, and I would genuinely recommend it 100% even if I didn’t work here. Moving forward, I would insist on using Talent Llama at any company I may end up in down the line.”
For him, that isn’t about novelty. It’s about a standard he now sees as baseline for modern hiring:
“Fast and fair aren’t opposites. They’re the new standard.”
And the line that sticks most, for future candidates reading his experience, is the simplest one:
“I didn’t have to impress anyone with anything other than my skills and experience. And that should make applicants feel confident that you ARE enough. Because the truth is… you are.”
