Job interviews are increasingly happening after most people have gone to bed. Ribbon AI, a voice-AI recruiting platform, told Business Insider that about a quarter of interviews conducted through Ribbon take place between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to data from more than 500 companies using the service. Among Ribbon's manufacturing customers, that share rises to 35%.
Arsham Ghahramani, the CEO of Ribbon, told Alex Hutchings last week on the ThinkData podcast that the pattern may be driven by working parents with little spare time, or by workers in factories or kitchens who struggle to find a quiet place to be interviewed during the day.
"What initially seems like a technology where you're sort of removing the human out of the aspect, seems like maybe there will be like a disadvantage for the candidate, actually kind of flips the other way," Ghahramani said.
"Now you have candidates who could never have been interviewed before," Ghahramani added. "That's a huge accessibility piece."
Ribbon said the AI interview tool also improves 180-day employee retention by 10% to 30% across top customers, and a major auto manufacturer has been hiring 35% faster since adopting the tool.
'We are just not going back' #
The use of AI in recruiting is gaining ground as employers look for ways to process a growing flood of applications. Two HR experts told Business Insider they're optimistic about how AI could reshape the interview process.
Tim Sackett, a veteran recruiter and CEO of HRUTech.com, told Business Insider that AI Interviewing might be "the best thing to ever happen" to inclusive hiring.
"For the first time in history, 100% of applicants are being able to interview and show their worth to the job," Sackett said. "I would estimate that we'll begin to see more inclusion within roles and companies as well, as more and more people get their 'at-bats' in the hiring process."
Steve Boese, Co-Chair of the HR Technology Conference, told Business Insider that technology-driven flexibility is a "net positive" for candidates.
"If hiring companies can offer 24/7 availability for these kinds of AI-brokered interviews, then they have removed a potential barrier for at least some candidates who by need or by choice will elect to take the interview at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m.," Boese said.
A Greenhouse survey released in May found that nearly two-thirds of applicants had been interviewed by an AI agent, up 13% points in six months. 38% of US candidates, however, responded to Greenhouse that they had abandoned a hiring process rather than interview with AI, while another 12% said they would do so if an AI interview were mandatory.
In the same Greenhouse survey, 36% of respondents said they felt evaluated differently because of age in both AI-led and human interviews, while 27% said the same due to race or ethnicity.
Research has found that large language models can absorb and reproduce stereotypes embedded in the data they are trained on. A 2025 Stanford study examining how generative AI depicts workers across industries, for example, found that ChatGPT's responses showed clear biases against older women and younger workers.
"While many people long for the 'old days' of live phone screens, in-person interviews, personal feedback, etc, we are just not going back to those processes at any scale," Boese added. "Tech has taken over most of the recruiting process, and AI is now replacing the legacy solutions."