Product head of $10 billion startup Mercor on the company junking take-home job interview assignments that can be completed with AI

AI hiring startup Mercor has stopped using take-home interview assignments that can easily be completed with artificial intelligence, choosing instead to focus on interviews that test a candidate’s thinking and decision-making skills. Speaking on the “20VC” podcast, Mercor’s Head of Product, Osvald Nitski, said the company now relies more on whiteboard interviews and discussions that help assess a candidate’s judgment, understanding of AI tools and system design. The move comes as many technology companies are changing their hiring process to allow candidates to use AI during interviews and coding tests.For those unaware, Whiteboard interviews require candidates to explain their ideas and problem-solving process while writing or drawing on a board. They became widely used by companies such as Google, Meta and Microsoft during the 2010s.

Mercor wants to test judgment, not AI-generated answers

During the podcast, Osvald Nitski said Mercor still checks whether candidates know how to use AI tools, but it has moved away from assignments that AI can complete with little effort.“We’ll do one round where we find out if the person is familiar with AI tools”, he said. “We care a lot about being able to set up good experiments and understanding statistics, having good judgment, and then systems design as well,” he said, referring to what is asked in whiteboarding sessions. Nitski said AI has made it easier for people to rely on tools instead of their own thinking.“We want to make sure that people still have the ability to have good judgment and know what they’re doing and not just, like, regurgitate what comes out of Claude,” he said.Mercor uses AI to screen candidates for its talent marketplace, but its hiring process for full-time employees differs from a growing trend in Silicon Valley Many companies are replacing traditional interviews with work trials and take-home projects. AI coding startups such as Lovable, Cursor and Kilo have said these practical assignments are a better way to judge both technical and soft skills.A Business Insider report quotes Emily Cohen, head of people and operations at AI coding startup Cognition, saying interviews should reflect how people work today. “I guess this is like asking a kid to take a math test without a calculator,” she said about not allowing AI use in interviews. “For the bulk of building something similar to what you would do on the role, you can and should use AI tools.”