"You Are Rejected!": An Empirical Study of Large Language Models Taking Hiring Evaluations
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Abstract (arXiv)
With the proliferation of the internet and the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence, leading technology companies face an urgent annual demand for a considerable number of software and algorithm engineers. To efficiently and effectively identify high-potential candidates from thousands of applicants, these firms have established a multi-stage selection process, which crucially includes a standardized hiring evaluation designed to assess job-specific competencies. Motivated by the demonstrated prowess of Large Language Models (LLMs) in coding and reasoning tasks, this paper investigates a critical question: Can LLMs successfully pass these hiring evaluations? To this end, we conduct a comprehensive examination of a widely used professional assessment questionnaire. We employ state-of-the-art LLMs to generate responses and subsequently evaluate their performance. Contrary to any prior expectation of LLMs being ideal engineers, our analysis reveals a significant inconsistency between the model-generated answers and the company-referenced solutions. Our empirical findings lead to a striking conclusion: All evaluated LLMs fails to pass the hiring evaluation.
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References · 7
- 2020Language (Technology) is Power: A Critical Survey of "Bias" in NLPcited by 951
- 2023A Survey on Large Language Models for Recommendationcited by 378
- 2019Mitigating Bias in Algorithmic Hiring: Evaluating Claims and Practicescited by 170
- 2023The Unequal Opportunities of Large Language Models: Revealing Demographic Bias through Job Recommendationscited by 41
- 2024Auditing the Use of Language Models to Guide Hiring Decisionscited by 19
- 2025LLMs can Perform Multi-Dimensional Analytic Writing Assessments: A Case Study of L2 Graduate-Level Academic English Writingcited by 10
- 2025Let's Get You Hired: A Job Seeker's Perspective on Multi-Agent Recruitment Systems for Explaining Hiring Decisionscited by 2
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- 2026Evaluating LLM Behavior in Hiring: Implicit Weights, Fairness Across Groups, and Alignment with Human Preferences
- 2025LLM-as-a-Judge for Software Engineering: Literature Review, Vision, and the Road Ahead ↗
- 2025Rethinking Technology Stack Selection with AI Coding Proficiency
- 2025I Think, Therefore I Am Under-Qualified? A Benchmark for Evaluating Linguistic Shibboleth Detection in LLM Hiring Evaluations
- 2025From Code to Courtroom: LLMs as the New Software Judges
- 2025LLM-ProS: Analyzing Large Language Models' Performance in Competitive Problem Solving
- 2024Enhancing LLM Evaluations: The Garbling Trick
- 2025Do LLMs Know They Are Being Tested? Evaluation Awareness and Incentive-Sensitive Failures in GPT-OSS-20B