Washington to Test AI Job Interviews for Federal Hiring

AI Job Interviews are about to become real for some federal job applicants. The US government will begin testing AI-powered virtual interview agents for a first group of candidates within days, as reported by CBS. The pilot starts with the Tech Force, a recruiting program launched in early 2026 that brings private-sector tech talent into two-year government posts.

The move is catch-up as much as innovation. The federal government employs 1.9 million workers but has fallen behind large private-sector employers that already use AI interviewing tools as the first screening layer, CBS reported. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the government's human-resources agency, already uses an AI tool to prepare job descriptions, and its administrative staff work with tools including Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI ChatGPT, and Google Gemini on government computers.

OPM Director Scott Kupor has made faster, skills-based hiring his signature project. In an interview with FedGovToday, he said the agency is preparing to test AI-supported structured interviews with applicants to the tech-talent program. AI will assist human reviewers rather than make final hiring decisions, he said, according to his interview with FedGovToday. Kupor has also urged agencies to fill at least a third of new hires with early-career professionals, a shift aimed at an aging federal workforce.

The policy framework behind the pilot arrived on August 27, 2026, when Kupor issued a memorandum urging agencies to adopt AI across the hiring lifecycle instead of waiting for future features in federal hiring systems. Under the guidance, drafting interview questions generally counts as lower-impact when authorized officials independently review the underlying records. But AI-assisted screening, scoring, and ranking are presumed high-impact when they could affect who advances, triggering stricter risk-management rules. A rubber-stamp approval does not clear the bar: the record must show an official independently reviewed the evidence and supplied the reasoning. The federal hiring process currently takes an average of 87 days, and the administration is targeting 80, according to a detailed writeup of the OPM memorandum.

How AI Job Interviews will work in the federal pilot

The pilot keeps the final decision with people and hands the repetition to the machine. AI agents will conduct interviews by phone, audio, or text through the platform CodeSignal, then send hiring managers transcribed recordings of each conversation. The software handles the standardized portion of the process — the same questions asked of every candidate — while a human still makes the hire.

Structured subject-matter-expert interviews traditionally require professionals to ask every candidate the same questions, over and over. Kupor has argued the AI agent can conduct that standardized portion and produce transcripts that hiring managers review and compare, a speed play for a process that currently takes months to complete.

The timeline from cuts to virtual interviews

In March 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency cut thousands of federal jobs. Four months later, former venture executive Scott Kupor was appointed to run OPM. In August 2026, his memorandum formalized the AI-in-hiring framework. In early September 2026, CBS reported that virtual interview agents would begin screening candidates within days. On September 22, 2026, Kupor visited Texas A&M University to talk through the workforce changes with students and faculty.

Preparing for AI Job Interviews

The symmetry is hard to miss: candidates are already bringing AI to the process. A Gdoc.io survey of 500 US job seekers in 2026 found that 36 percent use AI in their search and that AI users landed 40 percent more job offers. Gen Z leads every generation, with 46.7 percent using AI to find work — while a majority (54.2 percent) of AI users said they would never bring it up with an employer.

An AI-run screen may also suit how Gen Z prefers to be evaluated: 63 percent of Gen Z job seekers prefer skills tests, work samples, or task-based assessments over traditional resumes, according to Indeed's Hiring Confidence Index.

To prepare for AI Job Interviews, treat them like a human interview with perfect memory. The standardized questions reward structured answers — name the skill, give the example, land the result. Because the session is transcribed, every answer becomes part of the record a hiring manager compares later. Keep a steady pace, answer what was asked, and avoid filler, since the transcript is the product.

One hard rule: OPM's applicant guidance for USA Hire assessments says using ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or other AI tools during testing is prohibited unless the instructions expressly allow it, and applicants must certify they completed the assessment independently. Falsely certifying can make an applicant ineligible for further consideration for the announcement.

The risks researchers are watching

The counterpoint is bias. Researchers warn that interviews are a high-risk stage for unfair outcomes when AI systems evaluate speech patterns, accents, or nonverbal cues. Experts cautioned that AI resume screening and candidate assessments will require validation, subject-matter review, and training, Federal News Network reported — and OPM's own memo presumes scoring and ranking tools are high-impact when they affect who advances, keeping humans responsible for the decision.

Employers feel the same tension: 42 percent told Indeed they are more comfortable when final hiring decisions involve human oversight. That overlap — candidates wanting transparency, employers wanting control, and regulators demanding documentation — is exactly what the federal pilot is being built to navigate.

For now the experiment is small: one recruiting program, one platform, one standardized set of questions. But officials told CBS the technology is likely to grow across federal hiring — and with a workforce nearing two million people, whatever the government learns will set the template for how the country's largest employer interviews its future workforce. For more on how early-career hiring is changing, read our earlier coverage of the junior squeeze, and follow the Career Path topic page for ongoing coverage.