Companies Are Replacing Job Interviews with Work Trials in 2025 (www.finalroundai.com)

Hiring in 2025 is shifting away from rehearsed interviews toward paid, short work trials because AI has made traditional screening less predictive. With candidates using LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude) to craft applications and employers automating screening and first-round interviews, interviews increasingly reward polish over actual on-the-job performance. Harvard’s People Lab and a 20-CEO survey find interviews miss quieter or non-native speakers and produce false positives; nearly 95% of surveyed leaders say trials give clearer insight. Companies from Automattic, Linear, and PostHog to startups and Google are piloting trials and AI-assisted assessments (Meta is testing coding interviews where candidates may use AI tools), signaling a move to evaluate real workflows rather than canned answers. Work trials are short, paid projects or shadowing periods (commonly 7–14 days or multi-day scenarios) tied to day-one duties, scored with objective rubrics on execution, collaboration, and problem-solving. Properly run trials require fair pay, tight scope, evaluation rubrics, and candidate feedback; platforms like Work Trial AI help structure and track them. For AI/ML teams this matters especially: trials can test tool-augmented workflows (LLM-assisted coding, data pipeline debugging, model validation) and production-readiness rather than whiteboard performance, reducing hiring risk and improving retention. The implication is clear: assessment design must adapt to reflect real, AI-enabled work and measure how candidates use models, tooling, and team processes in production contexts.