While artificial intelligence can help biotech and pharma companies more quickly vet job applicants, it can also turn off the very people they want to employ. Two recruiting experts discuss AI’s role and limitations in the hiring process.
Artificial intelligence–led interviews with tools such as chatbots or avatars are not the norm in biopharma, but when they happen, they can frustrate job seekers and hurt their perceptions of the hiring company.
A biopharma professional pursuing a position at Amgen, for example, told BioSpace in a survey response that they did not have a good experience with their AI interview.
“The AI repeated my answers over and over but were incorrect when they repeated it,” they commented. “As the interview progressed, it just started to become even more frustrating.”
A survey respondent who had applied for a clinical scientist role at an unnamed midsize pharma described the impersonal nature of their experience. They noted that speaking to a large language model instead of a person “made it feel like that company really didn’t care who I was or what my qualifications were - it was all just going to be decided by AI.”
It’s most common for companies to apply AI behind the scenes of the hiring process, according to a 2025 report from employment platform iHire. The report found that 32.1% of employers use artificial intelligence to screen applicants and resumes and 16.1% to interview candidates. Those findings line up with what recruiting experts Julie Heneghan and Molly Robb told BioSpace they have observed in the biopharma industry. Heneghan is president and founder of The Steely Group, a national life sciences recruiting firm focused on midlevel positions up to the C-suite, while Robb is principal owner of MRSearch, an executive search and coaching boutique.
Heneghan and Robb noted that biopharmas commonly use AI behind the scenes for tasks such as sourcing and screening candidates; reviewing resumes; and scheduling and recording interviews. It’s less common, they said, for artificial intelligence to lead interviews.
When employers turn to AI interviews, and when they shouldn’t
Companies and recruiting teams that receive a high volume of applications and have lean resources may leverage AI to help more quickly determine which candidates for lower-level positions warrant additional human interaction, according to Heneghan. An artificial intelligence tool might ask applicants a consistent set of questions to help assess their basic qualifications and competencies before deciding to move a candidate forward, she explained.
That said, as the interview process proceeds and especially for higher-level positions, the human element becomes more important, according to Heneghan. For example, she explained, if a company is hiring someone to lead a clinical program, someone who’s going to interact with the FDA and build their scientific organization, they need to have real conversations and interactions with them.
“It would be virtually impossible to fully evaluate that person’s judgment, their leadership skills, their influence or if they’re a cultural fit through an AI interview,” Heneghan said.
Robb agreed that AI is not the right choice for interviewing candidates pursuing more senior positions.
“At the highest levels, there still needs to be the human interaction, the human touch, the judgment, the context—all of that needs to still be part of the process of evaluating a candidate,” she said.
The only biopharma companies that Robb said she has heard are using AI-led interviews are those driven by artificial intelligence. For example, an AI business recently interviewed one of her clients through an avatar.
The human element is also important for positions that require very specialized or technical expertise as well as strong judgment and an ability to operate in complicated environments, according to Heneghan.
You might have an algorithm that can identify whether someone meets the set of criteria, but it can’t fully understand what that person has accomplished in their career, how they think, how they influence others or how they’ll perform when things do not go according to plan without that conversation.
“You might have an algorithm that can identify whether someone meets the set of criteria, but it can’t fully understand what that person has accomplished in their career, how they think, how they influence others or how they’ll perform when things do not go according to plan without that conversation,” she said.
How AI can hurt employers
While using AI-led interviews can help companies more quickly assess candidates and interview a higher number of them, there are drawbacks, including the experience harming a job seeker’s perception of the employer. Most BioSpace survey participants said their view shifted for the worse, and a May 2026 report from hiring platform Greenhouse noted a similar issue. It found that 34% of respondents came away with a more negative perception of the company. However, when AI interviews were done well, 38% had a more positive view.
“The gap isn’t about whether to use AI,” the report shared. “It’s about whether employers are willing to build it on a foundation of transparency, fairness, and accountability, the same principles that define structured hiring.”
Heneghan also highlighted the importance of transparency. Candidates should understand when AI is being used and what role it’s going to play in the decision-making process, she said.
“For instance, if they discover halfway through an interview that they are being evaluated by AI without having understood that up-front, it could immediately impact or undermine their trust for that company and for that process,” she explained.
A BioSpace survey respondent who applied at Johnson & Johnson had an experience along those lines. While they believed they were having a traditional video interview, they were instead asked to record themselves answering three vague prompts.
“I felt humiliated trying to put on my best self to a blank screen with nobody on the other end, only to be rejected anyway, with no explanation as to why when I was completely qualified,” they commented.
Follow-up is an issue Heneghan touched on while discussing AI. The interview process is one of the first experiences a candidate has within a company’s culture, she said. So, if a company uses AI thoughtfully and transparently during the interview process and there is human follow-up, candidates might see the organization as innovative and efficient, she noted. But, Heneghan added, if AI drives the entire interview process, candidates could interpret the experience differently.
“They might question whether the company values people,” she said. “They might question whether the organization is overly transactional, or whether they’ll ever even have the opportunity to understand the people they’d be working with.”
Job seekers could even end up withdrawing their application, according to the Greenhouse report. It found that 38% of candidates walked away from a hiring process because it included an AI interview. The biggest reasons driving that decision were prerecorded video interviews scored by AI with no human present (33%), companies failing to disclose how AI would be used (27%) and AI monitoring during the process (26%).
Within biopharma, Heneghan noted that the biggest issue she hears about related to artificial intelligence led–interviews is that candidates want to know that someone is going to understand the context behind their experience.
“A resume may not tell you that someone helped rescue a clinical program, or that they’ve navigated difficult regulatory environments or built an organization during a critical inflection point,” she said. “It’s hard to get that information without having a conversation. So, those nuances often emerge really only through conversation—one-on-one conversation.”
