The 2027 State of Interview Intelligence Report

Job seekers are 8x more likely than talent leaders to rate an interview process poorly.

New research from Textio and Kyle & Co finds employers are confident their interview process is working—while candidates report unprepared interviewers, unacceptable feedback, and fraud detection gone wrong.

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Last year, we showed what's actually happening inside interviews.

Textio’s 2025 research analyzed 10,000+ interview assessments across nearly 4,000 candidates. We found the likable candidate gets the job, even if they’re not the most qualified.

12xMore likely that a candidate who received an offer was described as having a “great personality”
39%More feedback written about a candidate when the answer was no
25xMore often women candidates were described as “bubbly” than men

This year, we’re looking at the state of interviewing from both sides of the table: candidates and employers.

Spoiler: one thinks they’re doing great, the other thinks… things are not great.

Employers and job seekers disagree about the quality of the interview process.

Talent leaders scored their own company’s interview process at +48.25 on a standard recommendation scale. Job seekers, rating a process they had actually been through, scored it +2.87.

Employers report all is well. Candidates report mixed experiences. Something isn’t working as designed.

88%

of employers say their interviews are usually or always structured

48%

of job seekers say their most recent process felt at least partly improvised, and 7% say the interviewer seemed to be winging it

Candidates judge a hiring process by how it was run.

When asked for the single thing that matters most when judging a hiring process as good, candidates said:

How fair and consistent it felt35%
How well they communicated31%
How fast it moved10%
How respectfully I was treated10%
How honestly the role was represented8%
Whether I got the job6%

Candidates want more consistency and communication in hiring. They’re getting thoughtless feedback or straight up ghosted instead.

81%

of employers say rejected finalists usually or always receive substantive, personalized feedback

57%

of job seekers rejected at a final round got a templated line, no explanation, or no reply at all

Webinar

Hiring That Works: What TA Leaders Should Stop, Start, and Scale

You have all the data. Now join us on Thursday, November 12 at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET to hear from talent leaders on what comes next. Register below!

Matt CharneyTA Analyst at Kyle & Co
Colleen GallagherCEO at Textio

Employers are confident they can spot cheating. Candidates say they’re catching the wrong people.

8.1/10

How confident talent leaders are that their interviewers can tell when a candidate is using AI assistance during a live interview

39%

of job seekers have felt an employer wrongly suspected them of cheating or misrepresenting themselves

Employers are right to be on guard: 83% of job seekers say candidate misrepresentation is at least fairly common. It’s not that fraud is overblown. It’s that employers aren’t as good at detecting it as they think they are.

24%

admit to exaggerating a skill or credential

11%

say they’ve had someone help them answer in a live interview

10%

report they’ve used AI covertly in an interview

Bad interview processes cost companies customers, not just candidates.

56%

of candidates who had a poor interview experience say they would never apply to the company again

35%

say they would never apply again and they would stop buying from the company

Employer brand = Company brand = Company revenue.

Get all the insights and tips in the report.

The full report includes:

The nine major findings, explained
All the survey data, contextualized
The 100-point Interview Intelligence Index
Predictions on the near-future of interviewing
10 practical takeaways for talent leaders

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Textio is a leader in building AI tools that help high-growth companies recruit high-performing teams.

The company’s latest innovation, Lavalier, is an interview intelligence platform that helps recruiting teams get the right evidence from interviews to make better hiring decisions with.

Founded in 2014, people leaders at companies like Bloomberg, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, Samsung, Spotify, and more choose Textio to help them attract and develop top talent. Textio has been named to TIME’s 2026 Top WorkTech Companies, Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies list several times, in addition to the Fortune Impact 20, Forbes AI 50, and CNBC Disruptor 50.