Candidates using AI? No, thanks, say IIT recruiters

As the annual placement season dawns at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), colleges and recruiters are working to bar artificial intelligence (AI) tools and prevent cheating at test venues, a concern that first rose last year.

- Pratishtha Bagai

Simultaneously, recruiters are strengthening psychometric tests to pick the best candidates, and IITs are hiring professionals to help their students sail through.

Ahead of the placements starting on 1 December, IITs have established testing venues with biometric entry and restricted WiFi networks to block AI tools in online tests, multiple placement coordinators at IITs said. Companies are also deploying sophisticated software to monitor and prevent cheating behaviours such as unauthorized internet searches and tab switching.

Organizations looking to prevent AI use primarily deploy authentication tech and firewalls, said Jaspreet Singh, chief revenue officer at Grant Thornton Bharat LLP who specializes in AI and tech. When a candidate connects to a centralized system, the organization will block the usage of certain websites and applications.

"This is being done at IITs through the common WiFi they use to give examinations on campus. Further, proctoring and motion-sensing detects your movements and makes sure you are not switching tabs. Even if students bypass this, there are plagiarism detection software that campuses and recruiters use to ensure that responses submitted by students are original,” Singh said.

For now, recruiters want to build upon students’ foundational knowledge once the employees are onboard, making tech school recruitment distinct from B-schools, where AI is often utilized to test higher-order analytical skills. Some of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) actively increasingly integrate and encourage the use of AI. The rationale for the divergence between IIT and IIM hiring is rooted in the desired output from a tech graduate.