OpenAI Pilots 'Mission Interview' for Job Candidates
Key Takeaways
- •OpenAI is piloting a "mission interview" stage in its hiring process, starting with the marketing and human resources teams.
- •The new stage assesses candidates' judgment and ability to weigh trade-offs regarding OpenAI's mission, with no single "right" answer and skepticism or disagreement welcomed.
- •Interviewers will come from teams separate from the role the candidate is applying for, and OpenAI is building a training program to certify employees to conduct these interviews.
- •OpenAI, which employs roughly 8,000 people and has 830 open roles, is standardizing its evaluations to apply a consistent hiring measure across teams.
- •The practice parallels mission-focused hiring at companies such as Meta, Amazon, and Anthropic, and arrives amid OpenAI salaries that often exceed $300,000 with stock adding significantly more.
OpenAI has begun piloting a new stage in its hiring process, known as the "mission interview," for candidates interviewing with certain teams, the company told Fortune on Monday.
The pilot, which starts with the marketing and human resources teams, is intended to give job candidates a dedicated space to discuss how they would contribute to OpenAI's mission, which the company defines as "to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity."
Through the new stage, OpenAI seeks to gauge how candidates think, including their judgment and their ability to weigh trade-offs—qualities the company considers increasingly critical as artificial intelligence firms work to control a technology that carries both great benefits and potential dangers. There is no "right" answer, an OpenAI representative said; skepticism and disagreement are welcome, as is intellectual diversity.
The person conducting the interview will come from a team separate from the role the candidate is applying for. OpenAI is also building a training program through which interested employees can become certified to conduct the interviews, though that effort is only beginning to ramp up.
The change marks the latest evolution in OpenAI's recruiting process as the company looks to standardize its evaluations while it matures and grows rapidly. OpenAI employs roughly 8,000 people worldwide and had 830 open roles as of this writing. By standardizing the process, the company aims to apply a consistent measure to evaluate new employees across teams.
The concept is not unique to OpenAI. Many technology companies, including Meta and Amazon, have their own versions of a mission interview, which is somewhat akin to a test of cultural fit. At Amazon, employees can be trained as "bar raisers"—interviewers from outside the hiring team who assess whether a candidate meets the company's company-wide "Leadership Principles." OpenAI's use of interviewers from outside the hiring team parallels that structure.
Anthropic has its own variant: interviewers reportedly test whether candidates are joining the AI lab for its mission or for the money, according to Axios.
The mission-focused stage arrives as at leading AI companies are extraordinarily lucrative. Many positions at OpenAI currently offer salaries above $300,000, and significantly more once stock is included. One software engineer with six years of experience reportedly received an OpenAI offer of $935,000 in total compensation—including a $385,000 base salary and $2.2 million in restricted stock units (RSUs) vesting over four years—according to a post on Blind, the anonymous professional network (@JoinBlind on X). In another Blind post, Anthropic allegedly offered a different candidate $620,000 in total compensation (@JoinBlind on X). The new screening stage will unfold against that backdrop.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
