Your AI interviewer will see you now—Varun Khurana, Wayfaster

2025-03-31

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Varun Khurana wants every job candidate to have the best possible chance to prove themselves for every job they apply to. He’s been in the trenches building with voice AI for 2+ years, and had some great nuggets to share:* 💬 How Wayfaster started: “Wayfaster started out as a way to interview your entire pipeline in a couple seconds... the only way you can really do that is using voice AI."* ⛔️Why AI video avatars are a no-go: "We tried avatars and every candidate hated it... I think it just makes candidates...

* 💬 How Wayfaster started: “Wayfaster started out as a way to interview your entire pipeline in a couple seconds... the only way you can really do that is using voice AI."

* ⛔️Why AI video avatars are a no-go: "We tried avatars and every candidate hated it... I think it just makes candidates feel dumb. It's just like, why am I talking to an avatar? Like how stupid do you think I am?"

* 📑How AI interviews give candidates a chance: "Candidates have just gotten really accustomed to getting this default auto-reject email... At least here, I know that if I do a good job on the interview, I have a shot at this opportunity."

* 🐻Why he’s bearish consumer voice AI: "I'm actually a little more bearish on the consumer voice AI use cases. I like voice AI in constrained environments, like B2B, there's an amount of intent... I don't think people are going to want to be talking to their phones all the time."

Hope you enjoy the conversation! As always you can subscribe at https://smartspeakers.fm.

Chapters

0:00 Welcome and intro

1:32 First big AI aha moment

5:08 Career background

7:40 Exploring startup ideas

10:34 How WayFaster was born

14:21 Initial target markets

16:45 Candidate response to AI interviews

19:07 Benefits for recruiters and candidates

23:30 How AI is transforming recruiting

26:51 The two-sided recruiting game