The AI job interview has spawned its own industry

# The AI job interview has spawned its own industry Source: [https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/14/ai-job-coach-industry/](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/14/ai-job-coach-industry/) For the last year, Andrew Quillen has been coaching people on how to get a career in AI\. A former product strategist at OpenAI and head of AI at Spotify, Quillen makes $2,220 to $2,600 per client, providing 8 to 14 hours of mentorship and interview prep through[Leland,\(opens in new tab\)](https://www.joinleland.com/)an online career\-coaching platform\. Quillen is a full\-time AI strategist at consulting firm[And Maverick\(opens in new tab\)](https://www.andmaverick.com/), and the coaching is just a side gig\. His clients range from Stanford graduates to mid\-career workers looking to pivot\. Inquiries have surged since he started, he said, and he now fields 75 to 80 a month\. Between tech layoffs and the lure of enormous payouts from future IPOs, interest in AI jobs has skyrocketed\. Landing one of these positions has become more difficult, with longer interview processes, harder tests, and more competition\. Preparing for interviews is now an industry of its own\. A tried and true way to jump the queue is via personal referral, but for those without connections, the next best thing might be a paid practice interview with a current or former AI employee\. Enter coaching as a service\. ADPList, Exponent, Leland, and Prepfully hire independent coaches from a wide range of companies; the most in demand are from Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and OpenAI\.  Cognetta at his San Francisco residence\.\|Source:Morgan Ellis/The StandardSome of the services publicly link to their coaches’ LinkedIn profiles, while others conceal the coaches’ names to avoid any conflict with their employers, such as implying company endorsement or being accused of exposing confidential hiring practices\. Many hide their full roster of coaches until after a user signs up\. Rates range from free to more than $1,000 an hour, with some requiring clients to book multiple hours\. ## Application overload Recruiters acknowledge that it’s an unusually crowded market\. “Every top AI company is flooded with applicants right now,” said Jesse Dwyer of the SF\-based AI search engine Perplexity\. Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, OpenAI’s former head of recruiting, said last year that each new posting attracted a “massive amount of[applications\(opens in new tab\)](https://forum.openai.com/public/videos/event-replay-careers-at-the-frontier-hiring-the-future-at-openai)*\.”* Searches for AI jobs have grown 11\-fold since November 2022, according to[Indeed\(opens in new tab\)](https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/04/28/job-seeker-searches-for-ai-roles-have-grown/)\. The most coveted positions are at frontier AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind, but AI roles in general are viewed as more secure and influential than traditional tech roles\. - [https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/13/myth-ai-stock-real-estate/](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/13/myth-ai-stock-real-estate/)[https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/13/myth-ai-stock-real-estate/](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/13/myth-ai-stock-real-estate/) ### [The myth of bartering AI stock for real estate](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/13/myth-ai-stock-real-estate/) - [https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/11/anti-ai-protest-openai-anthropic-google-san-francisco/](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/11/anti-ai-protest-openai-anthropic-google-san-francisco/)[https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/11/anti-ai-protest-openai-anthropic-google-san-francisco/](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/11/anti-ai-protest-openai-anthropic-google-san-francisco/) ### [Slushies, a Barney costume, a march from OpenAI to Anthropic: Inside SF’s anti\-AI protest](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/11/anti-ai-protest-openai-anthropic-google-san-francisco/) - [https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/10/waymo-robotaxi-emergency-response/](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/10/waymo-robotaxi-emergency-response/)[https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/10/waymo-robotaxi-emergency-response/](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/10/waymo-robotaxi-emergency-response/) ### [Delays, detours, and passed\-out riders: Waymos keep blocking SF firefighters](https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/10/waymo-robotaxi-emergency-response/) Techies have long used coding bootcamps to build skills and platforms like HackerRank and CoderPad to practice for technical interviews\. Now many are using chatbots, not just to write cover letters, but to practice for the entire interview process\. “Everyone’s coming in much more prepared, because they’ve used AI to be prepared,” said Tina Shah Paikeday, a responsible AI senior adviser at Findem, a Redwood City\-based recruiting platform\. “The bar has leveled up\.” With AI increasingly handling parts of the coding process, employers are prioritizing critical thinking instead\. “We’re now shifting from knowledge workers to judgment workers,” saidPaikeday\. In the past year, 600,000 clients have joined[ADPList\(opens in new tab\)](https://adplist.org/mentors/felix-lee)\(short for Amazing Design People\), according to Felix Lee, its San Francisco\-based CEO\. Many sign up to practice for interviews with someone who’s “been there and done that,” he said\. Lee says he built the platform to provide more equitable access to tech jobs\. “I didn’t go to college, and my parents, they work odd jobs\. … We didn’t have access to the tech industry\.”  The offices of OpenAI, where job seekers are hoping to get a foot in the door\. \(Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images\)\|Source:Getty imagesMost of ADPList’s coaches are based in the Bay Area, and 90% mentor for free\. The others are paid “advance” coaches, a vetted tier ADPList introduced in 2023\. That group includes an[OpenAI\(opens in new tab\)](https://adplist.org/mentors/pablo-boerr)product designer\. The fees fund the for\-profit company\. Charging for coaching is less democratic but keeps these companies in business, said Pierre Azoulay, an MIT management professor who wrote a case study on San Francisco coaching platform[Interviewing\.io\(opens in new tab\)](http://interviewing.io/)\. The coaches grant access to inside circles, and while the hourly rate may seem high, for frontier lab workers “it doesn’t pay especially well, relative to the value of their time\.” ### Have thoughts on this story? San Francisco interview\-prep platform[Exponent\(opens in new tab\)](https://www.tryexponent.com/companies/openai)has seen a shift in the kinds of tech companies people want to work for\. Bookings for coaches at legacy tech companieslike Apple and Amazon dropped over the past year, and the number of people booking Meta mentors on the platform fell 67% amid[layoffs\.](https://sfstandard.com/2026/04/01/ai-workers-anxiety-therapy-bay-area/) Exponent costs $144 annually and charges extra for one\-on\-one coaching\. Employers increasingly expect AI skills, according to Exponent cofounder Stephen Cognetta, 32, who notes that hiring rates have dropped\. “If you don’t know how to use an AI agent, if you don’t know an MCP \[model context protocol, which connects AI to external tools\], if you don’t know how to think about agent orchestration, it’s not a good job market for you\.” Coaches from AI labs charge a premium over those from traditional tech companies,[Prepfully\(opens in new tab\)](http://www.prepfully.com/)CEO Udit Batra said\. Some individuals have spent more than $6,000 across 25 sessions with the company\. “It’s a sizable investment,” he said, though successful candidates sometimes recoup the cost by later becoming coaches themselves\. Some coaches use mentoring as a way to find applicants, said Batra, referring standout candidates to openings at their own companies\. Meeting candidates through coaching can help thin the résumé pile, agreed Perplexity’s Dwyer, noting that “great talent recognizes great talent\.” Dwyer, who spends a quarter of his time recruiting, looks for curious people, polymaths, and those “comfortable with trying things that have never been done before\.” His bar is deliberately vague\. “We don’t discriminate on experience; we discriminate on excellence,” he said\. Less than 1% of candidates pass the Perplexity engineering test, and some roles ask candidates to use Perplexity’s AI tool to explain why they’re a strong fit\. ## The desperation economy John Koelliker, CEO of Leland, for which Quillen and other AI veterans coach jobseekers, said demand has exploded as the user mindset has changed from, “‘Oh, I want to learn AI to be better at my job’ to ‘I have to learn AI … to survive in the economy\.” Job hunters are getting more desperate as companies are “opting for fewer people, doing a lot more, paying them a lot more\.” Coaching isn’t the only thing Leland is offering\. It has online AI career training programs, and businesses are signing up their employees to make them “more AI native\.” “The whole world happens to have the same career and educational goal this year, which is learn AI, work in AI, build with AI more,” said Koelliker\. That has created a surprising new line of business for Leland\. Some of the tech companies that are laying off workers to replace them with AI are paying the coaching platform to provide former employees with AI training as part of their severance\. The tech companies doing the hiring hold so much leverage that some have insisted candidates quit their jobs and work in\-house for a trial month\. “\[It’s\] a crazy type of power we haven’t necessarily seen before,” Koelliker said\. That helps explain why candidates are willing to pay so much for coaching\. “If you’re able to pay a few thousand to get help and differentiate you,” he said, “it’s kind of a no\-brainer\.”