How to Interview Your AI Before You Hire It

Treat your AI like a new team member, because it is.

Author

Justin Glover
August 29, 2025

In partnership with

Today’s Perspective Shift

From: Deploying tools for speed
To: Vetting tools for alignment

Theme for the Quarter: Tools With Soul
Theme for the Week: Train Your AI Like You Train Your Team

Quote of the Week:
“Automation is delegation at scale. Make sure you're not scaling the wrong culture.”

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✨ In Today’s Episode:

  • Why most founders “hire” AI without vetting it

  • A simple interview test to catch misalignment early

  • How to pressure-test AI for tone, values, and autonomy

  • A repeatable framework to build better bots

How to Interview Your AI Before You Hire It

Treat your AI like a new team member, because it is.

🧠 ONE Smart Idea

You’d never hire someone to speak for your brand without an interview.
Why give AI that privilege for free?

Deploying AI without testing for cultural fit is like handing a mic to a stranger and saying,
“Go represent me.”

You don’t need to micromanage.
But you do need to vet.

Before AI gets access to your systems, clients, or calendar…
put it through an interview.

📖 Story Spark

A client of mine had a lead-nurturing GPT writing onboarding emails.
They were grammatically perfect, strategic, and… weirdly intense.

When we ran a tone test, we found the GPT was trained on high-pressure sales prompts from Reddit.
Not his brand. Not his vibe.

He’d never asked:

“Where did this model learn how to sound like this?”
“Does this tone match my team’s?”
“What would it say when things go wrong?”

He’d automated hiring…
but forgot to interview the employee.

⚙️ Tactical Application: The 5-Step AI Interview Process

Use this anytime you onboard a new agent, prompt, or workflow.

1. The Identity Check

“Describe your tone, personality, and decision-making process.”
Red flag: Generic, robotic, or inconsistent tone.

2. The Values Alignment Test

“What 3 principles should guide how you interact with customers?”
Look for alignment with your actual values (not just “be helpful”).

3. The Crisis Simulation

“A client is upset and wants a refund. How do you respond?”
This reveals whether the AI matches your emotional posture.

4. The Explain-Your-Logic Prompt

“Why did you choose that wording?”
This checks for logic depth…not just surface-level word salad.

5. The Viral Test

“If this response went viral, would it make me proud?”
☠️ If the answer is no… retrain or reject.

💡 Pro Tip:
Run this interview in Claude, GPT-4o, or Perplexity with system prompts.
Create a scoring doc in Notion to track pass/fail before going live.

🔦 Tool Spotlight: GPTs, Claude, Perplexity Agents

  • GPTs: Use “custom instructions” to define tone and test responses

  • Claude: Best for empathy and long-context testing (e.g., client scenarios)

  • Perplexity: Great for real-world knowledge and logical breakdowns

🧭 Intelligent Elevation

AI isn’t just a productivity tool.
It’s a voice.

And the more it does for you, the more it becomes you.

That’s why sovereign founders don’t just ask, “What can this do?”
They ask, “Who will this sound like when I’m not in the room?”

“If AI is your new hire, clarity is your onboarding manual.”

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💬 Closing Insight

Don’t just ship prompts.
Ship your principles.

If you want AI that represents you…
start by interviewing it like you would a team member.

“Your AI is your voice at scale. Make sure it earns the mic.”

🧠 Reply with one “interview question” you’ll ask your AI this week
💾 Save this if you’re onboarding a new automation
➡️ Forward to a founder automating too fast without review

✍️

AiScaleTips is your founder clarity compass.
Most scale with chaos. You scale by design.

— Justin Glover