At Duolingo, job interviews begin the second a candidate steps right into a automotive.
Luis von Ahn, the billionaire cofounder and CEO of the language-learning app, revealed on Phoebe Gates’ and Sophia Kianni’s The Burnouts podcast how a job candidate treats their driver from the airport to the workplace could make or break their probabilities of getting employed—no matter how spectacular their résumé appears or how a lot they just like the candidate within the interview course of.
Entrepreneur von Ahn, who cofounded Duolingo in 2011 with Severin Hacker, recalled a time when the corporate had been searching for a chief monetary officer “for like a year.” The candidate had a powerful résumé and the whole hiring committee “really liked,” he advised The Burnouts in a February interview.
However “it turned out that they were pretty mean to their driver from the airport to the office,” von Ahn stated. “And that made us not hire them.”
The CEO of Duolingo, which has a market cap of $4.65 billion, knew this as a result of he pays taxi drivers to judge whether or not candidates are price hiring.
“Our belief is if they’re going to be mean to the driver, they’re probably going to be mean to other people, particularly people under them,” he stated.
It’s notably vital to Duolingo to rent the suitable particular person due to how a lot the corporate and von Ahn have leaned into AI. Final April, von Ahn stated he was eliminating contract staff and changing them with AI.
“We can’t wait until the technology is 100% perfect,” von Ahn wrote in a memo posted to LinkedIn in April 2025. “We’d rather move with urgency and take occasional small hits on quality than move slowly and miss the moment.”
Whereas von Ahn’s taxi-driver take a look at is an unconventional interview take a look at, candidates in right this moment’s brutal job market are being evaluated in methods they might not even understand.
A job market the place each element counts
His strategy comes at a time when touchdown a job has by no means felt extra grueling. Hiring in tech has slowed drastically, with job postings down an estimated 36% from pre-2020 ranges, in keeping with Certainly’s 2025 Tech Expertise Report. In the meantime, greater than 40,000 folks working in tech have been laid off thus far this 12 months, Layoffs.fyi knowledge reveals.
Plus, interview processes have turn into for much longer and extra concerned. Candidates routinely face 5 to eight interview rounds, panel shows, case research, and character assessments earlier than receiving a proposal. The typical time-to-hire within the U.S. is roughly 36 days from job posting to supply, in keeping with analysis by Alex Benjamin, vice chairman of expertise acquisition at OnPoint Consulting Providers.
And on high of that, tradition and character evaluations have quietly turn into a normal a part of the method—even when candidates don’t know they’re being assessed.
Different CEOs with unorthodox hiring ways
Duolingo’s CEO isn’t alone in wanting past a résumé and interview to search for character indicators.
Trent Innes, the previous managing director of accounting platform Xeno, and now chief development officer at SiteMinder, advised The Ventures podcast in an episode revealed in September 2024 he makes use of a coffee-cup take a look at to judge candidates.
When a job candidate arrives for an interview, the interviewer walks them to the kitchen for a beverage.
“Then we take that back, have our interview, and one of the things I’m always looking for at the end of the interview is, does the person doing the interview want to take that empty cup back to the kitchen?” Innes stated.
For anybody who leaves their soiled cup behind after the interview and doesn’t provide to take it again to the kitchen, it’s a no-go.
“You can develop skills, you can gain knowledge and experience, but it really does come down to attitude, and the attitude that we talk a lot about is the concept of ‘wash your coffee cup,’” he stated.
Even with out odd exams, a number of big-name CEOs are vocal about how vital road smarts and angle are to securing a job. Amazon constructed its hiring course of round its core Management Ideas, with interviewers skilled to probe for pink flags, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been outspoken about valuing road smarts and mental curiosity over pedigree alone.
“I care how you deal with our tellers, our guards, and our receptionists as much as I care how you deal with CEOs,” Dimon stated in a July 2024 interview with LinkedIn. “It’s those 300,000 people that matter, and we have to set up right for everybody.”
