HOW OFTEN HAVE you decided that the best way to prepare for a job interview is to write yourself a tidy little script? And then tortured yourself trying to learn it off by heart, as if the panel had invited you to deliver a 45-minute TED Talk rather than have a conversation?

If that sounds familiar – or triggering – you’re not alone. Most people I work with do it too.
It feels helpful. It looks helpful. But it isn’t.

A script might look good in print, but it rarely sounds good. The way we write and the way we speak belong to different worlds. Writing is polished, deliberate. Speaking is reactive, unique to the speaker.

And interviews – by definition – are a two-way exchange.

Scripting answers for something that depends on interaction is illogical. It doesn’t prepare you to perform under pressure, for curveballs or to help you sound interesting, engaged and memorable

“Yeah, I get all that,” someone said to me recently, “but my vocabulary’s terrible. Can AI not sex it up a bit?”

There’s a long-held myth that the more polished our language, the smarter or more professional we sound. But interviews aren’t literary recitals. The goal isn’t to impress -it’s to persuade. To be understood.

Nobody has ever landed a job by bamboozling the panel with jargon.

We see a version of this in online interviews.

It’s why so many people claim they’re less nervous on Zoom: they’re reading. Off Google Docs, off sticky notes on the wall behind their screen – convinced that rhetorical brilliance will dazzle. It rarely does.

And now, with AI, the problem has deepened.

At least those old Zoom scripts were the person’s own words, however stiff. Lately, I’ve seen candidates hand over the whole lot to ChatGPT – who they are, why they want the job, their vision for the role.

Then they arrive at the interview frozen, terrified of forgetting a line from their AI-generated script, unable to respond to anything unscripted.

Interviewers aren’t fooled. “You can smell a GPT answer a mile off,” one told me. “Bullet points, buzzwords, generic statements… eyes glazed over.”

It’s not that AI has no place in interview prep. It can be brilliant for research – helping you dig beyond the “About Us” page, spot trends in the industry, understand what the company values.

But when you hand it your voice – when you let it speak for you rather than use it as a helpful tool to inform you – you give up the very thing employers most want to see: your mind at work. The bit that problem-solves, connects dots and listens, reacts in real time.

No surprise then that employers are pushing back. Goldman Sachs has warned applicants not to use AI tools in interviews, saying they want to “hear from applicants in their own voice”. Anthropic – itself an AI company – wants to “understand your personal interest” and assess “non-AI-assisted communication skills”.

In other words: the same thing they’ve always wanted. Proof you understand them – their needs, their challenges – and that you’re someone they’d actually want around the place.

One client, applying for a senior banking role, asked ChatGPT to write her interview answers. The result? A 40-page script of generic questions and bullet-pointed responses. By the end, she was exhausted, anxious, and no wiser about what she actually brought to the role.

When I asked what the job spec said, she replied: “It doesn’t matter – I just need to learn these answers.”

That’s the trap.

AI, like over-scripting, strips away your personality – your humour, warmth, ability to empathise or think on your feet.

Another client, lively and funny in conversation, turned robotic the minute we switched into “interview mode”. Moments earlier he’d been animated, gesturing, telling stories. Then, suddenly, flat. “I bottled it,” he said. “Just didn’t trust my own voice.”

“Unsure, robotic, monotone,” he added. “I wouldn’t hire me.”

One hiring manager I know now adds an informal phone chat before the main interview – a quick test of who actually sounds human.

AI won’t make you sound dazzling. You have to do that bit yourself.

The real trick is to approach the interview as a problem-solving exercise. You’re not there to perform; you’re there to show you understand what the company needs, and how you can help meet that need.

That understanding gives you freedom to sound natural, be curious, to have a proper conversation.

So, by all means, use AI – but wisely. Let it broaden your thinking, highlight industry shifts, or help you find the right questions to ask. Then put it away.

Write down key points, examples, stories.

Practise saying them aloud – not word for word, but conversationally, as if explaining them to a friend. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s clarity.

Know three things: what they need, what you offer, and how you can prove it.

Because when everyone else is reciting ChatGPT’s idea of who they should be, the person who turns up – empathetic, thoughtful, unmistakably human – will stand out.

Sarah Geraghty is the Head of Careers at The Communications Clinic.