The Drug Everyone's Using and Nobody Admits To

A hiring manager asked me how to screen candidates for real AI skills. Here's what I told him — and why so many people still hide their AI use like a bad habit.

sometimes when you notice more, you see things that you have never seen. I drive by this corner often but have never noticed the awesome painting of a tiger. It’s in South Jordan, Utah just under the highway on I-15.

Last week a hiring manager asked me a question that stopped me mid-call: “How do we screen for candidates who actually use AI?”

He was hiring a VP of Growth Marketing. He wanted someone fluent in AI. But he had no idea how to tell the difference between someone who really uses it and someone who just says “AI” a lot in interviews.

Fair question. Because here’s the weird thing about AI right now:

It’s like a drug people use privately.

Plenty of people use it every day and won’t admit it at work or school. There’s still a vibe that it’s cheating. Cutting corners. Not “real” work.

I get why. But used right, it can 10X your output.

So let me be the first to tell you: I use AI. A lot. You can stop reading now if that offends you.

I use it to write this newsletter. I use it to pressure-test which candidates are the strongest fit for a search. I use it to get better at anything I’m trying to get better at.

Maybe you use it and you’re proud of it. Maybe you use it and you’d never admit it, because you’re worried people will think you’re not “authentic.” Maybe you don’t touch it at all.

I’m not here to tell you what to do.

I’m here to tell you the stigma is costing people — on both sides of the hiring desk.

Here’s what I’ve learned: the more I use AI, the more I realize how much I don’t know. And the thing I value most about it? If I tell it to be brutally honest with me, it will be. No sugarcoating. No trying to please me.

(If I don’t tell it to be honest, it turns into a professional butt-kisser. Ask for the truth. Always.)

That’s the real skill, by the way. Not prompting tricks. Truth-seeking.

Your job with AI — and mine — is to proofread what it spits out, fact-check it, check the sources, and use it to get to the truth faster. It’s not always right. It won’t replace you. But it will make almost anyone faster at their job.

So back to the hiring manager’s question. Here’s where this lands for you:

If you’re a candidate: use AI to prepare for your interviews. Feed it the job description and your resume, and tell it to grill you — honestly — on your weak spots. You’ll walk in knowing exactly which questions you should be sweating.

If you’re a hiring manager: use AI to prep too. Drop a resume in and ask it what you should probe. The gaps, the vague claims, the conveniently missing dates. Then in the interview, don’t ask “Do you use AI?” — everyone says yes. Ask them to walk you through the last real problem they solved with it. The people who actually use it light up and get specific. The people who don’t, stall.

The tool is the same on both sides of the desk. The advantage goes to whoever stops treating it like a secret.

The best interview question for AI skills isn't "Do you use AI?" It's "Walk me through the last real problem you solved with it." One gets you a yes. The other gets you the truth.

PS — The first draft of this post was written by me. I’d show you, but like every first draft, it was shit. The version you just read was improved by AI and fact-checked by my own eyes. That’s the whole point.