We let job candidates use AI. It made hiring better

When AI started becoming mainstream, many companies reacted by trying to keep them out of the interview process. Particularly in engineering, candidates were warned not to use Cursor or Claude Code. Some companies looked for ways to detect AI-generated work or redesigned exercises to make AI less useful. I understood the instinct, but thought it was solving the wrong problem. If someone is going to use AI every day after joining our company, interviewing them without AI tells me very little…