An OpenAI engineer has revealed that the company’s hiring process can move from an initial outreach to a signed offer in as little as one week, highlighting the speed and intensity with which the AI firm recruits talent, according to Business Insider.
Jerene Yang, a team lead for synthetic data generation at OpenAI, shared details of her experience on an episode of the AI Across Borders podcast published on Wednesday. Describing the process, Yang said her interview journey was “extremely quick, extremely efficient, and very no-nonsense.”
Yang joined OpenAI’s San Francisco office in October 2024. Prior to this, she worked at Google as a senior engineering manager, where she led Cloud Spanner and handled large scale database systems.
From first message to signed offer in days
Yang said a recruiter reached out to her on a Monday regarding a leadership role that closely aligned with her experience. She agreed to an initial discussion, which took place the following day with the hiring manager and technical lead.
By Wednesday, she had completed the full interview process, which ran from 9 am to 6 pm. She received an offer on Thursday and signed it on Friday, completing the entire hiring cycle within a week.
One of the most important stages, Yang said, was a “technical deep dive,” also referred to as a “research discussion” for research focused roles. During this round, candidates select a topic and explain systems they have built, the problems they were trying to solve, and the reasoning behind major technical decisions.
“You really get to see the intellect of your interviewer as well and how much they know about your area,” Yang said.
Efficiency and automation matter at OpenAI
Beyond technical expertise, Yang said one skill is critical for anyone hoping to work at OpenAI, being “brutally efficient” with time. With several high priority projects running simultaneously, employees are expected to focus only on work where their skills provide clear value.
She added that candidates should be comfortable relying on AI tools and thinking carefully about task automation to boost productivity.
According to OpenAI’s interview guide, candidates typically go through resume screening, introductory calls, skills based assessments and final interviews. The final stage usually lasts four to six hours over one or two days and is designed to test problem solving, communication and collaboration, often pushing candidates beyond their comfort zones.