Perceived AI interview design and organizational attractiveness: the roles of social presence, telepresence, and AI literacy

Introduction: This study examines how candidates' perceptions of AI interview design features influence organizational attractiveness through their anticipated experience of standardized, AI-mediated selection. Applying the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, we propose a presence-based model linking three specific design features-human-likeness cues, decision transparency, and feedback informativeness-to social presence and telepresence, which in turn relate to organizational attractiveness as a candidate-side recruitment outcome. Methods: Survey data were collected from 755 job seekers who evaluated a standardized AI interview scenario. The proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results: Social presence functioned as the primary and more consistent mechanism linking perceived design features to organizational attractiveness, whereas telepresence played a more constrained role. Candidates' self-reported AI literacy strengthened the positive association between telepresence and organizational attractiveness, but did not significantly moderate the relationship between social presence and organizational attractiveness. Discussion: These findings indicate that candidates' evaluations of AI-mediated recruitment depend not only on formal procedural features but also on the perceived experiential quality of the interaction. By clarifying the presence-based mechanisms underlying candidate reactions, this study extends the literature on technology-mediated selection and offers practical guidance for designing human-centered, candidate-sensitive AI recruitment systems.