Assessment of AI-Native Silicon-Design Candidates

Determine the best assessment approaches, interview formats, and technical questions for evaluating candidates’ AI-native silicon-design fluency and technical fundamentals.

Background

The paper argues that academic and industry evaluation must account for both traditional silicon-design fundamentals and new AI-native competencies. It discusses interviews that allow AI tools and suggests assessing candidates’ ability to decompose problems, identify when not to use AI, and formulate complementary AI techniques.

The authors explicitly leave unresolved which assessment methods and interview structures best measure these combined capabilities.

References

As students enter the workforce, academic and technical evaluation methods will need to adapt to also assess AI native fluencies. We are already seeing instances where industry interviews now allow for the use of AI tools but it is still an open question as to what the best approach, interview formats, and technical questions are to properly assess candidates.

— Academia x Industry: The Role of Fundamentals for Silicon in an AI Native Era  (2609.09344 - Lee et al., 8 Sep 2026) in Section 6, subsection “Evaluating Students for Industry Practice”