Canva makes AI use mandatory in coding interviews
The design firm says AI-assisted coding better reflects real job conditions.
Australian design giant Canva has revamped its technical interview process to reflect modern software development, requiring job candidates to demonstrate their ability to use AI coding assistants.
The shift aims to assess better how candidates would perform on the job, where tools like Copilot and Claude are already part of engineers’ daily workflows.
Previously, interviews focused on coding fundamentals without assistance. Now, candidates must solve engineering problems using AI tools in ways that reflect real-world scenarios, demanding effective prompting and judgement rather than simply getting correct outputs.
The change follows internal experiments where Canva found that AI could easily handle traditional interview questions. Company leaders argue that the old approach no longer measured actual job readiness, given that many engineers rely on AI to navigate codebases and accelerate prototyping.
By integrating AI into hiring, Canva joins many firms that are adapting to a tech workforce increasingly shaped by intelligent automation. The company says the goal is not to test if candidates know how to use AI but how well they use it to build solutions.
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