anvilohia/231101KAN-Interview

Setting Up Your AI Interview Agent

OB 301 / BUSGEN 101 — The AI-Powered Organization

Interview Exercise

Overview

You will build a personal AI interview agent that will interview your classmates and predict their Big Five personality scores. Your agent runs in a browser — classmates click a link, get interviewed, and, at the end, enter their personality scores from a questionnaire administered in class.

The only thing you design is the interview strategy. All the technical infrastructure is already built. Your job is to write a system prompt — a set of instructions that tells the AI how to conduct the interview, and how to translate the interview content into personality estimates on the Big Five dimensions.

Participant privacy will be strictly preserved. The personality scores will only be available to the AI agent but will not be reported to the protocol developer.

The AI engine powering every agent is Claude Haiku (Anthropic). Every student uses the same underlying model. What differs across agents is solely the interview strategy you design.

Estimated setup time: 20–30 minutes.

Your Anonymous ID

To protect your privacy, you will use an anonymous ID instead of your SUNet ID throughout this exercise — for naming your Space and registering your agent URL.

Formula: Day of birth (2 digits) + month of birth (2 digits) + first 3 letters of your birth city (uppercase)

Write yours down — you will need it in several places.

What You Need Before Starting

• —A free Hugging Face account
• —The class API key — posted on Canvas in the Interview Exercise
• —The class log token — posted on Canvas in the Interview Exercise
• —Your anonymous ID (generated above)

Step 1: Fork the Template

1. 1.Go to the class template Space: `https://huggingface.co/spaces/amirgostanford/ob301-b101-interview-agent-template`
2. 2.Click "Duplicate this Space" (⋮ kebab menu in the top-right corner)
3. 3.Name your Space: use your anonymous ID followed by -interview (e.g., 1503BOS-interview)
4. 4.Leave all other settings as default
5. 5.Click "Duplicate Space"

Wait about 60 seconds. The Space will show a "Building" indicator — it will fail at first because the API key isn't added yet. That's expected.

Step 2: Add the Class Secrets and Variable

Your agent needs credentials and a mode setting to function.

1. 1.From your Space page, click Settings
2. 2.Scroll to "Variables and secrets"

Add the following as secrets (click "New secret") — one at a time:

Keep these credentials confidential. Do not share them outside the class or post them publicly. They are rate-limited to class use only.

Add the following as a variable (click "New variable"):

Dev vs. Live mode: - dev — after the interview ends, the agent's predicted scores and rationale are displayed on screen. Nothing is logged. Use this to test your agent on yourself as many times as you like. - live — predictions are hidden, the self-report form appears, and the session is logged to the class dataset. Switch to this mode before sending your URL to classmates.

1. 1.After adding all three secrets and the variable, your Space will rebuild automatically. Wait ~30 seconds for it to restart.

Step 3: Write Your Interview Protocol

This is the intellectual core of the assignment.

1. 1.From your Space page, click "Files"
2. 2.Click on system_prompt.txt
3. 3.Click the pencil (edit) icon
4. 4.Delete all the existing text and replace it with your own interview strategy
5. 5.Click "Commit changes to main"

Your Space rebuilds in ~30 seconds. You can edit and re-commit as many times as you like before the deadline.

What to write

Your system prompt has two required sections, clearly labelled:

[INTERVIEW STRATEGY]

Instructions telling the AI how to conduct the interview. Write it as if you are briefing a human interviewer.

[SCORING RUBRIC]

For each of the five Big Five dimensions, describe the specific conversational signals you will use to assign a high vs. low score. This is your theory of measurement — what does a conversation reveal about each trait, and how?

Be concrete. For example:

• —"Agreeableness: use responses about food — someone adventurous and open to others' tastes scores high; someone rigid or dismissive scores low."

This rubric is never shown to the interviewee. It is used only at the prediction stage, after the interview ends.

What NOT to include: Do not write any instructions about outputting scores or the Big Five scale. The app handles that automatically.

Example (replace this with your own — do not copy)

[INTERVIEW STRATEGY]
You are a warm and curious recruiter.
You are trying to learn about the candidate's personality.

Ask open-ended questions about how they approach their work, what energizes
them, how they handle disagreement, and what they do outside of work.
Follow up on interesting answers. Keep the conversation natural — avoid
yes/no questions.

Aim for about 10-15 exchanges before wrapping up the conversation.

[SCORING RUBRIC]
Extraversion:            how extroverted is the interviewee?
Agreeableness:           how agreeable is the interviewee?
Conscientiousness:       how conscientious is the interviewee?
Emotional Stability:     how stable is the interviewee?
Openness to Experiences: how open is the interviewee?

Step 4: Test Your Agent

1. 1.Go to your Space's main page and click "App" (or use the embedded preview)
2. 2.Have a test conversation with your agent
3. 3.Does it interview the way you intended?
4. 4.If not, go back to Files → system_prompt.txt → edit → commit

Test it as if you were a classmate being interviewed for the first time. In dev mode, your predicted scores and rationale will appear on screen at the end — use this to evaluate whether your rubric is working as intended.

Step 5: Register Your Agent

Before registering, make sure your agent is in Live mode:

1. 1.In your Space, go to Settings → Variables and secrets
2. 2.Change MODE from dev to live
3. 3.Wait ~30 seconds for the Space to rebuild

Then go to the class registration app:

`https://huggingface.co/spaces/amirgostanford/ob301-b101-registration`

Fill in:

• —Your anonymous ID (e.g. 1503BOS)
• —Your SUNet ID (e.g. jsmith — used only to email you your assignments)
• —Your agent Space URL (e.g. https://huggingface.co/spaces/your-hf-username/1503BOS-interview)
• —Your course (OB 301 or BUSGEN 101)

Register by 1pm before class on April 13 (OB 301) or April 14 (BUSGEN 101). You will receive a confirmation on screen and your interview assignments by email after the deadline.

What Happens Next

After the registration deadline, you will be randomly assigned to complete interviews with 3 of your classmates' agents from your course section. You will receive those URLs by email. Follow the instructions you recieve in the email.

Troubleshooting