Duolingo CEO uses taxi driver test to screen job candidates before the formal interview begins

(SeaPRwire) –   For Duolingo, the job interview process begins the instant a candidate enters a car.

Luis von Ahn, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of the language-learning app Duolingo, disclosed on Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni’s podcast The Burnouts that a job candidate’s behavior toward their airport-to-office driver can either secure or ruin their hiring chances—even if their resume is outstanding or the hiring team likes them during the interview stages.

Entrepreneur von Ahn, who co-founded Duolingo with Severin Hacker in 2011, remembered a period when the company had been searching for a chief financial officer “for about a year.” The candidate had an impressive resume, and the whole hiring committee “really liked them,” he told The Burnouts in a February interview.

But “it turned out they were quite rude to their driver on the ride from the airport to the office,” von Ahn stated. “And that led us to decide not to hire them.”

Duolingo’s CEO—whose company has a market capitalization of $4.65 billion—found this out because he compensates taxi drivers to assess if candidates are suitable for hiring.

“We believe that if someone is rude to the driver, they’re likely to be rude to others, especially those who report to them,” he explained.

Hiring the right people is especially crucial for Duolingo given how heavily the company and von Ahn have invested in AI. Last April, von Ahn announced he was phasing out contract employees and replacing them with AI.

“We can’t wait for the technology to be completely perfect,” von Ahn wrote in a LinkedIn memo in April 2025. “We’d prefer to act quickly and accept occasional minor quality setbacks rather than move slowly and lose the opportunity.”

Although von Ahn’s taxi driver test is an unusual interview method, candidates in today’s tough job market are being assessed in ways they might not even be aware of.

A job market where every small detail matters

His method comes at a time when finding a job has never been more exhausting. Tech hiring has slowed significantly, with job postings dropping an estimated 36% from pre-2020 levels, per Indeed’s 2025 Tech Talent Report. At the same time, over 40,000 tech workers have been laid off this year so far, according to Layoffs.fyi data.

Additionally, interview processes have grown much longer and more complex. Candidates often go through five to eight interview rounds, panel presentations, case studies, and personality tests before getting an offer. The average time to hire in the U.S. is roughly 36 days from job posting to offer, according to research by Alex Benjamin, vice president of talent acquisition at OnPoint Consulting Services.

On top of that, assessments of culture fit and character have quietly become a standard part of the hiring process—even when candidates aren’t aware they’re being evaluated.

Other CEOs with unconventional hiring tactics

Duolingo’s CEO isn’t the only one who looks beyond resumes and formal interviews to gauge character traits.

Trent Innes—formerly managing director of accounting platform Xeno and now chief growth officer at SiteMinder—told The Ventures podcast in a September 2024 episode that he uses a coffee cup test to assess candidates.

When a candidate arrives for an interview, the interviewer takes them to the kitchen to get a drink.

“We then take the drink back, conduct the interview, and one thing I always watch for at the end is whether the candidate offers to take their empty cup back to the kitchen,” Innes said.

Anyone who leaves their dirty cup behind after the interview without offering to return it to the kitchen is automatically out of consideration.

“Skills can be developed, knowledge and experience can be gained, but it all boils down to attitude—and the attitude we emphasize is the idea of ‘washing your own coffee cup,’” he stated.

Even without such unusual tests, many high-profile CEOs stress the importance of street smarts and attitude in landing a job. Amazon’s hiring process is centered on its core Leadership Principles, with interviewers trained to spot red flags, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been vocal about prioritizing street smarts and intellectual curiosity over formal credentials alone.

“I care just as much about how you treat our tellers, guards, and receptionists as how you treat CEOs,” Dimon said in a July 2024 LinkedIn interview. “Those 300,000 people are the ones who matter, and we need to do right by all of them.”