Finding a place to take an AI interview turned into a half-day project

Why my own living room felt like a mistake

I really thought I could just sit in my room to do that AI competency test. It’s supposed to be just me and a webcam, right? But then I started worrying about the background. My desk is a mess of wires, old books, and a half-finished cup of coffee that had been sitting there since the morning. If I moved the camera to hide the mess, I’d be facing a blank, dingy wall that makes me look like I’m sitting in a basement. I spent an hour trying to clean up, but the lighting from my single ceiling bulb just made me look like a suspect in an interrogation room. I realized then that home just doesn’t work for these things when you actually care about the result.

The hunt for a quiet rental space

I started searching for a meeting room or a rental space where I could focus. I looked at some places in Gangseo-gu, thinking I could just grab a quiet corner, but most of them are tailored for group meetings or seminars. I found a small spot that charged about 10,000 to 15,000 KRW per hour, which felt fine for a temporary solution. The problem was the availability. Most of these places are booked solid by people doing team projects or private study groups. It took me a while to find a room that wasn’t right next to a loud construction site or a busy hallway where people were chatting and laughing. I felt a bit ridiculous calling around just to ask if the walls were soundproof enough for me to talk to a computer screen without feeling embarrassed.

Walking into a sterile environment

When I finally settled on a small rental room near the station, it was weirdly quiet. It wasn’t an ‘interview room’ specifically, just a generic shared workspace rental. I had to pay for two hours, even though the test itself was only about 45 minutes long, because that was the minimum booking duration. The desk was clean, the internet was fast, and the lighting was bright enough to make me look like a human being instead of a shadow. Still, there was this lingering anxiety. I was sitting there, talking to an algorithm, and the guy in the next room was clearly having a heated debate on a conference call. I spent half the time praying that the mic on my laptop wasn’t picking up his voice, and the other half hoping the AI wasn’t going to dock points because I looked nervous in a sterile, unfamiliar environment.

Things that still bother me about the setup

I’m still not convinced that paying for a rental space is actually better than just sucking it up at home. Sure, the background was clean, but the stress of checking the clock to make sure I wasn’t running over my booked time was real. I had to pack my laptop, my charger, and my ring light, and it felt like I was moving house for a forty-minute exercise. I wonder if the recruiters even notice the background, or if they just look at the weirdly choppy expressions you make when the internet lags for a microsecond. At the end of it, I just walked out and grabbed a coffee nearby. The test is done, but I still have no idea if my ‘competency’ came through or if I just looked like someone who was desperately trying to find a quiet place to exist for an hour.

Was it worth the effort?

Looking back, I probably overthought the whole thing. The room was perfectly fine, and the noise from the next room probably didn’t even make it onto the recording. But the sheer inconvenience of having to find a rental, deal with the booking schedule, and commute just to talk to a monitor—it makes me tired just thinking about the next round. I keep wondering if I should have just cleared off a corner of my desk and accepted that my real life isn’t a studio set. Next time, I think I might just gamble on my own room again, wires and all. At least I wouldn’t have to pack a bag.