SME Careers screens most roles with a recorded AI interview of about 15 minutes. You get one attempt, plus a retake only if SME offers it. The questions are about the skills the job needs, so this guide starts with the AI training work itself. From SME’s help centre and the SME postings on this site, read 13 October 2026.
The job behind the interview: checking AI answers in your field
SME Careers is SuperAnnotate’s network of subject matter experts. Its help centre says the work is training and evaluating frontier AI models with your domain expertise. The postings say what that means in practice. Of the 185 open SME roles on this site:
- 169 ask you to review AI-generated content in your field
- 90 ask you to fact-check claims
- 91 ask you to spot hallucinated or unsupported statements
- 88 ask you to rate and compare several AI responses to the same prompt
- 55 ask you to write model or gold-standard answers
- 109 mention rubrics, the scoring guides a project gives you
Here is a made-up example of the kind of task the postings describe. A biochemist gets three model answers to a question about enzyme kinetics. One gets the direction of a pathway wrong, one is correct but buries the answer, one invents a reference. The job is to say which is best and why in writing, then write the answer the model should have given.
Language roles follow the same pattern for fluency, register and mistranslation instead of science. Some safety roles add a step: deciding whether a request is harmless, dual-use or adversarial, and whether the model should have refused.
What the interview asks
SME says the interview opens with a warm-up question, then moves to role-specific questions about your skills. It gives three pieces of advice:
- answer as you would in any professional interview
- use concrete examples from your own experience, not general statements
- say so when you do not know something, instead of guessing
The postings show which skills those questions are likely to reach. Prepare two or three examples where you:
- caught an error in someone else’s work in your field, and how you knew it was wrong
- explained something difficult to a non-expert, accurately and briefly
- chose between two defensible answers and could say why one was better
Each one maps onto the work: finding the mistake, writing the better answer, ranking the responses. Read the posting’s responsibilities on the interview welcome page before you start. SME shows the role description, key responsibilities and the pay rate there, where one is set.
Practise the task itself
SME’s help centre mentions no practice interview. You can still practise the work itself. Ask a chatbot a hard question from your field. Then mark up its answer as if you were paid to: what is wrong, what is missing, what would you cut. Then write your own version in a few sentences.
Do it two or three times and you will have fresh, specific examples to talk about. It also tells you quickly whether this kind of work suits you.
Setup before you click the link
- Use the link from your Applications page or the invitation email, signed in with the account you applied with. Each link works once.
- A desktop computer with a current Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari. SME does not recommend phones.
- A quiet room, a stable connection and headphones. Close Zoom, Slack and anything else that uses your camera or microphone, so they do not block access during the technical check.
- Check the interview language. Most interviews are in English, but some roles interview in another language, and you answer in that one. The welcome page and the job details say which.
Before it starts you accept a consent notice: the interview is recorded, AI produces summaries and a first assessment, and people decide. You can ask for an accommodation or another format, such as audio only, by emailing [email protected] with the role and your reason.
During: take your time, answer alone
SME says the interviewer waits about 5 to 6 seconds after you stop speaking so it does not cut you off mid-answer. Take your time. A timer labelled Scheduled Interview Time counts down. When it runs out you may see Time exceeded while the interviewer wraps up, and you can finish the thought you are on.
Do not use Google, ChatGPT or notes. SME says this is detectable and leads to disqualification, and that recordings go through automated and manual checks.
One attempt, and one retake if offered
SME’s results page sets out the limit:
- You take the interview once.
- If the result is Needs Retake, your application shows Retake available and you can try once more.
- Not Passed means the interview was not successful for that role.
- An Incomplete interview, cut short by a technical problem or with fewer than three questions answered, does not count as an attempt.
- SME may grant a further attempt in rare cases, but not automatically.
The limit is per job. Using it up on one role does not affect any other. There is no waiting period, but SME asks you to wait for the first result before retaking. Before a retake, it suggests rereading the job requirements and looking for answers you could back with a more specific example.
After: review, screening, an exam for some roles
Grading usually takes 1 to 2 business days, and your application shows Interview under review meanwhile. A pass moves it to Qualified for role. Then screening begins:
- SME’s team reviews your profile and CV against the role.
- Some roles add a short call with a recruiter. SME warns that missing it without notice can end the process.
- If screening succeeds, you are invited to onboard: a Deel contract, identity checks and a linked Discord account.
Some roles also have a qualification exam after the interview, written or task-based, hosted outside SME’s site. Some exams are paid.
Most projects then start with a bootcamp, a paid training period where the project team scores your training tasks against its own quality bar. Pass it and you move to real tasks as an annotator, a QA reviewer or another assigned role. The tasks themselves are done in the project’s work platform, such as SuperAnnotate, not on the SME site.
SME gives no timeline for screening, and says not every qualified expert is placed straight away, because placements depend on active projects.
What happens to your recording
SME keeps the video, audio and transcript for up to 24 months, plus a screen recording only when the interview includes a technical exercise. It says only its assessment reviewers and contracted service providers see it. It is not shared with clients, and SME says it is not used to train AI models. If you pass, it may be reused to match you to future roles. Email [email protected] to have it deleted, which SME says happens within 30 days.
What SME does not publish
None of these appears on an SME page, so this site does not state them:
- how answers are scored, or what the pass bar is
- how long screening takes after you qualify
- which roles have a qualification exam before you reach it
- the bootcamp pass threshold, which SME says varies by project
- how many hours a project offers each week
Before you start
Read the posting, practise the task twice, check the interview language and pick your examples. Then browse the open SME Careers roles and choose the one closest to your own field. To see how micro1 and Mercor screen, read their two interviews side by side.
This site is not affiliated with SME Careers or SuperAnnotate, and passing the interview is not a promise of work.