How Does Duolingo Test Job Candidates Outside the Office?

At Duolingo, hiring decisions often come down to the opinion of someone unexpected – the candidate’s taxi driver. 

Luis von Ahn, CEO of Duolingo, has revealed on the Burnouts podcast that he pays taxi drivers to help evaluate prospective employees on their way to the interview, saying that the company’s belief “is that if they’re going to be mean to the driver, they’re probably going to be mean to other people, particularly people under them.”

This strategy has played a key role in several hiring decisions – including the time a company had been looking for a CFO “for like a year.”

The company had found candidates it "really liked", but ultimately chose not to hire them.

Why? “It turned out that they were pretty mean to their driver from the airport to the office,” Luis said. “And that made us not hire them.”  

Hiring at Duolingo 

When hiring, Duolingo has said it looks for candidates who can demonstrate technical excellence and contribute to the company’s ‘One for All’ culture – which focuses on collaboration, shared, mission-driven goals and stay engaged. 

Candidates who are driven by this culture and mission, Duolingo says, tend to do much better and the company than those who are not. 

To assess these qualities, the company said “we continuously strive for accurate and unbiased skill assessment,” by having required training for hiring managers and interviewers, and investing time to decide between leadership and the company’s hiring team what strong candidate performance looks like. 

To ensure it hires the right talent, the company has said it looks for people who are exceptionally skilled and a strong culture fit, “even when it means filling roles more slowly.”

“Our hiring bar is very high,” Luis shared on Linkedin. “We look for people who have something exceptional in their resume. In some cases that’s a high GPA from a top university, in others it’s an amazing portfolio and in others it’s beating all odds from the hand they were dealt in life.”

Increasing talent pools

As AI takes on more tasks traditionally completed by people, hiring is slowing – meaning that talent pools are increasing.

Research from Bank of America finds that the number of small businesses who planned to hire in February 2026 fell 4.4%, while Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that companies announced 54,000 AI related layoffs in the US in 2025. 

As more people look for roles, the average time taken to fill a role has risen to between 63 and 68 days, according to Corporate Navigators. With more applicants per role, companies are having to introduce new stages to their hiring process to ensure they are hiring high-level talent. 

Anthropic, for instance, has a hiring process that often requires five to six interview stages, which test strategic decision making, a candidate’s ability to communicate and technical skills depending on their role, such as collaboration with AI tools. 

This thorough hiring process is needed to assess a candidate's abilities, with Daniela Amodei, Co-Founder of Anthropic, saying: “We look for people who are great communicators, who have excellent EQ and people skills, who are kind and compassionate and curious and want to help other people.”