Fair AI screening for high-volume hiring

We have just opened Recruitment Screening to our customers: an AI that gives every applicant a structured first interview by phone. Using AI in hiring deserves scrutiny, so here are the rules we built it around.

1. A person makes every decision

The AI never rejects anyone. Each report carries one of three results: recommend for interview, review before deciding, or not enough evidence. There is no fourth. Your managers decide who to meet and who to hire.

2. The recommendation is a rule, not an opinion

The AI scores each of your values from 1 to 5, with evidence. The result is then calculated from those scores by a fixed rule that is printed on every report. The AI is never asked "should we hire this person?".

3. Every score needs evidence

A score must quote what the applicant actually said. If the call produced no evidence for a value, the report says so. It does not guess.

4. How someone speaks is never scored

Accent, fluency, grammar and nerves are excluded. So is anything touching a protected characteristic. If you tell the system you are looking for something it cannot fairly assess, it is ignored, and the report tells you.

5. The same interview for everyone

Every applicant gets the same core questions and the same role-plays, in the same order. Five further questions are written from their own application.

6. Applicants know

The AI says it is an AI at the start of the call, explains that a person will make the decision, and offers a human alternative.

7. Only what is needed is kept

Applications are read, and details that have no place in a first interview are never stored: date of birth, health and criminal-record declarations, home address, referees. An applicant can be erased with one click.

What it does well

It does not accept "I'm a team player". It asks for a time, a place and what happened. It gives an honest picture of the job, including the cleaning, and checks availability against a real week rather than a grid of ticks. And it has time for every applicant, which no manager does.

Most of the people your managers meet will arrive with a scorecard and a list of things worth asking. The interviews get shorter and better.