Recruiting With AI: Screen Résumés and Schedule Interviews

Hiring at a small business: one more job on top of the job#

At a large company, recruiting is a profession. At an SMB, or for a freelancer hiring their first employee, it's one more task for the owner or team lead, on top of their usual work. And it's a heavy one: write the job ad, post it, read every application, reply to each person, organize interviews, follow up, inform those who aren't selected.

The consequences are familiar. Applications skimmed late at night, candidates waiting weeks for an answer and eventually accepting another offer, rejections never sent.

An AI agent can take over the administrative and preparatory side: reading, summarizing, organizing, scheduling, informing. It must not decide for you who deserves an interview, let alone whom to hire. This article shows how to draw that line clearly.

What the agent can do at each stage#

Step 1: A precise job description#

Everything else depends on this step. An agent can only compare an application with explicit criteria. “A dynamic, high-performing salesperson” allows no useful comparison. Write instead:

• The main responsibilities: three to five, concrete.
• Must-have criteria: a qualification required by regulation, a driver's license, minimum experience in a specific task, a language.
• Nice-to-have criteria: a tool, an industry, a complementary skill.
• What doesn't matter: say that too. For example, “the degree doesn't matter if the experience is there.”

The Job ad writing template starts from your description in a few lines and writes the complete ad: responsibilities, profile, benefits, salary, hiring process. Stating the process in the ad (number of interviews, timelines) is appreciated by candidates and commits you to sticking to it.

Step 2: Screening applications#

How it works#

The Application screening template reads the applications received by email (résumé and cover letter) every weekday evening at 6 p.m. For each one, it:

1. summarizes the profile in three lines;
2. compares it with your job description;
3. gives an indicative score out of 5, with strengths and unmet criteria;
4. updates a tracking sheet in Google Sheets.

Every evening you receive the highest-scoring profiles, with a link to the full sheet. By default, the agent sends no automatic replies to candidates during screening.

Why an “indicative” score#

The score isn't a verdict. It's there to order your reading, not to eliminate candidates you haven't seen. A good practice: glance at every summary, including those at the bottom of the ranking. An unusual career path may deserve an interview even if it ticks few boxes.

Sample criteria sheet for the agent#

Role: administrative and sales assistant, permanent, full-time, in Nottingham. Must-have: at least two years' experience in administration (quotes, invoices, client follow-up); confident spreadsheet skills. Nice-to-have: experience with invoicing software; construction industry experience; a second language. Doesn't matter: level of degree; previous industry if the tasks are comparable. For each application, summarize the career path in three lines, list which must-have criteria are met and not met with the sentence from the résumé that shows it, and give an indicative score out of 5. Never take into account age, sex, ethnic origin, family situation, photo, home address or any other criterion unrelated to the role.

Asking for “the sentence from the résumé that shows it” is useful: it lets you check at a glance that the agent hasn't extrapolated.

Step 3: Organizing interviews#

Once you've marked the candidates to meet in the sheet, the Interview scheduling template takes over. Twice a day on weekdays, it offers each shortlisted candidate three free slots from your calendar, creates the Google Calendar invitation with the video call link once a slot is chosen, and sends a reminder the day before.

You can also link the two agents in a chain: that's the Screening and interviews template. The first agent fills a table of scored candidates; the second offers slots to the candidates you've selected. If you'd rather have slot offers go out automatically above a certain score, that's possible, but we recommend keeping human approval before any contact.

Step 4: Keeping every candidate informed#

A candidate left without news forms a poor opinion of the company, and talks about it. The Candidates kept informed template, designed for a recruiting tool such as Workable, sends an acknowledgment, gives an update at each stage change, drafts a respectful, personalized rejection when the process ends, and flags candidates who haven't heard from you in seven days.

Here's a rejection the agent can prepare:

Dear Mr. Lefèvre, Thank you for your interest in the administrative and sales assistant role and for the time you gave us during our conversation on Thursday. After careful consideration, we have chosen a candidate whose invoicing experience more closely matches our immediate needs. Your project management background caught our attention, and we will get back in touch if a role closer to your profile opens up. We wish you every success in your search.

This rejection is personalized from your interview notes. Always review it before sending.

The legal framework: fairness, GDPR and AI#

Non-discrimination#

Most countries prohibit rejecting a candidate on grounds such as age, sex, origin, family situation, physical appearance, place of residence or health, among others: the French Labor Code, the UK Equality Act 2010 and US federal law all set out such rules. An AI agent must be explicitly configured to ignore these factors, and you must be able to check which criteria each summary relies on. That's why the library templates include the rule “Never take into account age, sex, origin or family situation.” You can extend it.

GDPR#

Résumés contain personal data. When the GDPR applies (candidates in the EU, for instance), a few rules follow:

• Inform candidates about how their data is processed, for example with a notice in the ad or the acknowledgment, including the use of an automated tool to prepare screening.
• Limit retention: in France, the data protection authority (CNIL) recommends not keeping a rejected candidate's data for more than two years after the last contact, unless they agree.
• Limit access: only the people involved in the hiring process should see the tracking sheet.

Human decision-making#

The GDPR restricts decisions based solely on automated processing when they significantly affect a person, and the EU AI Act classifies systems used for recruitment as high-risk. In practice, the conclusion is the same: the agent prepares, a person decides. Never let an agent reject an application on its own without a human having reviewed it.

For a specific situation, consult an employment law adviser; this article provides pointers, not legal advice.

Scenario: a construction company hiring a site manager#

A fifteen-employee structural works company posts a site manager role. The owner never has time to read applications during the day.

• Week 1: the screening agent reads incoming applications every evening. The owner receives a summary of the best profiles, with each candidate's site management experience and the types of projects mentioned. He marks four candidates “to meet” from his phone.
• Week 2: the scheduling agent offers three slots to each, taking into account the half-days the owner is in the office. Three interviews are set; one candidate doesn't reply, and the agent flags it.
• Week 3: after the interviews, the owner notes his impressions in the sheet. The agent drafts personalized rejections, which the owner reviews and sends.

The owner spent his time on what mattered: reading relevant profiles and meeting candidates.

Pricing and getting started#

An application screening agent and an interview scheduling agent usually fall into the “Essential” or “Advanced” tiers; the exact price is calculated based on complexity and quoted before launch. You can pause the agent as soon as the position is filled: you only pay for active agents. See the pricing page, the HR templates and the HR and recruiting use cases. Once the person is hired, the Employee onboarding template prepares their arrival.