Voice AI

Voice AI for first-round candidate screening

The same six questions, four hundred times, at the stage where speed decides who you lose.

First-round screening is structured, repetitive, and time-critical. Automating it means calling every applicant within the hour instead of the best ones next week.

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Typical timeline: Live in 6–8 weeks

How it works

Consent, then structured facts, then a person

It decides who gets a conversation, never who gets hired.

You are probably here because

These are the signs this is worth doing

If several of these are true, this is usually where the fastest return sits.

Good candidates accept elsewhere before you reach them.

Recruiters spend their day on calls that end in the first minute.

Screening depth varies with who made the call and how tired they were.

High-volume roles produce more applicants than anyone can phone.

Notes are inconsistent, so shortlisting is a judgement about a judgement.

First-round screening is unusually well suited to this. The questions are known in advance, the answers are largely factual — notice period, current location, expected salary, specific experience, willingness to relocate — and the outcome is a routing decision rather than a hiring one.

It is also where speed matters most. In competitive segments the difference between calling within an hour and calling in three days is the difference between a shortlist and an apology, and no team can call four hundred applicants within an hour.

What the agent establishes

Genuine interest, and whether they even remember applying.
Notice period and realistic availability.
Location and willingness to relocate or commute.
Salary expectation against the band, before anyone invests time.
The two or three role-specific requirements that actually filter.
Interview slot booked directly into the recruiter's calendar.

Consent, and why it is not optional here

Screening calls process personal data, are usually recorded, and involve candidates who did not choose to speak to a machine. Under the DPDP Act that means consent captured before the call, with the purpose stated, and a defined retention period afterwards.

Practically: the candidate is told at the start that it is an automated screening call and that it is being recorded, and is offered a human alternative. Recordings and transcripts expire on a schedule rather than accumulating indefinitely. This is straightforward to build and awkward to retrofit, which is why it belongs in the design rather than in a later phase.

Screening decides who gets a conversation. It should not decide who gets hired, and we would not build it to.

When this is not worth doing

We would rather tell you now than three weeks into a project. This work is usually the wrong call if any of the following describes you.

Senior or specialist hiring, where the first call is a relationship rather than a filter.
Low-volume recruitment — under a certain number of applicants a recruiter is faster and warmer.
Anyone wanting the system to score or rank candidates on suitability. Structured facts, yes; judgement about people, no.

What this touches

The systems involved

We integrate rather than replace wherever it makes sense. These are the systems this work most commonly touches.

Applicant tracking systemsJob boards and aggregatorsCloud telephonyWhatsApp Business APICalendars, for interview scheduling

FAQ

Candidate screening — questions we get asked

Does it decide who gets rejected?

No. It collects structured answers against criteria you set and routes accordingly. Where a candidate falls outside a hard requirement, that is a fact, not an assessment — and everything is visible to a recruiter who can override it.

How do candidates react?

Better than most people expect for a first-round call, provided it is honest about what it is and offers a person. Being called back within the hour is itself a positive signal to a candidate.

Which languages?

Whatever your candidate pool actually speaks, including mixed-language answers. We test on recordings from your own queue before committing to anything.

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