When facing a high volume of applications, what your hiring team really needs is a way to streamline candidate screening so you can make faster, more consistent, and more confident decisions. That’s where the Screening Assistant can help.
Once activated, this AI-powered assistant checks applications against your set criteria and surfaces relevant information for you to review.
✨ Save time on early screening
Instead of spending hours on repetitive, manual CV reviews, you can get a helping hand with first-round screening.
✨ Make confident decisions
Get clear, criteria-based insights showing how candidates meet the requirements you’ve defined.
✨ Stay in control
You set the screening criteria and always maintain control, with every AI output subject to your review.
Automating early screening helps hiring teams move faster, reduce workload, improve the quality of hires, and deliver a better candidate experience.
📌 Note: You get full access on the Optimize plan. The Advance plan includes 100 screenings per month, and trial users receive 10 screenings to test the feature.
Note on responsible use
The Screening Assistant uses AI to help you review applications, but it is not a substitute for human decision-making. Ensure everyone involved in the recruitment process understands how the Screening Assistant works, its limitations, and its appropriate use.
How it helps
It plays a supportive role by showing how candidates meet the criteria you’ve set, making it easier to focus your review.
The Screening Assistant assists you, but does not replace human judgment. All outputs must be reviewed by a human.
What it doesn’t do
It won’t give you rankings, suitability scores, or “top candidate” lists.
While it can suggest starting criteria, it does not set or approve screening requirements independently, and it cannot make final decisions about candidate outcomes. You are responsible for reviewing and approving any suggested criteria, defining the final requirements, reviewing the results, and making decisions that affect candidates.
Keep data relevant and unbiased
Make sure all input data is relevant, accurate, and free from unverified or biased information, including candidate details and evaluation criteria.
Inform candidates about AI in the screening process
You must inform candidates that AI is used in the screening process. This allows them to exercise their rights, such as asking for a human review or challenging AI-assisted decisions.
Here are several suggestions on how to effectively inform candidates:
Update your Terms & Conditions or other applicant-facing policies to include a section that discloses the use of AI in the recruitment and screening process.
Include a statement about AI usage in any legal agreements candidates may sign during the application process.
Add a specific screening question during the application process that informs candidates of the use of AI.
However, please consult with your legal counsel to ensure that any communication is compliant with applicable laws.
Set up the Screening Assistant
To use the Screening Assistant for a job, you must first enable it for your organization and accept the required legal terms.
📌 Note: Only an Administrator can turn on this feature company-wide. To enable the feature on a per-job basis, you need to have the Manage jobs permission.
1. Go to Settings > Organization > Tellent Intelligence and toggle on the Screening Assistant.
2. A dialog box will appear for you to accept the legal terms and conditions.
Define screening criteria for job
You can set up to 6 job-specific criteria for the AI to use when reviewing applications. You can do this when creating a new job or by editing an existing one.
💡 Tip: To save time, set your criteria at the job template level. This way, the requirements will be automatically included every time you create a new job using that template.
📌 Note: The AI assistant will check the candidates’ CV, cover letter, and screening questions to show how many of your requirements were met. It ignores sensitive information like names, age, contact details, social media links, gender, and nationality. Candidates won’t see these criteria or results.
1. Navigate to the relevant job and select Workflow in the job editor.
2. Scroll down to the Screening Assistant section and click Enable.
📌 Note: When you turn on the Screening Assistant for a published job, it will only screen new applicants.
3. The screening criteria editor will open. The system will suggest criteria based on the job posting and any existing screening questions. If there are no existing questions, it won’t generate criteria automatically.
4. Review and edit or remove the criteria as needed. Once satisfied, click Verify and save.
💡 Tips for writing screening criteria
To get the best results, write clear and specific criteria. Ensure that these criteria are job-related, accurate, and free from bias.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Focus on one requirement at a time.
❌ Instead of: “Experience in social media and email marketing”
✅ Try: “Experience managing social media accounts,” “Experience planning and executing email marketing campaigns”
Avoid vague or subjective terms. Provide enough detail to ensure the criteria are interpreted consistently.
❌ Instead of: “Has leadership potential”
✅ Try: “Candidate has managed a team of 5+ employees”
Use criteria that you can easily confirm from a CV or application. Do not use criteria that could lead to bias based on protected characteristics like race, age, gender, or nationality.
❌ Instead of: “Candidate is under 30 years old”
✅ Try: “Candidate has 2+ years of experience in B2B sales”
The criteria will now be saved, and screening will automatically start for new applicants in the selected pipeline stages. Only candidates applying through the careers site form will be screened.
You can change the criteria at any time by clicking the Edit button in the Screening Assistant section.
📌 Note: If you change the criteria, the new criteria will only apply to new candidates.
View screening results
See a candidate’s detailed screening summary on their profile, while overall screening scores appear right in your pipeline. You can easily filter and sort candidates by their screening scores.
In the pipeline
In a job’s pipeline, you can see each candidate’s screening result, e.g., 5/5 criteria met. Click on the candidate card to see how the AI reached this score.
On a candidate’s profile
On the candidate’s profile, you can see the outcome of the AI screening.
1. Go to a candidate’s profile (e.g., from the pipeline view).
2. In the candidate profile sidebar, expand the Screening Assistant section. The summary shows how candidates matched each requirement, indicating whether criteria are met or not met.
3. Expand the list to see the assessment for each individual criterion. You can view the AI’s explanation for how it reached its conclusion on each criterion.
4. If you think a result is incorrect, you can click Edit manually to override the result and note the reason for the change.
📌 Note: Your note will replace the AI screening result and will be visible to your team.
Filter and sort candidates
You can filter and sort candidates based on screening results.
📌 Note: Filtering and sorting are intended to help you organize candidates based on how many criteria were met, not to replace human assessment.
You should review each candidate individually to validate screening results and avoid relying solely on filters, as this could contribute to biased outcomes.
Filter
1. Go to Candidates or the Filters tab in a job.
2. Click Add filter and select Screening Assistant to expand your options.
3. You can filter candidates by:
Screening score (e.g., 4/5 criteria met).
Criteria met/not met (e.g., filtering for candidates who met specific criteria).
Sort by
1. In the job’s pipeline view or on the candidate list, click the Sort by menu.
2. Select the Screening score property to sort candidates based on the number of criteria they met.
Turn off the Screening Assistant
To turn the assistant off at the job level:
1. Navigate to the relevant job and select Workflow.
2. Scroll down to the Screening Assistant section and click the three dots icon to turn off the assistant.
📌 Note: If you turn off the assistant, existing AI screening scores will remain visible, but AI won’t screen new applicants.
📌 Note: If the feature is turned off and then re-enabled for the same job, the system will reuse the criteria that were already created when the feature was previously enabled. You will not have to define them again.