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.

It reviews applications against your set criteria and surfaces relevant information to support your decision-making. You stay in control by defining the criteria and maintaining oversight at all times.

Key benefits and use cases

Screen candidates consistently and at scale by reviewing applications against job-specific criteria set by the hiring team.
Reduce manual effort in early screening to free up time for interviews, candidate engagement, and strategic work.
Prioritize your review with clear insights that show how candidates meet the requirements you’ve defined.
Align your hiring team around shared expectations and build confidence in early-stage decisions.

📌 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.

Enable 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.

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.

📌 Note: Only users with Full access at the organization level can turn this feature on or off for the entire company. To activate the Screening Assistant for specific jobs, you also need the Manage jobs permission.

Define screening criteria for a 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.

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.

Set up screening criteria

1. Navigate to the relevant job and select Workflow in the job editor.

2. Scroll down to the Screening Assistant section and click Enable. 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.

4. Review and edit or remove the criteria as needed. Once satisfied, click Verify and save.

📌 Note: If the system finds any potential bias or clarity issues in your criteria, it will raise a warning. You can review the highlighted fields and either adjust or remove the criteria before saving your changes.

What happens next

Once the criteria are saved, screening automatically starts for new applicants in the Applied stage.
The Screening Assistant reviews the candidate’s CV, cover letter, and screening questions to show how many of your requirements were met.
It ignores sensitive information such as name, age, contact details, social media links, gender, and nationality.
Candidates won’t see the criteria or the results.
Screening applies only to candidates who apply through the careers site form.

You can change the criteria at any time by clicking Edit in the Screening Assistant section. If you update the criteria, the changes will only apply to new candidates.

💡 Tip: Read our best practices for using the Screening Assistant effectively and responsibly, including tips for writing good screening criteria.

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 the candidate card to see how the AI arrived at 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. You’ll see a summary of how many criteria were met, with each marked as met or not met.

3. Click a criteria to expand it. This shows the AI’s explanation for how it reached its conclusion.

4. If you think a result is incorrect, you can click Edit manually to override it and note the reason for the change. 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 organization level, go to Settings > Organization > Tellent Intelligence, then toggle 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.
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.

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, nor can it 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

Ensure all input data is relevant, accurate, and free of 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.
Add a clear statement to the bottom of your job postings informing applicants that AI-assisted tools are used.

💡 Tip: In Screening questions, you can use the Infobox answer type to show a notice.

If you want candidates to acknowledge the information, use the Legal answer type for an optional or mandatory checkbox.

You can also add a Legal agreement checkbox in your CareersHub settings that candidates must accept before submitting their application.

However, please consult your legal counsel to ensure that any communication complies with applicable laws.

Best practices for using the Screening Assistant

AI at Tellent

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