Overview

ShortlistIQ is an AI recruitment tool that conducts first-round interviews with job candidates. Instead of screening CVs by hand, recruiters set up a conversational AI assistant that chats with each applicant, asks role-specific questions and produces a scoring report. The company claims that more than 80% of the time spent screening candidates can be automated.

Building your AI recruiter

ShortlistIQ says building an AI recruiter takes minutes. You give it a name, upload an image or generate an AI avatar, and tailor it to your organisation's culture. Settings let you choose the tone (relaxed, balanced or formal), the depth (light, moderate or comprehensive), the humour (serious, witty or funny) and how often it uses emojis.

Interviews

The assistant interviews candidates through chat in a personalised and engaging way, typing at a human speed, and works in multiple languages. The site contrasts generic questions such as "Do you have experience with Scrum?" with the AI's more probing ones, such as asking how a candidate used a burndown chart during a sprint, or how they used Excel's INDEX MATCH function to solve a problem and why.

Scoring reports

For each candidate, ShortlistIQ produces a human-like scoring report with an overall score, scores per area, and pros and cons, which the company likens to an experienced talent acquisition team weighing each candidate.

Pricing

There are no setup fees, and prices shown are per month paid annually. Basic costs $49 a month for startups, with up to 20 applicants, a single AI assistant and unlimited job positions. Standard costs $199 a month for small and mid-sized teams, with up to 200 applicants, unlimited AI assistants and live chat support. Premium costs $599 a month for agencies and enterprises, with up to 2,000 applicants. All plans include the AI assistant builder, interview builder with AI suggestions, candidate chat, advanced scoring and analytics, and you can start for free.

Things to consider

Tell candidates clearly that they are talking to an AI, even though the company markets its assistants as hard to tell apart from humans; some jurisdictions, such as New York City and the EU, regulate automated hiring tools and require notice or bias audits. Review AI scores rather than rejecting candidates automatically, and monitor for bias.