Most teams decide on AI screening the wrong way: a slick demo, a gut feeling, and a contract. Two weeks of real requisitions will tell you far more than any sales call. Here's a simple pilot plan that a recruiting team can run without disrupting live hiring.
Week 0: set it up (half a day)
Pick two or three open roles. Choose roles with volume and clear must-haves, for example a support specialist, a Python developer and a business analyst. Avoid one-off executive searches.
Write down your baseline. Before you change anything, record for each role:
- Applicants per week
- Recruiter hours spent on first-round screens
- Time from application to shortlist
- Shortlist-to-interview pass rate with the hiring manager
Without a baseline, you'll end the pilot with opinions instead of numbers.
Agree on the screening questions. Write five or six questions per role that map to the must-haves. Mix one or two knowledge questions with scenario questions ("Walk me through how you'd debug a slow API endpoint").
Week 1: run both tracks side by side
Send every new applicant for the pilot roles through the AI screen. Keep your normal recruiter phone screen running in parallel for a sample of the same candidates.
This side-by-side comparison is the most important part of the pilot. For each candidate, compare:
- Did the AI screen and the recruiter screen agree on "advance" or "reject"?
- Where they disagreed, who was right once the hiring manager saw the candidate?
- What did the recruiter learn from the recorded answers and the proctoring evidence that a phone call wouldn't have shown?
Week 2: let recruiters lead with the evidence
Now flip the order. Recruiters review the AI screening results first and then decide who gets a recruiter conversation and who goes to the client or hiring manager.
Track:
- Recruiter hours per role, against your Week 0 baseline
- Time to shortlist
- Hiring manager feedback on shortlist quality
- How many submissions came back as "not what we asked for"
Day 14: decide with a simple scorecard
| Question | Pass if... |
|---|---|
| Time saved | Recruiter screening hours dropped meaningfully |
| Quality held | Hiring manager pass rate stayed the same or improved |
| Integrity | Proctoring flags caught issues you'd otherwise have missed |
| Candidate experience | Completion rate was healthy and few candidates complained |
| Recruiter trust | Your recruiters would keep using it |
If quality dropped, stop. Speed isn't worth a weaker shortlist.
What the tool should and shouldn't do
A good AI screening tool doesn't replace your recruiters. It handles the repetitive first pass so recruiters spend their time on judgement: reading answers, checking proctoring evidence, and building a stronger case for each candidate they submit.
That's how we built SimpleHire AI. Candidates answer structured questions, responses are scored, and recruiters review the answers alongside proctoring evidence before they submit. If you work at a staffing agency, our guide for staffing agencies shows how that fits into a client submission workflow.
Pilot checklist
- 2–3 roles with volume and clear must-haves
- Baseline numbers recorded before Day 1
- 5–6 screening questions per role, agreed with the hiring manager
- Week 1: AI screen and recruiter screen run side by side
- Week 2: recruiters review AI evidence first
- Day 14: scorecard reviewed with recruiters and hiring managers
Visit SimpleHire AI: https://simplehire.ai/
Top comments (0)