What is AI screening?
Truffle is an AI screening tool for high-volume hiring. But what does AI screening actually mean? Here we break down the definition, how it differs from an ATS, and discuss how we think the category evolves.
AI summary
- AI screening is the use of AI to read every applicant against criteria a person has set, and rank them with the evidence shown, so a human can decide who to talk to. It reads resumes, one-way interview answers, and assessment results.
- It is not an ATS, an assessment, an AI interviewer, or a resume parser. It sits at intake, reads everything, and hands you a ranked list with reasoning. Nothing is auto-rejected.
- It makes sense when you hire in volume: the same roles every month, seasonal bursts, or hundreds of applicants per posting. For one role with forty applicants, it probably doesn't.
I’ve been working with a trainer to help train my lovely, but very reactive, toy poodle, Walter. In our first session my wife and I ended up debating what the core commands should be. (She’s a translator and I’ve made my living mostly writing.)
Should it be “stop” for negative reinforcement? And would a simple “yes” suffice for positive reinforcement? Needless to say the dog trainer was probably more concerned with us than the dog’s behavior.
We’ve similarly spent some time recently at Truffle trying to decide exactly what to call ourselves. For a while we’d settled on candidate screening software, but it came with a host of challenges that I wrote about here.
Recently we went through an exercise and realized that AI screening software was actually the category we best belonged to.
Which, much like deciding whether Walter needs to hear “stop,” “no,” or something else entirely, sounds like debating semantics. But the words you choose shape what people understand, and ultimately what they do next.
So here’s how we got there, how we think about AI screening as a category, and how we think it’s reshaping the future of hiring.
What is AI screening?
AI screening is the use of AI to read every applicant against criteria a person has set, and rank them with the evidence shown, so a human can decide who to talk to. Truffle’s AI screening can read resumes, one-way interview answers, and assessment results. Critically, AI does not reject anyone or make the hiring decision.
What AI screening actually does
Under the hood, even the most elaborate AI screening workflow is built from the same four humble parts:
- Someone (hopefully a human) sets criteria for a role. With Truffle you’re given the option to complete a role brief to provide more detail alongside your job description. This consists of three questions:
- “What does winning look like in the first 90 days?”
- “Who would nail this position?”
- “Who would struggle, even if their resume looks great?”
- You determine the shape of your AI screening. It could include analyzing resumes and providing a personality assessment, or it could just be a one-way interview.
- Every applicant completes the screening process that you define and is analyzed against the criteria you defined in step one. Each candidate gets a score with an explanation based on the results. This helps provide structure to the pile of applications.
- A person reviews and decides who to progress. No one is ever automatically rejected by Truffle’s AI.
How AI screening works
I’m biased, but I think the best way to understand what AI screening actually does is to watch this demo video of Truffle.
What AI screening replaces
There’s a lot of concern about using AI in the hiring process, including the possibility of introducing bias. You can learn more about what Truffle’s AI does here and how we don’t use things like biometrics.
Our philosophy is that AI should be used to surface information faster. And that, in sum, the ability for hiring teams to better access this information about candidates leads to fairer hiring.
One needs to look no further than current applicant screening workflows to see that AI can actually represent a massive leap forward. Manual applicant screening not only slows teams down, but it’s also pretty good at helping great candidates fall through the cracks.
- Employers look at a resume for about 7.4 seconds to determine who to talk to.
- Because of limited availability, they then do a first-round phone or video interview with a very small number of candidates.
AI screening tools like Truffle allow a deeper dive into candidates, with one-way interviews letting you gather more information on a larger set of candidates.
How AI screening differs from ATS, assessments, AI interviewers, and resume parsers
There’s a lot of confusion when it comes to hiring software. Some ATS offer screening add-ons. Some don’t. Some assessments offer AI interviews. Some don’t. That’s why we think of AI screening as separate to the below categories.
- An ATS tracks applicants. It knows that 200 people applied. It has no way of telling you which 15 deserve a call. Screening helps you form the opinion, then sends it back to the ATS.
- Assessments go deep on a few people. Screening goes wide on everyone. Run screening first, then send the assessment to the handful who cleared it. Some AI screening tools like Truffle even offer assessments as part of the screening process.
- AI interviewers host the conversation. Screening reads it. With screening, you write the questions, candidates record answers on their own time, and the AI scores the transcript against what you said matters.
- Resume parsers read documents. Screening reads candidates. Parsed fields are one input. The match score is the whole picture.
| ATS | Assessments | AI interviewers | Resume parsers | AI screening | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core job | Store and track applicants | Measure traits or judgment | Run a live Q&A with candidates | Turn resumes into structured data | Rank every applicant against your requirements |
| Where it sits in the funnel | Everywhere (system of record) | Mid to late, after a shortlist exists | Early to mid | Top, at intake | Top, at intake |
| What it reads | Whatever you put in it | Test responses | Its own conversation | The resume file | Resume, video answers, and transcript |
| Who writes the questions | N/A | The vendor | The AI, mostly | N/A | You |
| What you get back | A pipeline view | A profile or score on one dimension | A transcript | Parsed fields | Match score with reasoning, ranked list, highlights |
| Candidate experience | Form fill | A test | Talking to a bot | None (invisible) | Answering your questions on video, on their time |
| Who decides who moves forward | You | You | You | You | You |
| Works alongside the others? | Yes, holds the results | Yes, runs after screening | Overlaps with screening | Yes, it’s an input to screening | Yes, feeds the ATS and hands off to assessments |
Who AI screening is for
Historically, AI screening tools have been built for large enterprise teams. Some of the earliest players in the category (Harver, Paradox, and HireVue) primarily serve companies like Teleperformance, Delta, and Coca-Cola.
Part of Truffle’s mission is to make that same class of technology accessible to SMBs, with pricing starting at $49 per month, every feature on every plan, and no per-seat fees.
Our best customers tend to be those:
- High volume. People dealing with volume and not scarcity.
- High turnover. Businesses where you fill the same role every month (field sales, customer service reps).
- Seasonal hiring. You have short bursts of hiring that make it difficult to invest in headcount.
Choosing an AI screening platform
The first question we ask prospective customers is whether their hiring volume actually requires AI screening. (We want folks who are going to stick around.)
Occasionally we get people hiring for one role and they maybe have thirty or forty people applying. Unless you’re hiring multiple roles with this kind of volume, it doesn’t really make sense to pay for a service like ours.
The second question to ask yourself is whether you need an integration to your ATS. Sometimes people think they need an integration, but you can also set up simple triggers in your ATS that send an email with a link to your AI screening process.
Beyond that, we recommend looking for a platform that:
- Allows you to build your own hiring criteria and doesn’t rely on generic templates.
- Provides different types of screening (resumes, assessments, video interviews).
- Offers a free trial with clear self-serve pricing.
- Has a stated policy on what the AI does not do.
Try out AI screening with Truffle
AI screening isn’t a novelty anymore. Across hiring teams, folks are improving the quality and speed of their hiring process.
This is where Truffle fits; it’s the screening layer for your ATS. With a 7-day free trial that includes 30 credits and needs no credit card, you can try it out today with zero commitment and see if it could work for you.
