Workflow automation

Two hundred applicants. Somebody skimmed forty of them.

Manual screening doesn't fail loudly. It fails quietly: the strong candidate ranked 147th in the pile nobody opened, the thirty-second skims that reward pretty formatting over real experience, the role that stays open for six weeks while applications pile up unread. The cost isn't the hours spent reading resumes. It's the hire you never met and the weeks the seat sat empty. Here's what the manual version actually costs, and what the automated version does instead.

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The manual version

Where the time actually goes

A posting goes live. Applications land in the ATS, a shared inbox, and two job boards that don't talk to each other. Somebody, usually a hiring manager with an actual job to do, blocks an evening to "get through the pile." They open each resume, skim for keywords, try to remember what the job description said, and sort people into yes, no, and maybe based on a gut read they never write down.

By resume sixty, the bar has drifted. A candidate who'd have made the shortlist at 9am gets passed at 11pm. Nobody can tell you why one maybe advanced and another didn't, because the reasoning only ever existed in someone's head, for about thirty seconds.

Meanwhile the best applicants, the ones with options, accept other offers while your pile waits for the next free evening. The seat stays open, the team covers the gap, and the pile keeps growing.

Opening every resume and hunting for the same five keywords by eye
Re-checking the job description because nobody remembers the actual must-haves
Re-typing candidate details into the ATS, or skipping that step and losing them
Sorting on gut feel with no written rationale, so nobody can audit a decision later
Ghosting most of the pile, because nobody has time to send declines

agentclaw · workflow run

$ claw run invoice-intake

→ 47 documents queued

→ extracted · matched · posted

✓ done in 3m 12s · 0 exceptions escalated

The automated version

What automated screening looks like end to end

Not a keyword filter. A system that reads every application in full, scores it against your written bar, and hands humans a shortlist with the reasoning attached.

01
Every application actually gets read
Resumes, cover letters, and form answers from every source land in one queue, whether ten arrive or four hundred. The agent parses each one and extracts the facts that matter: work history and tenure, specific skills and tools, certifications, location and work authorization, salary signals, employment gaps. All of it goes into structured fields in your ATS without anyone re-typing a thing. Candidate 312 gets the same careful read as candidate 3.
02
Scored against your bar, in writing
Before anything runs, we turn your hiring criteria into an explicit rubric: must-haves, nice-to-haves, and hard dealbreakers, weighted the way you'd actually weight them. Each candidate gets a score plus a short written rationale citing what in their application earned it. Only your stated dealbreakers screen anyone out. Borderline and unusual profiles, like the career changer whose experience doesn't map cleanly, get flagged for human eyes instead of silently binned.
03
Shortlist, summaries, and fast answers for everyone else
Top-scoring candidates arrive as a ranked shortlist, each with a one-paragraph summary a hiring manager can read in under a minute, and interview outreach goes out while they're still interested. Candidates below the bar get a prompt, polite decline instead of silence. Anything ambiguous escalates to a person with the full application and the rubric attached. The system builds the shortlist; a human decides who gets hired.

Signs it's time to automate this

You don't need all six. Two or three means good candidates are already slipping past you.

A single posting pulls a hundred-plus applications and you know most were never opened
Screening happens in evening batches, days after applications arrive, so responsive candidates are gone by the time you call
Your shortlist depends on who screened and how tired they were, and nobody can explain why a given candidate was passed
Hiring managers quietly re-screen the "screened" pile because they don't trust it
Most applicants never hear back at all, and it's starting to show up in your reviews
Roles sit open for weeks while the team absorbs the workload, not for lack of applicants but for lack of reading time

Straight answers

Does the system reject candidates automatically?+

Only on dealbreakers you explicitly set, like a license the law requires or work authorization you cannot sponsor. Everything else is scored and ranked, never auto-binned. Borderline profiles are flagged for human review by design, because the interesting candidates are usually the ones a keyword filter would have missed. You define the bar; the system applies it consistently; people make the calls that matter.

Isn't AI screening biased?+

Any screening process carries the bias of its criteria, including the manual one, where the bar drifts with fatigue and the rationale is never written down. A rubric-based system is at least inspectable: every score comes with a written reason you can audit and correct. We build the rubric around job-relevant criteria you sign off on, keep humans reviewing edge cases, and note that some jurisdictions now regulate automated hiring tools, which is a conversation we have with you up front, not something we paper over.

Can I do this myself?+

A useful version, yes. If you're screening one role at a time, a well-written rubric plus a general AI chat tool will beat tired late-night skimming. Start with our free job description and screening pack and the rest of our skills library. Where DIY strains: parsing hundreds of inconsistent resumes reliably, keeping scores consistent across roles and weeks, writing everything back to your ATS, and knowing when to escalate. If one role a quarter is your volume, don't hire us.

What does it cost?+

Engagements start at $5,000/month, which covers building the system around your roles and ATS, running it, and tuning the rubric as your hiring changes. The math works when hiring is a constant, not an event: steady requisitions, high application volume, or a bad-hire cost measured in months of salary. If you hire twice a year, skip us and use the free resources. They're genuinely free.

Keep going

AI agents for recruiting and staffing firms

When screening is the product, every unread resume is unbilled revenue.

AI agents for restaurants and hospitality

High-volume hourly hiring, constant turnover, and applicants who take the first offer they get.

Workflow automation services

How we build, run, and maintain systems like this inside your business.

Find out what your unread pile is costing you

In a free AI opportunity audit, we map your hiring flow from application to offer, show you where candidates stall or vanish, and tell you honestly whether your volume justifies automating it. Same team. Double the output.

Book your free audit

We take on companies ready to invest $5,000+/month. Not there yet? Our free resources are genuinely free.