How to Automate First-Round Interviews with AI

Every recruiter understands how the bottleneck happens. There is a need to fill in the vacancy position, and forms are collected, but all the hiring stops at this stage because it turns out that people need to squeeze thirty candidates into thirty calendars. While conducting the first round of interviews, it may take weeks or even months until you find out that you have already lost your best candidates.

AI is used at this stage of hiring since it can automate all the repetitive, labor-intensive, and monotonous tasks during hiring.

Why First-Round Interviews Are the Right Place to Start

There are several reasons why first round screens can be automated, including:

Their format is straightforward. First rounds are generally similar in format: validate the main items of the CV, delve into technical questions or verify the previous experience, and check language abilities. These processes are precisely those that the automated system can effectively execute.

They are performed in bulk with little variance. Most of the recruiters spend hours on the phone, which usually leads to imprecise picks. Automating this phase does not mean removing doubts about hiring decisions but only removing uncertainty from the simplest stage of hiring.

They are characterized by substantial loss due to scheduling dependence. A five-day timetable of organizing a half-an-hour phone interview usually becomes a huge obstacle to the effectiveness of the hiring process.

The consistency of this stage is almost impossible to achieve without automation. Even if you ask ten recruiters to conduct the first stage of interviews, the candidates will receive ten different feedback messages and questions to answer afterward.

What “Automated” Means in AI Hiring

It is important to clarify the terminology surrounding AI interviewing. There is a notable distinction between:

Chatbot pre-screening: A method in which a candidate resume is evaluated based on a text-based survey conducted by the chatbot.

Asynchronous video prompts: A method in which a candidate, without the presence of a recruiter, can film himself/herself as he/she answers predetermined questions.

Real-time adaptive AI interviews: An AI tool that employs voice technology to create a real conversation with the candidate, adjusting the questions and evaluating the replies according to what is being said by the candidate.

Only the latter option can substitute a human moderator fully in this early stage of the process, as it provides not just another filtering option. If there is a need to eliminate scheduling and screening bottlenecks effectively, the use of this technology becomes essential.

Step 1: Define the Rubric Before You Automate Anything

The most frequent mistake that teams make is activating an AI interviewer without having a clear conversation about what “good” comprises. Before implementing any form of automation, clearly identify the following signals:

The 3-5 essential signals needed for a job (expertise in technology, level of tools experience, communication efficiency, suitable prior experience)

Definition of “Good Fit,” “Fair Fit,” and “Poor Fit” in the scoring process

Specification of the type of questions is fixed, and that ones can change based on what is on the candidate’s CV

From then on, this set of rules will be used as a basis for an automated interview. Should you miss this step, you will get reliable processing but useless results.

Step 2: Let the AI Handle the Full Screening Conversation

Once the rubric is prepared, there is no need for the recruiter to be present during the interview. An AI interviewer that is aware of resumes goes through the job description and the resume of the candidate, asking specific queries and giving follow-up questions based on previous answers and responses that have been provided (the questions are not fixed). As far as technical roles are concerned, these interviews can even involve some coding tests which would be graded automatically.

Since there is no need for any scheduling, the candidates can take the interview as per their wish, irrespective of whether it is the day or night. Some people have reported that the first round of interviews now takes only one day instead of weeks because people are able to conduct many interviews at once instead of one interview at a time.

Step 3: Build in Fairness and Integrity Controls

The automatization of the interview does not imply the withdrawal of responsibility from the entire process. Two concepts are crucial here:

Bias Auditing: Every applicant needs to go through the same evaluation process with no distinction between the first candidate interviewed in the morning and the last applicant interviewed in the evening. You need to search for platforms using the adverse-impact tests (such as the four-fifths rule) and capable of generating audit logs for your legal and DEI teams.

Interview Integrity: The virtual format of an interview can increase the likelihood of cheating (for example, the candidate might be using some other computer screen with artificial intelligence). Therefore, the use of full-screen mode and prevention of copy-and-paste in these interviews is as important as the scoring process.

Transparency with candidates: It is tremendously important to clarify from the very outset that the candidates are being interviewed by artificial intelligence, not human beings.

Step 4: Push Results Straight into Your ATS

For recruitment automation to be effective, automated first-round interview results must flow directly into the tools your recruitment team already operates in. This means that scored reports, transcripts, and recordings must instantly sync with your ATS, while eliminating the need for manual data entry, CSV exports, or additional dashboards to have a look at the results. If the software that you’re using requires your team to log into another dashboard to interpret the results, it is merely a new data entry headache on top of the scheduling one.

Step 5: Keep the Hire Decision Human

The objective here is not to eliminate human elements. AI’s role here is to expose every candidate with certain qualifications to a standardized first interview that takes place the same day in addition to providing the report to your team. The final choice still lies with human teams doing the recruitment.

Measurable Results from Real Teams

Organizations have seen similar results in using this type of automation, with reductions in time to hire in many cases by up to 80%, halving cost per hire, and allowing recruiters to review applicants in under 30 minutes instead of three to four hours during what is normally a very labor-intensive process. Candidates also indicate that they have a good experience with the AI because it listens properly to what the candidate says, does not interrupt, and asks meaningful follow-up questions.

Turn Insights into Action

When considering this for your own team, look for a platform that offers four features combined: adaptable voice interviews capable of learning from resumes (no chatbots, no asynchronous videos); scoring that is done in real-time based on rubrics; built-in bias detection; and integration with ATS. One such platform, Rebecca AI by Pete & Gabi, has been created with this concept in mind and conducts the full communication process in the first round while generating reports on the same day.

Regardless of the platform you opt for, the essence behind it eventually remains the same: first round interviews will stop being the reason why the best candidates leave the pipeline and instead they will become the easiest and fastest part of the recruitment process.

Author Profile

Adam Regan: Deputy Editor

Features and account management. 7 years media experience. Previously covered features for online and print editions.

Email Adam@MarkMeets.com