Prescreener
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Screening · Candidate prescreening

Candidate prescreening software for applicant pre-screening at volume

Prescreening is the step that decides who a recruiter ever talks to, and on most teams it is also the least consistent step in the whole process. Somebody skims the pile on Monday with fresh eyes and a full hour, then skims Thursday's applicants between two intake calls. The criteria never changed, but the standard did. By the time the shortlist is built, nobody can say what actually separated candidate 12 from candidate 40.

Parse · score · rank · recruiter reviews

Shortlist Desk
Criteria

top · held

Screen the pile to watch Prescreener parse every resume, apply your criteria and knockouts, and rank the inbound applicants with a transparent reason on each.

Live, interactive · AI assists, you decide · no signup needed

top matches surfaced held for review Reasons on every card

AI assists · you decide · bias-audited (EEOC / NYC Local Law 144)

CONSISTENT CRITERIA RANKED PILE ATS-READY

Human-in-the-loop you decide

EEOC and LL144 bias-audited

Prescreener does the pre-screening pass for you. You define the eligibility gates, the screening questions, and the role-fit criteria that matter for the role; it reads every application as it lands, asks the screening questions, checks the answers against your criteria, and ranks the pile with a short written reason under each candidate. Recruiters open a list that is already ordered, and they still make every call, because nothing is ever auto-rejected. It works alongside Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, or whatever ATS you already run.

The practical difference shows up on the roles that hurt. A req with 400 applicants gets the same prescreening standard applied to applicant 400 as applicant 4, at two in the morning, on the day the job posting hits a big aggregator. That is the part manual prescreening cannot do, and it is the reason the shortlist stops depending on when somebody applied.

Why it works

What your team gets with candidate prescreening

One prescreening standard

The same eligibility gates and screening questions run against every application, so the shortlist does not shift with the reviewer, the hour, or the size of the pile.

Screening questions that get read

Answers to your screening questions are checked against the criteria you set instead of sitting unread in an ATS field, which is where most prescreening data quietly goes to die.

A reason under every candidate

Each ranked applicant carries the criteria they met and the resume evidence behind it, so a hiring manager who disagrees can see exactly what the prescreen saw.

What it handles

Parsed, scored and ranked on autopilot

Prescreener reads every inbound resume, applies your knockout and eligibility criteria, asks the screening questions you set, scores role-fit against consistent criteria, and ranks the applicant pile so your recruiters review the top matches first.

  • Pre-screens every application the moment it arrives
  • Asks your screening questions and checks the answers
  • Applies eligibility gates evenly across the whole pile
  • Ranks candidates with the reason written under each one
  • Bias-audited to support EEOC standards and NYC Local Law 144
SHORTLIST Screening
#1 Maya R. 92
#2 Devon L. 88
#3 Priya S. 81 Review
Role-fit scored 48 screened this week

Why Prescreener

One step that screens the whole inbound pile

Not a full ATS, not a six-figure assessment suite, and not a staffing agency. Parse, score, rank and hand off in one place, shaped to the criteria you already hire on.

Reads every resume

Prescreener parses every inbound application, applies your knockout and eligibility criteria, and asks the screening questions you set. Applicants consent and are told AI is screening their application, so no qualified person sits in a backlog for days.

Scores role-fit consistently

Every applicant is scored against the same criteria, with a transparent reason on each candidate, so the pile is compared consistently and the scoring stays bias-audited against EEOC guidance and NYC Local Law 144.

Ranks the pile

The strongest matches rise to the top of a ranked pile your recruiters review first. Prescreener never auto-rejects, it ranks and flags candidates for review, and your team makes every decision.

Good questions

Questions about candidate prescreening

Pre-screening is the evaluation that happens before anyone from the hiring team contacts a candidate. It checks each application against the role's hard requirements and a short set of screening questions, so recruiters spend their calls on applicants who already clear the basics rather than discovering a mismatch ten minutes into a phone screen.
Candidate prescreening software reads every inbound application, applies the eligibility criteria and screening questions you defined, scores role-fit, and ranks the pile so the strongest matches surface first. The useful ones show their reasoning per candidate and leave the accept or reject decision to a human.
Good pre-screening questions are short, job-related, and answerable in one line: work authorization, required license or certification, shift or on-site availability, and years in the specific work the role needs. Keep them to five or six, ask every applicant the same set, and avoid anything that is a preference rather than a real requirement.
Prescreener never auto-rejects. Applicants who miss a hard requirement are flagged and ranked lower with the reason attached, and a recruiter decides what happens next. Some tools do auto-reject on knockout answers, which is worth checking before you buy, because a badly written question then removes qualified people with nobody watching.
Prescreening is the first filter on the raw inbound pile, before any recruiter contact. Screening usually means everything after that: the phone screen, the structured interview, and the assessments. Prescreening decides who is worth a conversation; screening decides who is worth an offer.
No. Prescreener is a screening layer, not an applicant tracking system. It sits alongside Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, or whichever ATS holds your reqs and candidate records, and hands back a ranked pile with reasons.
Read every resume screening question

Explore more

More ways hiring teams screen with Prescreener

Applicant tracking system screening

The AI screening layer that ranks your inbound pile alongside your ATS.

Learn more

Resume parser

A resume parser that does not stop at fields. It scores and ranks too.

Learn more

Candidate screening software

Screen every candidate on consistent criteria, then review the top matches.

Learn more
See every screening use case See pricing Back to resume screening

Stop reading the inbound pile by hand. Put screening on autopilot.

Set your role and criteria and Prescreener parses every inbound resume, scores role-fit, and ranks the pile for your team. Prescreener ranks and flags candidates, your recruiters make every hiring decision.

See pricing

Consistent criteria · bias-audited to EEOC and LL144 · human-in-the-loop