What is resume screening? Your questions, answered

Resume screening is the step where someone reads every inbound resume, checks the must-haves for the role, and decides which applicants are worth a closer look. Done by hand it is slow and inconsistent, and strong candidates get missed simply because no one reached their resume in time. Prescreener does resume screening automatically: it parses every resume, applies the knockout and eligibility rules you set, asks role-specific screening questions, scores role-fit against your criteria, and ranks the inbound pile so recruiters review the top matches first. Candidates are told AI is used to screen their application, and a human makes every final call.

No. Prescreener takes the repetitive reading and triage off your recruiters' plates so they spend their time on the candidates who matter. It scores applicants against your criteria and ranks the pile for recruiter review with reasons and knockout flags. It never auto-hires or auto-rejects anyone. Every decision to advance, interview or pass stays with a human on your team. See how it works.

Before their application is screened, candidates are clearly told that AI is used to help screen resumes and asked for their consent. If a role uses screening questions, every applicant for that role answers the same ones, so no one is judged on who happened to review their file. Prescreener does not use facial analysis, voice analysis or personality pseudoscience. It scores resumes and screening answers against job-related criteria, nothing else. See the features.

Prescreener scores each applicant against the criteria you define for the role, which makes screening consistent and comparable across the whole pile. It is decision-support, not a verdict: every score carries a transparent reason tied to the criteria so your recruiters can check the reasoning. We do not claim perfect accuracy, and we do not use face reading or personality pseudoscience. Humans review the ranked pile and make the final decision.

Consistency is the point of running a structured screen. Every applicant for a role is evaluated against the same criteria and scored on the same job-related signals, which removes a lot of the inconsistency of reading resumes by hand. We run bias-audit and fairness checks on the scoring, provide reports you can share, and we do not score appearance, name or personality. A human reviews the ranked pile and makes the final hiring decision, so the AI never has the last word.

Prescreener is built as a decision-support tool with compliance in mind. Scoring is structured and criteria-based, we run bias audits and provide fairness reports aligned to EEOC guidance and NYC Local Law 144, and candidates receive clear AI disclosure and give consent before they are screened. On Growth and above you get bias-audit reports, and Enterprise adds a full compliance pack with audit trails. You should still confirm your own obligations with your legal and compliance teams. See how scoring works.

No. Prescreener ranks and flags applicants for recruiter review and never makes a sole automated rejection. When an applicant misses a knockout rule, it surfaces it as a flag for a recruiter to review, not an automatic no. A human on your team reviews the ranked pile and decides who advances, who to interview and who to pass on. The AI is decision-support, not autonomous hiring.

Candidates are told up front that AI is used to screen their application and asked to consent before resumes are processed. We use encryption in transit and at rest, least-privilege access, and your candidate data stays yours and is not sold or used to train models for other companies. Resumes, parsed data and scores are retained for the period you configure or that law requires, then deleted or anonymized. Connections to your ATS are scoped and revocable.

You pay a flat monthly fee based on active jobs, applicant volume and seats. Starter is $199 per month for up to 3 jobs and 1,000 applicants, Growth is $499 per month for up to 15 jobs and 5,000 applicants with ATS export and bias-audit reports, and Scale is $1,290 per month for up to 50 jobs and 25,000 applicants with integrations and custom criteria libraries. Enterprise is custom for unlimited volume. There is no free plan and no percentage of salary, just a predictable monthly fee. See pricing.

Yes. Prescreener is screening-first, not a full applicant tracking system, so it sits alongside Greenhouse, Lever, Workable and any ATS you already run. You define the role and criteria, it reads the inbound pile, and the ranked shortlist with scores, reasons and knockout flags exports back to your ATS so it stays the single source of truth. There is no rip and replace. See use cases.

Not long. You define the role criteria and knockout rules, add any screening questions, and it starts reading the inbound pile the moment applications land. Most teams define their first role and screen the same day, then see a ranked pile with reasons ready for review. There is no long onboarding before you get value.

There is no free plan; the live demo on the homepage is the free taste, so you can watch Prescreener parse, score and rank a pile before you pay. After you choose Get started and confirm your work email, you set up your first role criteria and knockouts. Prescreener parses every resume with candidate consent and AI disclosure, scores role-fit, and builds a ranked pile with reasons and knockout flags for your recruiters to review. You are screening the same day, alongside the ATS you already use.

Volume is set by your plan rather than by any technical ceiling: 1,000 applicants a month on Starter, 5,000 on Growth, 25,000 on Scale, and unlimited on Enterprise. Applications are read as they land instead of in an overnight batch, so a role that draws 400 applicants in its first 48 hours comes back ranked while the posting is still fresh. For context, a recruiter reading by hand manages roughly 20 to 30 resumes an hour before quality starts to slip.

It depends almost entirely on applicants per requisition. Below roughly 50 applicants a role, a recruiter can read the pile within a day or two and will usually make better calls than any scoring model, so the honest answer is no. Above a few hundred, the reading either does not happen properly or it consumes the recruiting hours you are paying for anyway. Work out your cost per requisition at current recruiter hourly rates and compare it against a flat monthly fee before you buy anything.

An applicant tracking system is a system of record. It stores candidates, moves them through stages, schedules interviews and holds the audit trail. Resume screening software evaluates: it reads each application against your criteria, scores role-fit and ranks the pile. Most ATS platforms include filters and keyword search but not scoring or ranking, which is why screening tools run alongside them rather than replacing them.

No, and we would advise against it. Prescreener is not a system of record and has no interest in becoming one, so nothing migrates and no historical data moves. It reads the inbound pile, ranks it, and exports the shortlist with scores, reasons and knockout flags back into the ATS your team already lives in. If you stop using it, your ATS is untouched, which is a large part of why buying a layer is a smaller decision than buying a platform.