Playbooks·HR / People·Professional Services·HR03
Screening & Candidate Shortlisting
Extract evidence from candidate materials, generate summary cards, and produce a criteria-linked shortlist with risk flags.
GenAI impact
What this playbook delivers
Projected against the same workflow run manually, end to end
- 56%
- Faster than the manual baseline
- ~7.4hrs
- Saved per cycle
- 3
- Source-of-truth artifacts
Estimated impact based on 20 candidates evaluated against 5 must-have criteria · Real savings vary with team volume and current process maturity
The challenge
Why the workflow breaks
Three patterns show up across teams using GenAI without a shared workflow
Evidence sprawl
Candidate evidence sits across resumes, notes, and screening artifacts, making it easy for important signals to disappear.
Criteria drift
Reviewers can compare candidates against different assumptions when must-have criteria are not applied consistently.
Ranking pressure
Shortlists often collapse into a ranked list before gaps, risks, and evidence quality have been reviewed.
Where GenAI helps
From confused intake to source-of-truth artifacts
Here’s what changes when the team uses this playbook
From
To
Reviewers skim applications independently
Evidence Extraction Tables anchor the review
Candidate summaries emphasize different signals
Candidate Summary Cards use the same structure
Risks are discussed late in the process
Risk & Gaps Log records concerns before ranking
The shortlist is hard to explain
Shortlist Table links buckets to evidence
How the playbook works
3 phases, one source of truth
Each phase produces an artifact the next phase builds on
Extract evidence
AI pulls candidate claims into an Evidence Extraction Table so reviewers can see what is supported by the source materials.
Verify gaps
The workflow produces Candidate Summary Cards and a Risk & Gaps Log before any shortlist decision is finalized.
Build shortlist
Verified evidence flows into the Shortlist Table (Buckets/Ranked), preserving the rationale behind each placement.
What you’ll produce
Sample artifacts from the workflow
Interim and final deliverables you can review and download
Candidate Summary Cards
One-page evidence profile per candidate, capturing role fit, strengths, and red flags. Every claim is traced to a source in the resume or screening note.
Risk & Gaps Log
Consolidated view of every must-have criterion with Partial or No Evidence. Grouped by criterion and by candidate to surface pool-level hiring risks before shortlist decisions.
Shortlist Table
Final ranked decision matrix assigning each candidate to Advance, Hold, or Decline. Every bucket placement is traceable to evidence counts and reflects hiring manager review.
Built into the workflow
Quality and risk checks at every step
Verification, data handling, and definition-of-done rules are part of the playbook — not afterthoughts
Quality
Enforces identical 5-criterion evaluation with verbatim evidence anchoring for every candidate, preventing the scoring drift that degrades manual screening after 10–15 resumes.
Risk handling
Prevents candidate PII from reaching unapproved AI tools and catches fabricated qualifications through a mandatory human cross-reference gate before the shortlist reaches the hiring manager.
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Step-by-step prompts, role guidance, data-handling notes, and definition-of-done checks for every step of the workflow