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AI-assisted resume screening: triage with recruiter review
Short answer
An AI agent for CV screening extracts facts from the documents, sets them against the job requirements, prepares follow-up questions and marks uncertainty. Every application stays in, and the recruiter decides. Our own ATS with a voicebot saves a technology company's HR team about 3 to 4 hours per candidate, according to the client. The agent costs from €3,000 net and, with 400 applications a month at 12 minutes each, pays back in 1.5 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- net per agent for one process, build paid once
- from €3,000
- from signing the contract to acceptance
- 6–16 weeks
- free prototype on your cases
- €0
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Recruitment and AI: statistics 2026
1.5 mo.
payback of a €3,000 agent with 400 applications a month: €2,792 of work today, €852 with checking and the model. Scenario.
3–4 h
According to the HR team of a technology company, a Syntalith client under NDA (2026), our own ATS with a prescreening voicebot saves about 3 to 4 hours of work on each candidate.
Source: Syntalith, ATS with a voicebot for an HR team (2026) ↗
2 December 2027
According to the European Commission (2026), the rules on high-risk systems in Annex III of the AI Act apply from 2 December 2027, and those on systems built into regulated products from 2 August 2028.
Source: AI Act Service Desk, When does enforcement start? (2026) ↗
49%
According to the European Commission (2026), 49% of EU SMEs and mid-caps do not trust AI or automated systems for decisions on staff matters.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer on AI and algorithmic management (2026) ↗
90%
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of companies that use AI say people take the decisions, and 2% of decisions are fully automated.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer on AI and algorithmic management (2026) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Does it organise documents or choose candidates
One job advert draws 200 applications. The HR team checks formal requirements, experience, availability and salary expectations, and some documents are incomplete or describe skills in other words. Start with what happens after the output arrives: if the recruiter reads every application, a card with sources makes checking the facts easier. If they see only the top ten of a ranking, the model shapes who gets noticed at all.
The criteria must be open. „Experience in B2B SaaS is a plus” must not quietly become a must-have. When a CV does not mention a tool, the right record is „no mention found”, and the recruiter sees the difference from „lacks the skill”.
| Feature the vendor offers | Question before you buy |
|---|---|
| Extracting facts from a CV | can you check the source and correct the reading |
| Comparison with requirements | does it tell a must-have from a nice-to-have |
| Ranking or filter | does it change whom the recruiter sees |
| Follow-up questions | who approves their scope |
| Rejection in the ATS | who decides, and how it can be reconstructed |
- 01Factspositions, periods, tools and languages, with the CV passage
- 02Requirementsmust-haves and nice-to-haves kept apart
- 03Gaps„no mention found” in place of a judgement
- 04Questionsfollow-ups approved by HR
- 05Decisionthe recruiter, who can change the suggestion
- Contact with a person and a request for an explanation
- Reporting an error in the data
- A request for the application to be reviewed again
- Data retention set for the purpose and the period
What it costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 400 applications × 12 min = 80 h (€2,792)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 30% of the time
- €838
- Model, 2 calls per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €14
- Cost of one case
- €6.98 today, €2.13 with the system
- Saving
- €1,940 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.5 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 6,000 input and 800 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and passing things on. What remains is the time to check the output, 30% of today's work in the scenario. Before the quote we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a €0 test that takes 5 working days.
The count keeps 30% of today's work for the recruiter's review of every card. An assumption about „fewer bad hires” would need separate evidence, so we count only HR working time.
The AI Act, the GDPR and what the agent does not do
AI systems used to recruit and select candidates are listed in Annex III of the AI Act, and the rules on high-risk systems in that annex apply from 2 December 2027. A specialist assesses the classification of a specific system under Article 6, and a recruiter approving the output does not settle it alone. Candidates' data needs a defined legal basis, purpose and retention period, including after the recruitment ends. Stopping the flow before an action and a person's review are what tools such as LangSmith with human involvement let you build.
Few applications, a simple process
a card template and good instructions
no build
Many applications, the recruiter reads them all
an agent that prepares cards with sources
from €3,000
The whole recruitment in one place
your own ATS with prescreening
from €3,000
Where to start
The pilot covers one job advert with a real human review: the agent prepares cards, keeps every application and waits for HR's decisions. We check the sources, the corrections and stopping an action. AI in HR and recruitment describes the scope for an HR department. We build this as part of AI agents. For the free process review, a description of one case from recent weeks and the tools it ran through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: recruitment
We run the same count for your HR team in the free process review.
€2,327
a month for handling 800 candidate and employee documents by hand
Payback: 1.5 mo.
5 minutes to receive and check a document and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: reading a document in our case file system (about €0.0002) plus a description of what is missing (Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 2,000 + 300 tokens), at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
