AI Recruiting Platform Features: Sourcing, Interviews, Shortlists
The Cognitive's features cover sourcing and first-round interviews. AI candidate sourcing from a plain-English brief, with verified email and phone reveals. Live, two-way AI video interviews with adaptive follow-up questions, in 9 languages. Interview reports with a 1 to 5 score per criterion, overall written feedback, the transcript and the recording. Integrity flags logged for review, not scored. Bulk invite, and candidates book their own slot.
AI Sourcing That Feeds Interviews Directly
AI sourcing in The Cognitive is candidate search written as a sentence: describe the role in plain English and get back people ranked against the whole requirement, not profiles whose wording matches a query. 1 credit per candidate a search returns, 5 to reveal an email, 10 to reveal a phone number. Charged only on a successful reveal. Everyone found stays in that role's pool, and a sourced candidate can be moved into a live AI interview without an export.
Outreach and ATS: Reaching Candidates, and Keeping Them
Recruitment automation is the half of recruiting between finding someone and interviewing them. In The Cognitive, on the Sourcing Pro plan, per-role email and SMS sequences go out from platform mailboxes, and a reply or opt-out on either channel stops both. Every candidate you contact stays in that role's durable pool, so the next search builds on the last one rather than starting over. The Cognitive is not an ATS: it connects to 60+ of them, imports candidates from a stage you choose, and writes back a note with the score, a summary and the report link. Stages never move.
AI Video Interviews That Adapt in Real Time
The Cognitive's AI interviewer holds a live, two-way video conversation, and the invitation tells candidates it's run by AI. It asks a role-specific question, listens to the answer, and decides the follow-up from what was said, so a vague answer gets pressed rather than passed. The rubric is fixed for every candidate; the questions are not, which is what separates it from a recorded questionnaire.
Structured, Consistent Candidate Evaluation. Same Rubric, Every Interview
Every candidate for a role is scored against the same rubric, defined when the role is created, so 40 interviews stay comparable instead of depending on who ran which call. Each report gives a 1 to 5 score per criterion, overall written feedback, the transcript and the recording, so a debrief argues about which signal matters with the candidate's own words in front of everyone.
Deep AI interviews explained · AI sourcing tool · Integrations · MCP server · Pricing
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes The Cognitive's AI interviewer different from a chatbot?
The Cognitive conducts live, two-way video interviews with a realistic human face and natural voice - not a text chat or scripted question tree. It listens to candidate answers, identifies gaps, and generates contextual follow-up questions in real time based on what was actually said, going as deep as a senior human interviewer would.
How does The Cognitive score candidates?
Every interview produces an evidence-based scorecard built on a structured rubric defined per role. The AI evaluates responses against predefined competency criteria, assigns weighted scores, and ties every rating to exact quotes in the recording - so reviewers audit the reasoning, not a black-box number.
What does the AI sourcing product include?
Plain-English candidate search over talent profiles at 1 credit per candidate returned, verified personal emails (5 credits) and direct phone numbers (10 credits) charged only on successful reveals, a built-in Boolean and LinkedIn X-ray builder, automated email and SMS outreach sequences, and one-click handoff into AI interviews. Plans from $49/month.
How long does setup take?
About 8-10 minutes per role. You create the role (paste a JD or generate one with AI), generate an evaluation template, and optionally add custom questions - all AI-assisted from the dashboard. Then add or import candidates, click Invite All, and interviews start as candidates pick their slots. If you want help, a 30-minute onboarding call gets most teams fully live.
Can I customise interview questions and competencies per role?
Yes. You configure question sets, competency frameworks, and scoring weights for each role independently - a customer success interview and a software engineering interview run completely different tracks with depth appropriate to each. Free tools on this site generate JDs, competency maps, questions, and scorecards to start from.
Does The Cognitive integrate with ATS platforms?
Yes - 60+ ATS integrations including Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, SmartRecruiters, iCIMS and Bullhorn. Candidates are imported from the stage you choose, and each interview's score, summary and report link go back to the ATS as a note. ATS integration is included on Scale and Pro plans monthly, and all plans annually.
How does The Cognitive handle cheating and identity verification?
Every session runs real-time integrity monitoring: tab switches, camera-off events, screen-away behaviour, and face tracking are flagged with timestamped clips and logged alongside the recording. Adaptive follow-up questions also make scripted or coached answers collapse - memorized responses rarely survive the second probe.
Does it replace interview scheduling software?
Effectively, yes. You set a slot window (open and close dates); candidates pick their own slot from it and get a join link automatically - no back-and-forth emails, no calendar coordination, no interviewer availability to manage, because the AI interviewer is available for every slot. The coordination bottleneck that slows most pipelines is gone.