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A CV screen in front of the interview, when nobody has screened yet
Most agencies bring the shortlist their own screening left them, and go straight to the interview. When the applicants have not been screened, add a CV screen to the job: every CV is scored against what the role needs, with a written justification you can read, check and disagree with.
The optional CV screen in Alert Hire scores every CV on a job against what the role needs: one mark per requirement, one overall score, and a written justification that quotes the CV. Every mark points at the line that produced it, so you can check it rather than trust it. It decides who is invited to the interview only by the rule you set, and a low score is not a rejection.
Watch a grade happen
A CV read section by section, scored 90 out of 100
The walkthrough below shows a CV being graded. It plays once and holds the finished grade card.
How a grade is built
Four steps, each one you can check
Requirements in your words
Must haves, nice to haves and how much each one counts, drafted from your job ad and edited per role by the recruiter who owns it. There is no generic “good candidate” model behind it.
Every mark quoted
Each sub-score points at the sentence in the CV that produced it, so you can check a mark-down against the criterion instead of taking it on trust.
Read section by section
Experience, qualifications, skills and the rest are checked against each criterion in turn. Missing evidence is scored as missing, not guessed.
Score with a justification
One sub-score per criterion, one overall score, and a written explanation that quotes the CV. If a candidate is marked down, you can see exactly why.
What a criterion looks like
Specific enough to check, weighted the way you would
Good criteria are things a CV can answer. "Five or more years running payroll for 200+ staff" grades cleanly. "Culture fit" does not, and Alert Hire will tell you so when you write it.
Anything a CV cannot answer, like notice period, salary expectations or shift flexibility, belongs in the interview’s key checks instead.
Five or more years processing end-to-end payroll in Australia.
Hands-on with at least one major payroll platform (MicrOpay, Chris21, ADP, Employment Hero).
Has interpreted a modern award or EBA in a previous role.
Experience with a payroll system migration.
Exposure to New Zealand payroll.
Candidates scoring 70 or above are invited to the interview. Everyone else stays in the list, graded and visible, for you to invite or not.
Questions about the CV screen
Bullhorn’s GRID 2026 report found 54% of APAC agencies saw KPIs improve by more than 25% from AI screening alone. Whether that holds for you depends on the criteria, which is why they are yours to write. The full list of questions is on the home page. Anything else: admin@alertai.com.au.
The grader scores the experience, the skills and the qualifications against requirements you wrote, and every mark quotes the line in the CV that produced it, so you can check the reasoning yourself. It is told to ignore a candidate’s name, age, gender, nationality, photo, address and where they studied, unless a requirement is itself about a location or right to work.
Yes, that is the point of the marks. Each one in the report shows the sentence in the CV it was drawn from and the written justification for it. A low grade is never a rejection: the candidate stays in the list for you to read.
PDF and Word files with text in them, so a two-page Word CV and a twelve-page PDF get the same treatment. A scanned image with no text cannot be read yet, so it is flagged for you to add the details by hand rather than scored.
No. If your own screening, or LinkedIn’s or SEEK’s, has already cut the applicants down, add that shortlist and go straight to the interview. Add the CV screen to a job when the applicants have not been screened yet.
Screen the CVs, then interview the ones worth it
Bring a live role to the pilot. We set up its requirements and interview with you, and you see both run.