As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly shortlist candidates for interview.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the current job specification and write down the genuinely essential criteria separately from the desirable criteria.
   2. Remove unnecessary personal information from each CV or application, including photographs, addresses and protected-characteristic information, then label the documents Candidate A, Candidate B and so on.
   3. Confirm that you have the right to use the application information in an AI system and check the system's data retention and access settings before uploading anything.
   4. Paste the job specification, criteria and anonymised applications into a chatbot with the prompt above.
   5. Ask the hiring manager or panel to compare every proposed shortlist decision with the evidence table and record any disagreement or missing information.
   6. Ask HR to check the criteria and shortlist for indirect discrimination, reasonable-adjustment issues and consistency with the organisation's recruitment process before inviting anyone to interview.
   7. Send interview invitations only after an accountable human approves the final shortlist and keeps a record of the reasons.

   Prompt

   You are helping with an initial, human-reviewed recruitment screen for a UK role.
   
   Job title: [JOB TITLE]
   Job specification: [PASTE THE JOB SPECIFICATION]
   Essential criteria: [LIST ONLY THE CRITERIA THAT ARE GENUINELY REQUIRED]
   Desirable criteria: [LIST THE CRITERIA THAT ARE HELPFUL BUT NOT REQUIRED]
   Candidates: [PASTE ANONYMISED CVs OR APPLICATIONS, LABELLED CANDIDATE A, CANDIDATE B, AND SO ON]
   
   Shortlist candidates for a first interview using only the stated essential and desirable criteria. Do not infer or use age, sex, gender reassignment, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or belief, disability, pregnancy or maternity, sexual orientation, marital status, caring responsibilities, name, address, photograph, school, or any other proxy for a protected characteristic. Do not make assumptions about personality, culture fit, health, family circumstances, immigration status or future performance.
   
   For each candidate, provide:
   1. shortlist decision: shortlist, hold for human review, or do not shortlist;
   2. a table showing the evidence for and against each essential criterion;
   3. evidence for desirable criteria;
   4. missing or ambiguous information that must not be guessed;
   5. a short explanation of the decision using only the evidence supplied.
   
   Do not rank candidates by writing style, prestige of employer or educational institution unless that is an explicit, job-related criterion. Do not automatically reject anyone because information is missing. Flag criteria that may be vague, unnecessary or liable to create indirect discrimination. Finish with a list of checks the hiring manager and HR should complete before sending interview invitations. This is a decision aid, not an automatic hiring decision.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.