How AI Phone Screening Interviews Work

And if you’ve noticed it always takes a few tries before you can reach them, that’s because nowadays, most candidates hate receiving phone calls and see them as a real inconvenience.

For recruiters, it’s not a fun ride either. Phone screenings are a time-consuming, labour-intensive administrative task that take a lot of organization and brainwork. After 20 faceless chats with candidates running through standardized questions, it can be hard to feel enthusiastic about any of the job applicants you’ve spoken to.

But of course, there’s no denying the fact that phone screenings are still a hugely important step in the hiring process - particularly if you have a high number of applicants for a role.

This is why so many hiring teams have jumped at the chance to use artificial intelligence to take over the process of screening candidates. AI-powered phone screening technology is here, and it’s already transforming how the recruitment industry handles this stage of the interview process.

Let’s take a look at what AI phone screening looks like in practice, and why using this technology creates a much better experience for candidates as well as recruiters.

What is an AI phone screening interview?

In AI phone screening interviews, a virtual assistant conducts a phone interview with job applicants instead of a recruiter handling these calls manually over the phone.

The aim of using AI technology to take over the screening process is that it gives hiring teams the tools to assess candidate fit quickly, consistently, and at scale, meaning they can handle high volumes of job applicants without any human input.

It’s important to clarify here that recruiter input is still incredibly important to the hiring process. These AI tools aren’t designed to take over interviews completely, but to streamline pre-screening so recruiters can focus their time and effort engaging with the top candidates who make the shortlist.

If you have some hesitations about the impact it might have to delegate your pre-screening process to an AI agent, let me put your mind at ease...

Common misconceptions about AI phone screenings

There are two primary concerns I hear from recruitment teams who are resistant to the idea of AI interviews. So before we move on, let’s put these to bed.

“It’s impersonal for candidates.”

If you’re worried about candidates dropping out of your hiring process because an AI-powered prescreening feels impersonal, it’s worth knowing that candidates find any phone screening process impersonal, whether it’s being handled by a recruier or an AI agent.

It’s also worth acknowledging that candidate needs have changed a lot over the last decade. Nowadays, candidates are used to automated communication, and usually the benefits of this technology far outway any negatives. For example, they enjoy the flexibility of using a screening tool that allows them to answer the screening questions at a time that suits them rather than a recruiter’s schedule. They also appreciate that automation results in a faster process, especially in high-volume recruitment scenarios.

“AI doesn’t understand nuances.”

While it’s true that AI recruiting technology isn’t advanced enough to understand nuances yet, this doesn’t prevent AI screening tools from doing their job. The technology is designed to capture unstructured responses to interview questions and turn them into structured data which is then fed into an ATS or similar tool. But recruiters can still review recordings and transcripts for deeper insights at any point, if they think the AI tool might have missed on good candidates.

Good to mention is that AI recruiting tech isn’t here to replace recruiters, but to support them by taking over the time-intensive manual work. Where pre-screening is concerned, this means automating the calls and giving recruiters the information it gathers so they can make informed decisions about who to progress to the next stage.

How AI phone screening interviews work

If you’re still a little unsure about handing the pre-screening process over to AI, it will help to understand what the process looks like in action for both you and your job applicants.

Here’s what an AI-powered candidate evaluation process looks like.

Step 1: Candidate application

The hiring process starts, of course, with a vacancy. Once this is published on your career site or a job board, and the job seeker applies to the open role, they are asked to leave their contact details and their preferred communication method - which can be phone call, messaging, or email, for example.

After the application is submitted and the candidate is added to your ATS, they receive a message with details about the screening. In this case, because we're talking about AI phone screening, the candidate will receive an SMS, WhatsApp text, or phone call.

Candidates can choose a convenient time to take the interview, or if they’re feeling confident, immediately connect to start answering the interview questions straight off the bat.

Step 2: AI conducts the conversation

The AI assistant introduces the pre-screening process so the candidate knows what to expect, and notifies the candidate that they are talking to an AI. This is a requirement as per AI legislation, and it helps manage the candidate's expectations too.

Now, if you’re worried about R2-D2 calling your best candidates, be comforted to know that the AI sounds very human and not robotic at all. In fact, candidates often report forgetting that they're talking to an AI.

To ensure only matching candidates are shortlisted, the AI will will ask the interviewee a series of pre-set questions which have been tailored to the role based on the job description and role requirements.

These will normally be questions around their availability, expected salary, and previous work experience. It can also include questions about specific skills and ask for scenario-based behavioural interview responses.

With tools like Carv, these questions - and the entire conversation flow - is generated by the AI in advance, so you - or your recruiting team - don't have to manually create conversation flows and logic trees. Of course, you can review and vet all the questions before the phone pre-screening begins.

Step 3: Real-time voice recognition and analysis

During the phone interview, the AI uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand and transcribe the candidate's responses to the interview questions.

When transcribing and analysing the interviewee’s answers, the AI can also assess whether they’d be a good cultural fit for the organization.

If you’d like the AI to go a step further, it can even use sentiment analysis or speech pattern insights to add an extra layer to the candidate assessment. For example, it can take note of the candidate’s soft skills, like their communication style, problem-solving mindset and confidence presenting themselves during the call.

Step 4: ATS data syncs

Once the screening call is complete, the candidate’s responses are automatically recorded and stored in the cloud. This includes a full transcript of the call and key insights extracted by the AI, summarized for easy review.

The data is seamlessly integrated into the company’s ATS or any other recruitment tool you use, making it readily accessible to you, the hiring manager, or anyone else involved in qualifying candidates.

You can then ask the AI to generate a shortlist of top-performing candidates from the pre-screening stage, helping you decide who to progress to an in-person or video interview.

Plus, with all this data automatically added to your ATS, you can enrich your talent pool and reduce sourcing time for future vacancies. Just think about the time and effort you’ll save by automating this process!

Benefits of AI phone screening interviews

Just so we’re all on the same page here, let’s also take a quick look at some top-level benefits you’ll see intstantly if you start using an AI agent to handle your candidate pre-screening.

1. Save time - AI phone interviews eliminate manual screenings from your hiring process, freeing up recruiters’ time so they can focus on later-stage interviews and tasks that actually require human input.
2. Fair and consistent screening process - During AI phone screenings, every candidate receives the same questions and has the same pre-screening experience. There’s no going off in tangents with the candidates you ‘click’ with or forgetting to ask some interviewees every questions. As it’s a standardized process, this reduces bias and inconsistencies between interviews, which make it more difficult (and less fair) when assessing candidates against one another.
3. Objective decision-making - Using structured data from interviews supports fair and informed hiring decisions, creating a system where candidates are progressed through the funnel based on solid performance data rather than how the recruiter feels about the candidate.
4. Positive candidate experience - You might think replacing a recruiter with an AI agent for prescreening interviews can’t be a positive experience for candidates. But in reality, there are lots of benefits to having an AI handle your phone interview instead of a recruiter. For example, candidates like it that they can complete screenings at their own convenience, when they feel fully prepared, rather than when a recruiter decides to call them. Speaking to an AI initially can also be a good way to ease nervous candidates into the interview process too.
5. Employer branding - Automating your pre-screening inevitably results in more timely feedback and a faster time-to-hire, which will help you build a positive reputation amongst job seekers. Lack of feedback on progress is one of the biggest candidate complaints when going through the recruitment process, and using an AI agent means you have the data to provide applicants with instant feedback if required.
6. Scalability - The beauty of AI-powered phone screenings is that they’re extremely adaptable. Whether you’re screening 10 job seekers or 100, the technology can efficiently handle the process and scale up whenever you need it too. Automating the pre-screening process means you can let the AI agent conduct hundreds of screenings simultaneously without any bottlenecks - which is particularly game-changing if you’re involved in high-volume recruiting.

Set up your AI phone screening today

By implementing an AI screening solution like Carv, you can dramatically reduce time-to-hire while ensuring a consistent, bias-free candidate experience that allows the candidate to take part in your screening process at time that suits them.

And it’s a technology that will allow you to scale up your recruiting when needed: AI-powered phone interviews make it possible to screen hundreds of candidates simultaneously without sacrificing quality or candidate engagement.

Request a demo of Carv today to see how you can integrate AI phone screening effortlessly into your recruitment process.