The AI recommends, it never decides. When it rates an application a Low match, nothing is sent to the candidate: the application waits for a person on your team to keep it or to confirm the rejection.
Ben Fletcher
a seed-stage startup · London, UK (remote) · 3 yrs exp
Needs reviewStep 1: Needs review
The status under the candidate's name. The scoreboard further down gives the AI's verdict, Low match, with the ATS score. Low match is the AI's lowest verdict. It is never worded as a rejection.
Step 2: Awaiting human confirmation
The banner on the candidate's page says what is pending: AI recommends rejection, awaiting human confirmation.
Step 3: Your decision
Keep in process or Confirm rejection. Until someone chooses, nothing happens.
What happens when the AI recommends rejection
An application gets a Low match when its ATS score falls below the job's minimum ATS score: the bar you set in your screening profile, or 55 if you have not set one. See Tune your screening profile.
When that happens:
- The application's status changes to Needs review.
- It appears in the Review queue in the sidebar, alongside every other application waiting for a decision.
- Your team gets a notification.
This only happens to a new application nobody has worked on yet. If someone has already moved the candidate on, a Low match never pulls them back into review. The candidate is not told anything: on their status page the application simply shows as in review.
A person decides
On the candidate's page, or in the Review queue for several at once, choose one of two actions:
- Keep in process dismisses the AI's flag. The application moves to In review and carries on like any other.
- Confirm rejection opens a confirmation first: You are recording a human hiring decision. Once confirmed, the candidate moves to the Rejected stage and is sent a rejection email in their email thread.
Every confirmed rejection is recorded with the name of the person who made it and the time, in the activity log. If the candidate opted in to the talent pool, a confirmed rejection is also what makes them available for other roles. See How the talent pool works.
The permission to confirm a rejection is checked by the database itself, not only by the app. By default Owners, Admins and Recruiters can confirm rejections. Hiring Managers can keep a candidate in process but cannot reject. See Roles and permissions.
For working through many applications at once, see The review queue.
Knockout answers go to review too
If you mark an answer to a screening question as a knockout, an applicant who picks it is not rejected. Their application goes to the same Review queue with a line naming the answer, for example Answered “No” to “Do you have the right to work in Singapore?” (a knockout question). AI screening waits, so it is not scored yet. A person then chooses Reject, which works like Confirm rejection, or Score anyway, which clears the flag and sends the application through AI screening. See Screening questions and knockouts.
Other ways an application closes
Two things can close an application without the review queue. Both are a person acting:
- Your own Reject button. Reject on a candidate's page records a human decision directly and sends the rejection email.
- Moving a card. Dragging a card to the Rejected column on the pipeline board changes the stage only and sends nothing. See The pipeline board.
Changing your mind
A rejected candidate can be brought back with Reconsider on their page. The application returns to review on the job's screening stage, and the candidate is not emailed. Reconsidering needs the same permission as rejecting.
After interviews
Interview feedback makes the AI re-score a candidate. A re-score at that point never sends the candidate to the review queue, even if the new verdict is a Low match: once people have met a candidate, the decision stays entirely with them.