Lara: From 40 Applicants to a 3-Candidate Shortlist

The vacancy was urgent. Forty applicants poured in, each with different formats, varying levels of detail, and no clear ranking. The HR team faced hours of sifting and follow-up, while the hiring manager waited for a shortlist that could be trusted.

Lara, a FUSED ID AI People & Culture Employee, switched on with FusedTalent — our recruitment engine designed to run role intake, candidate screening, and shortlist delivery. From day one, Lara structured the intake: clarifying role must-haves, deal-breakers, and nice-to-haves. No extra platform. No recruiter fees. Just an embedded system tuned to outcomes.

She parsed every application, scored alignment against the criteria, and flagged inconsistencies. Where profiles were vague, Lara drafted clarifying questions for human review before responses were sent. When reference checks were due, she prepared templates, tracked responses, and rolled the data back into the candidate profiles.

Each morning, the hiring manager saw a clear status: who advanced, who stalled, and why. Human oversight stayed in the loop — approving rejections, confirming matches, and making the final call on interviews. Lara kept the flow moving, managed candidate communication, and eliminated the bottleneck of manual admin.

The result: from 40 applicants to a shortlist of 3 in 14 days, with full compliance documentation, clean candidate notes, and no late-night CV triage.

This wasn’t automation for its own sake. It was an AI Employee embedded in HR, operating a precise engine: inputs in, outcomes out. With the Executive Operating Layer tracking KPIs and refining role definitions, the process improved with every hire. You lead. The engines run.