AI Recruiting Software That Sources, Interviews, and Shortlists
The Cognitive is AI recruiting software for sourcing and first-round interviews: AI sourcing reads a plain-English brief, searches ~900M public profiles and reveals verified contact details, and a live, two-way AI video interview screens each candidate in depth, asking follow-up questions and pressing on vague answers. The invitation tells candidates the interview is run by AI. Every interview returns a 1 to 5 score per criterion, overall written feedback, a transcript and a recording. Interviews run in 9 languages, and candidates book their own slot.
AI Sourcing: Find Candidates, Not Just Applicants
AI sourcing is candidate search in plain English: describe the role and get matched profiles. Credits are simple: 1 credit per candidate a search returns, 5 to reveal an email, 10 to reveal a phone number. A reveal is charged only when a value comes back. Sourced candidates move into an AI interview without an export, or you can select a batch and bulk invite them.
Every Candidate Judged Against Your Bar, Not Matched on Keywords
A keyword search returns profiles whose wording matches your query. The Cognitive's sourcing agent reads the role's full requirements and weighs each candidate against them in plain language, so a result is a judgment with a "Why this match" line, not a string hit. Anyone who misses a must-have drops below the people who meet them, and nobody is removed. A card shows an "Open to work" badge when the profile carries that signal, and the profile panel shows tenure for each role.
The Durable Role Pool: Nothing You Source Is Ever Lost
Every candidate found for a role stays in that role's pool, so results do not vanish when you run the next search. Later searches for the role skip people you have already seen, so each one adds new names instead of repeating the last.
Works Alongside Your ATS: 60+ Integrations
The Cognitive is not an applicant tracking system: it does not post jobs or send offers. It connects to 60+ ATSs, including Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday and Bullhorn. You import candidates from a stage you choose, and after the interview a note with the score, a summary and the report link goes back to that candidate's record. Stages in your ATS never move.
Live AI Interviews That Go Deep
Each interview is a live, two-way AI video conversation of 10 or 20 minutes, and the invitation tells candidates it's run by AI. The rubric is fixed per role and the questions adapt live: follow-ups on what was said, pushback on vague answers. The report gives a 1 to 5 score per criterion, overall written feedback, a weighted score out of 100, the transcript and the recording. Up to 5 resume claims the AI probed come back marked verified, refuted or unclear. Candidates book their own slot without an account.
Better Hires Start Upstream: AI Sourcing Reaches the Candidates Your Team Would Miss
Every hire is capped by the quality of the pool it came from. Job boards surface the people who are actively looking, a fraction of the qualified market, so hiring from inbound alone means hiring off the top of a funnel that filtered itself. AI candidate sourcing widens that pool inside the platform: a Boolean search surfaces resumes whose wording matches the query, while candidates judged against your brief surface people whose experience matches, so recruiters open a pool already ranked for fit. When the pool is thin, the search relaxes its softest filters and says what it broadened. Live AI interviews then take the first round, so your team reads a report before spending an hour with anyone.
Two Products, One Chain of Agents: AI Sourcing and Live AI Interviews
Sourcing platforms cannot interview and interview tools cannot source, so a candidate found in one has to be exported to the other. The Cognitive runs both as one chain of agents: AI candidate sourcing finds the person and reveals verified contact details, on Sourcing Pro, email and SMS sequences go out from platform mailboxes and stop on a reply or opt-out, and a live, two-way AI interview screens them, so "found" becomes "proven" without leaving the platform. An agent runs each stage from source to shortlist and hands back to you before the next one, which is what makes the platform agentic rather than autonomous: your team approves between stages and makes every hiring decision. It is built for teams that cannot afford to lose candidates to slow hiring, or strong candidates to shallow screening, with 16 industry playbooks from tech startups to the public sector.
Scale Interviews Without Adding Recruiters
The bottleneck in most hiring cycles is human screening and coordination. With candidates booking their own interview slot and reviewers reading a scored report first, one UK staffing agency went from 200 to 1,400 interviews a month with the same 8 recruiters. Read the UK staffing agency case study.
AI Sourcing From $49/Month, AI Interview Plans From $99/Month
AI sourcing plans run on credits from $49/month: 1 credit per candidate a search returns, 5 to reveal an email, 10 to reveal a phone number. AI interview plans run from $99/month to $999/month, custom above that, with each tier's allowance listed on the pricing page. Every account starts with a free trial of the whole platform: 100 sourcing credits plus 2 live AI interviews.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is The Cognitive an agentic AI recruiting platform?
Yes. An agent runs each stage of the funnel: a sourcing agent finds and ranks candidates, an outreach agent sequences email and SMS, an AI interviewer holds a live two-way interview, and an evaluation agent returns an evidence-scored shortlist. It is agentic rather than autonomous; the recruiter approves between stages and makes every hiring decision, and every score is traceable to a quote from the interview so a human can check the agent's work.
What is The Cognitive?
The Cognitive is the AI recruiting platform that sources, interviews, and shortlists. AI sourcing finds candidates with verified emails and phone numbers, a live two-way AI interviewer with a human voice runs deep adaptive video interviews, and your team receives a scored report, transcript and recording as each candidate finishes. Nothing is rejected automatically. Humans make every hiring decision - the AI removes the volume.
How does the AI interviewer work?
The AI interviewer joins a live video call with the candidate using a realistic human face and natural voice. It asks role-specific questions, listens to each answer, generates context-aware follow-ups in real time - pushing back on vague answers and probing deeper on strong ones - and scores every response against the same rubric. Hiring teams get the full recording, a searchable transcript with speaker labels and timestamps, and an evidence-based scorecard quoting what the candidate said.
How does AI sourcing work?
Describe the role in plain English and the AI searches talent profiles for matches - including passive candidates who never applied. Searches cost 1 credit per candidate returned; a verified personal email is 5 credits and a direct phone number 10, charged only when the reveal succeeds. Engagement is built in: automated outreach sequences across email and SMS that stop the moment a candidate replies, with replies sorted by intent. Sourced candidates flow straight into AI interviews.
How much does The Cognitive cost?
2 products, priced transparently. AI Sourcing: credit plans from $49/month for 500 credits. AI Interviews: from $99/month, up to $999/month at the top tier, custom above that. Annual billing saves 17%. The free trial includes 100 sourcing credits plus 2 free interviews.
Can AI replace human interviewers?
The AI replaces the volume, not the judgment. It conducts deep, consistent interviews at any scale - the 50th interview is as sharp as the first - and organizes the evidence. Your team reviews scorecards, meets only proven candidates, and makes every hiring decision. Teams typically reclaim 15-20 hours per week of interviewing time.
Is AI interviewing fair and unbiased?
Every candidate for a role is assessed on the same competencies and scored against the same rubric, with every rating traceable to exact quotes. The AI decides each next question live during the conversation - from the role, the rubric, the candidate's resume and their previous answers - so nothing is scripted or prepared in advance - what is held constant is what is measured and how it is scored - removing the interviewer variance, fatigue, and mood effects that make human screening inconsistent. No system should claim to be perfectly bias-free; The Cognitive's claim is consistent, evidence-tied, and auditable, with humans making all final decisions. See /trust/bias-and-fairness for the full controls.
What does a candidate experience in an AI interview?
A real conversation at a slot they pick themselves - evenings, weekends, any timezone - from the window the recruiter opens. No coordination emails: they choose a slot, get a join link, and interview. The AI greets them, asks role-specific questions, responds to their answers, and never rushes or has a bad day. If the employer enables it, rejected candidates even receive a feedback email with strengths and gaps - rare anywhere in hiring. Try the exact experience free at /try-interview.
Does The Cognitive integrate with our ATS?
Yes - The Cognitive connects to 60+ applicant tracking systems, including Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, SmartRecruiters, iCIMS and Bullhorn. You import candidates from the stage you choose, invite them to a live AI interview, and the score, summary and report link go back to the ATS as a note. See /integrations.
What kinds of roles and industries does it cover?
50+ role templates across engineering, product, sales, marketing, healthcare, finance, and operations - from call center agents to VP-level hires - and 16 industry playbooks including tech, healthcare, BPO and staffing, fintech, retail, and hospitality. Interview tracks are fully configurable per role: technical, behavioral, and managerial rounds.
How is The Cognitive different from HireVue, hireEZ, or other tools?
Sourcing platforms (hireEZ, SeekOut, Gem, Juicebox) find candidates but don't interview them; interview and screening tools (HireVue, Truffle) evaluate but don't source. The Cognitive does both in one pipeline - and its interviews are live and two-way with adaptive follow-ups, not one-way recordings. Honest head-to-head comparisons: /compare.