Rubric Screener
Screening a recruiter can defend and an auditor can inspect
Why this is different from the screener in your ATS
An automated tool that scores or ranks candidates for employment is, in New York City, an automated employment decision tool under Local Law 144, and in Illinois it falls under the amendments HB 3773 made to the Human Rights Act from January 2026. In both cases the duties sit with the employer or employment agency using the tool, not with the company that sold it. A vendor's black-box score gives you nothing to show when a client, a candidate or a regulator asks why.
This screener is built the other way round: the rubric is yours, every score comes with a written reason, and the record of who saw what is kept from the first candidate.
What the agent does
- Rubric workshop: your recruiters define criteria, weights, and disqualifiers in plain language; we turn that into a document you own and version
- Scoring with rationale: each candidate is scored per criterion with a short written justification that cites the evidence in the resume or application
- Human decision: the recruiter sees the scores and reasons and makes the call; no candidate is rejected by the agent alone
- Notice and opt-out: candidate-facing notice text, timing, and alternative-process routing, configured per jurisdiction
- Audit exports: selection-rate data by the categories an independent bias audit needs, plus a per-candidate pack for client or regulator requests
- Retention: records kept for the period your counsel specifies, in a store you control
Guardrails
- Protected characteristics are excluded from the model's inputs and the rubric is checked for proxies during the workshop
- The agent's scores are advisory in the workflow; the ATS stage change is made by a person
- We do not run the bias audit. We produce the data an independent auditor needs and can introduce you to one
A typical build
| Phase | Work |
|---|---|
| Weeks 1-2 | Rubric workshop, proxy review, jurisdiction map, data access |
| Weeks 3-4 | Scoring and rationale build; recruiters review against past hires |
| Weeks 5-6 | Notice flows, audit exports, ATS integration, parallel run and handover |
Typical, not contractual; jurisdictions and integrations set the pace.
How we work with you
- Hourly, time and materials. Senior US engineers billed by the hour, with scope agreed in writing before we start.
- The rubric and the records are yours from the first workshop, whoever runs the system later.
- After handover, rubrics change, laws change, and clients add their own AI-use clauses. We stay engaged for rubric revisions, re-running audit exports and keeping notice flows current, on the same hourly basis.
What it is not
- Not legal advice. Your counsel confirms the notice text and the audit cadence for the places you place in.
- Not a sourcing tool, a resume parser, or a chatbot.
Next step
Contact us and tell us where you place and what you screen against today.