Interview notes without sending candidate calls away

Ask first, every time

Candidate calls are the kind of conversation people are careful about, and they are right to be. Before you record, say that you are recording, say what it is for, and wait for an answer.

A form of words that works:

• "I record screening calls so my notes for the hiring team are accurate. The recording stays on my laptop. Is that all right with you?"
• If the answer is no, do not record. Take notes the old way.
• Say who sees the notes, which is usually the hiring manager and the recruiting team and nobody else.

Rules on recording differ by country and sometimes by state. Ask first and you rarely need to look them up.

Five screens in a morning

Back-to-back calls are where notes quietly stop happening. By the third one the first has blurred, and what reaches the hiring manager is an impression rather than a record.

Generating a recap between calls takes about as long as making a cup of tea, and the notes come from what was said rather than from your memory of it.

Notes a hiring manager will actually read

A raw transcript is not a useful thing to forward to anyone. The recap turns it into a short summary, a list of follow-ups and a draft email, which is the format a busy manager opens.

Set up a template once. If your team always wants the same four headings, say experience, motivation, notice period and expectations, put them in the template and every recap arrives in that shape.

Why candidate data gets treated differently

Someone who does not get the job still has rights over what you wrote about them, and usually a shorter window in which you should be keeping any of it. That is far easier to manage when the file sits on one machine and you can delete it.

Your audio, transcript and notes stay on your computer. The app goes online for three things only: the one-time model download, your account and billing if you choose to have one, and anonymous page counts.

Nothing syncs anywhere, so a deleted meeting is actually deleted.

Where this sits next to your ATS

It does not replace your applicant tracking system and does not try to. Paste the summary into the candidate record and keep your process exactly where it is.

The transcript stays on your machine if a decision is ever questioned, for as long as your own retention policy says it should.

Try it on your next screen

Ask the candidate, record five minutes, generate the recap and compare it with the notes you would have typed. Use Chrome or Edge, and share the call’s sound when your browser asks.