Applicant screening
Screen applicants on the work, not the CV.
Send every applicant a short, hands-on assessment built from your job spec. They triage, investigate and fix in real environments, and you see who can actually do the job before your team gives a single hour to interviews. Build it yourself in minutes, or have our team build it with you.
Why this hurts
The CV sift is the weakest step in your process.
- 01
A CV tells you what they claim.
Any applicant can now produce a polished, perfectly tailored CV in seconds. Keywords, certifications and job titles show what someone has been near, not what they can do.
- 02
Strong candidates get sifted out.
Career changers, self-taught analysts and people from smaller teams rarely have the right keywords. A CV sift rejects them before anyone has seen what they can do.
- 03
Your seniors pay for every mistake.
Whoever gets through the sift lands in a senior engineer's calendar. When the sift is wrong, that hour is gone, and it is usually obvious in the first five minutes.
How we fix it
A short piece of the real job, for every applicant.
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Hands-on from the first step.
Candidates work in a live shell, a KQL editor, real Windows event logs or a mail client, against realistic data. A focused set of tasks on the core skills the role cannot do without.
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The same bar for everyone.
Direct applicants, referrals, internal movers and agency submissions all sit the same assessment and are scored the same way. No keyword filter, no reviewer fatigue.
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Ranked evidence, ready to act on.
Every candidate is scored on every task, with integrity signals next to each result. You decide who goes forward, with the work in front of you.
What you can actually test for
What a screening assessment can cover.
- Alert triage and prioritisation
- Phishing analysis with full headers and raw source
- Raw log analysis in a live Linux shell
- KQL hunting across sign-in and device telemetry
- Windows event log investigation
- Firewall rule review
- Secure code review
- Cloud misconfiguration hunts across AWS, Azure and GCP
- Risk and control mapping for GRC roles
Honest comparison
Screening on the work vs screening on the CV.
| CyberHire | CV sift + phone screen | |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Hands-on work in real environments | Keywords, job titles and certifications |
| AI-written CVs | Irrelevant. The candidate still has to do the work | Every CV looks strong |
| Who does the screening | Scored automatically, the same way for everyone | Recruiters and seniors, alongside the day job |
| Candidates without the usual keywords | Judged on what they can do | Sifted out before anyone looks |
| Integrity controls | Three integrity modes, flagged next to every score | None |
How applicant screening runs
- 01
Start from the role
Paste the job specification or pick a ready-made assessment for the role. Rather not? Our team will build it with you.
- 02
Keep it short and focused
Pick the two or three skills the role cannot do without and save the depth for later. Review it and change anything before it goes out.
- 03
Invite your applicants
A link, a secure bulk upload, or straight from your ATS. Everyone goes through the same door.
- 04
Candidates do the work
In real environments, in your branding, with integrity monitoring switched on. Watch results arrive in your workspace.
- 05
Decide who goes forward
Every candidate ranked on the evidence, with a per-skill breakdown and integrity signals. Move the strongest on to your technical interview stage.
Applicant screening questions
How long should a screening assessment be?
Short. At this stage you only need to know who is worth your team's time, not to evaluate anyone fully. Focus on the two or three skills the role cannot do without and save the depth for the technical interview stage.
Will good candidates do an assessment this early?
Strong technical candidates tend to prefer it. It lets them show what they can do instead of hoping their CV gets read, and it gives people without the usual keywords a fair route in. The candidates who drop out are more often the ones whose CV was doing the work.
Does it work with our ATS?
Yes. Invite candidates straight from your ATS and get their results written back to the candidate record, or send a link or use a secure upload if that is simpler.
What stops candidates using AI?
Mostly the task design. An AI model will define Kerberoasting instantly but cannot tell you which account in this specific log set is doing it, because that answer only exists in the data in front of the candidate. Time away from the test, pasting from outside, fullscreen exits, second screens and location are captured alongside every score.
How is this different from the technical interview stage?
Screening is a short check of core skills for everyone who applies. The technical interview stage is a deeper hands-on assessment for the candidates who pass it. You can run both on CyberHire, one after the other.
How we think about screening
The method behind the assessments is written up in full. None of it is gated.
Stop guessing.