Getting your organisation’s candidate experience right is proving to be something we’ll hear about increasingly. This is as job applicants demand more from companies they interact with. A recent poll on LinkedIn by a recruitment specialist attracted almost 80,000 views and 1000’s of reactions. It revealed that 52% of the people polled (one assumes mostly recruiters) believe that a template email is good enough as a response to an application for a job.
When it comes to recruitment, responding to candidates has always been an area we know has been ripe for improvement. And it costs companies too, with a bad candidate experience said to have cost Virgin $5 million.
That’s not to say there aren’t historical reasons why recruiters have not been able to respond to the hundreds of applicants received for a job. Until now it’s not been something we can practically do with limited time and resources. This is where AI plays a fundamental role in moving our industry forward as it allows mass personalisation at scale.
This has never been more important than right now as we have had mass job losses across industries due to the impact of COVID-19. If you look at the Hospitality and Tourism industry across the globe, it’s hard to wrap your head around the sheer number of job losses with very little hope of returning to normal soon. If with every job application we were able to give each unsuccessful candidate feedback on where they could improve, imagine the impact we could have in activating the world economy.
This is entirely possible and every day we hear about the impact our technology is having on people’s lives when they get personalised feedback designed to steer them in the right direction.
81% of people who get personalised feedback from our platform said it was useful in identifying their strengths, 71% said it would help them better prepare for interviews and 59% said it would help them find a job that suited them.
And lastly, it’s not something we can quantify, but we do believe it’s important. What we’re giving so many people right now is hope. We think that’s something worth companies cultivating alongside us too.
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Have you seen the 2020 Candidate Experience Playbook? Download it here.
Ethical AI doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through transparency, rigorous science, and strong governance.
We are proud to share that Sapia.ai has achieved ISO/IEC 42001:2023, the world’s first international standard for AI management systems. This certification is independent proof that every part of our AI, from design to deployment, follows a framework of integrity, accountability, and fairness.
While many providers rush AI features to market, we have taken a different path by putting governance first. Since 2018, our platform has been built on science and ethics.
In 2021, we introduced the FAIR™ Framework (Fair AI for Recruitment), setting a global benchmark for what responsible AI in hiring should look like: explainable, inclusive, and continuously tested for bias. Achieving ISO 42001 builds on that foundation, formalising years of responsible practice.
“Responsible AI isn’t new for us, it’s our foundation,” says Barb Hyman, CEO & Founder. “Our customers trust us with decisions that affect people’s lives. ISO 42001 provides further proof that our systems are built for accountability and transparency.”
Sapia.ai is the first AI interview company to achieve ISO 42001 certification, reflecting our approach to responsible data use, model training, and validation.
Our models are trained on behavioural data from more than eight million structured interviews and three billion words of human responses, measuring genuine skills and competencies rather than using inferred or scraped data. This foundation ensures that our AI is grounded in evidence and fairness.
We also maintain a full suite of enterprise-grade security and compliance credentials, including:
ISO 27001 certification for information security management
SOC 2 Type II attestation
GDPR and UK DPA 2018 compliance
AWS Bedrock data hosting, which ensures zero data sharing or retention with LLM providers
Privacy by Design and regular third-party security audits
Each certification supports the same goal: giving customers confidence that innovation is backed by integrity.
With the EU AI Act about to reshape how enterprises govern AI, independent validation has never mattered more. ISO 42001 demonstrates that Sapia.ai already meets these standards: ethical, compliant, and explainable by design.
Our mission is to prove that AI can be both powerful and principled, helping organisations hire faster and fairer while preserving the dignity of every candidate.
Responsible AI is both good governance, good business, and it’s how brilliant hiring gets done.
1. What is ISO/IEC 42001:2023?
ISO/IEC 42001:2023 is the world’s first international standard for AI management systems. It sets out how organisations should design, implement, and monitor AI responsibly. The framework ensures transparency, fairness, and accountability across all AI operations.
2. Why is ISO 42001 important for HR and recruitment?
For HR and TA leaders, ISO 42001 certification provides assurance that AI systems used in hiring meet global standards for governance and compliance. It reduces risk under new regulations such as the EU AI Act and demonstrates a commitment to fairness, transparency, and data protection.
3. How does Sapia.ai ensure ethical use of AI in hiring?
Sapia.ai’s platform is built on the FAIR™ Framework (Fair AI for Recruitment), a science-backed model for designing, testing, and monitoring AI that is fair, explainable, and inclusive. All models are validated, bias-tested, and audited regularly to ensure consistent fairness across candidate groups.
4. What other certifications does Sapia.ai hold?
In addition to ISO 42001, Sapia.ai holds ISO 27001 certification for information security management, SOC 2 Type II attestation, and full GDPR and UK DPA 2018 compliance. The platform is hosted on AWS Bedrock, ensuring that data is never shared or retained by LLM providers.
5. How does Sapia.ai differ from other AI hiring tools?
Sapia.ai is an AI-native platform built on behavioural science and more than eight million structured interviews. Unlike generic AI tools, Sapia.ai measures real skills and competencies using structured, conversational assessments that are inclusive and explainable by design.
6. What does this mean for candidates?
Every candidate who completes a Sapia.ai Chat Interview receives feedback and insights, ensuring a transparent and respectful experience. This approach restores fairness and dignity to hiring, aligning with our broader mission to humanise recruitment.
If you’ve experimented with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you’ve probably experienced this: ask the same question twice and you’ll often get two different answers.
This is by design. Gen AI models are probabilistic. They generate answers by predicting the “next most likely word,” with an intentional dose of randomness (temperature, sampling) to make them feel more “human.”
When you use that design principle in recruitment, you’re playing with fire.
Imagine using generic AI for:
If the same input produces different outputs depending on the day, you have a trust problem:
Hiring decisions are high-stakes. Candidates deserve certainty and fairness. Employers need defensibility. Probabilistic creativity is great for drafting emails or brainstorming headlines. It does not belong where the output affects someone’s career.
What we’re now seeing in the market is a proliferation of “thin wrappers”. Hiring tools that are built quickly on top of open-source AI models. The logic is simple: take a model like Qwen, Mistral, or LLaMA, put a UI around it, and call it a recruitment solution.
The problem? These wrappers inherit all the instability of their foundation models. And worse, they add risk x10:
This is the hidden risk of generic AI in the hiring process. On the surface, it looks sleek, fast, and innovative. Underneath, it’s a house built on sand.
At Sapia.ai, we’ve taken a very different path. We’ve built a for-purpose AI system designed specifically for hiring, utilising methods published in peer-reviewed journals.
Over the last eight years, we’ve conducted more than 8 million structured, conversational interviews across 50 countries and 20 languages. Every response is scored against validated competencies, ensuring that our assessments are:
This isn’t a thin wrapper. It’s an AI system designed from the ground up for hiring, with fairness, science, and trust at its core.
The convergence of Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, and Reskilling means the pressure on HR leaders has never been higher. Everyone wants internal mobility, but the default playbook (job boards, CV self-mapping) rarely delivers.
If the tools you adopt today are built on randomness and inference, you’re not just risking a poor candidate experience. You’re risking lawsuits, compliance failures, and reputational damage.
If instead, you invest in measurement, structure, and science, you create a workforce data asset that compounds in value, unlocking hiring intelligence, mobility pathways, and skills development at scale.
Generative AI has transformed how we create at pace and at scale. But let’s not confuse creativity with science. Recruitment isn’t about “good enough, most of the time.” It’s about fairness, rigour, and trust.
For those who want to understand more, check out our ebook Understanding Responsible AI in Recruitment.
This is the state of hiring in 2025. Too often, candidates are ghosted, ignored, and reduced to a CV. Recruiters are forced to make decisions in data poverty, with scraps of information like grades, job titles, or where someone has worked before. Privilege gets rewarded; potential gets overlooked.
For the first time, we now have evidence that AI, when designed responsibly, brings humanity back to hiring.
Sapia.ai has released the Humanising Hiring report. The largest analysis ever conducted into candidate experience with AI interviews. The study draws on more than 1 million interviews and 11 million words of candidate feedback across 30+ countries.
Unlike surveys or anecdotal reviews, this research is grounded in what candidates themselves chose to share at one of the most stressful moments of their lives: applying for a job.
30% more women apply when told AI will assess them, resulting in a 36% closure of the gender gap
98% hiring equity for people with disabilities through a blind, untimed, mobile-first interview design
Here’s what candidates themselves revealed:
“None of the other companies I’ve applied to do this sort of thing. It’s so unique and wonderful to give this sort of insight to people… whether we get the job or not, we can take away something very valuable out of the process.”
“That felt so personal, as if the person genuinely took the time to read my answers and send me a summary of myself… that was pretty amazing.”
“This study stands out as one of the most comprehensive examinations of candidate experience to date. Analysing over a million interviews and 11 million words of candidate feedback, the findings make clear that responsibly designed AI has the potential to fundamentally improve hiring — not just by increasing speed, but by advancing fairness, enhancing the human aspect, and leading to stronger job matches.”
— Kathi Enderes, SVP Research & Global Industry Analyst, The Josh Bersin Company
The research challenges the idea that AI dehumanises the hiring process. In fact, it proves the opposite: when thoughtfully designed, AI can restore dignity to candidates by giving them a real interview from the very first interaction, giving them space to share their story, and giving them timely feedback.
With Sapia.ai’s Chat Interview:
Every candidate gets the same structured, role-relevant questions.
Interviews are untimed, so candidates can answer at their own pace.
Bias is monitored continuously under our FAIR™ framework.
Every candidate receives personalised feedback.
This isn’t automation for the sake of speed. It’s intelligence that puts people first, and it works. Leading global brands, including Qantas, Joe & the Juice, BT Group, Holland & Barrett, and Woolworths, have all transformed their hiring outcomes while enhancing the candidate experience.
Applicant volumes are exploding. Boards are demanding ROI on people decisions. And candidates expect fairness and agency. Sticking with the status quo — ghosting, inconsistent interviews, CV screening — comes at a real cost in brand equity, lost talent, and wasted time.
It’s time to move from data poverty to data richness, from broken processes to brilliant hiring.
This is the first time candidate feedback on AI interviews has been analysed at such scale. The insights are clear: hiring can be brilliant.
👉 Download the Humanising Hiring report now to see the full findings.