What an AI recruiting assistant should never do on its own

An AI assistant can take a lot off a recruiter's plate: checking profiles against a role's criteria, drafting messages, drafting replies, noticing when a call is booked. The useful question is not whether to hand that work over. It is where a person has to stay involved, & why.

Here is the list we build Skosh around. Each item is something an assistant should never do on its own, with the reason & what Skosh does instead.

1. Send a first message nobody approved

Your first message to a candidate is your reputation, & your company's. Once it is sent it cannot be taken back. A person should approve either each message or the exact template a role sends from, before anything goes out.

In Skosh, outreach comes to you as a batch in the web console, & you approve or cancel each batch, follow-up included. A role's outreach goes hands-free only after you approve its outreach template, & then it sends only from that template.

2. Answer a question about pay without a pay band

Pay is a negotiation & a commitment. A number stated in a reply becomes an anchor, & a wrong number can cost you the hire or the budget. It needs someone who knows the band, the level & the context.

In Skosh, every pay question comes to a person, in every mode.

3. Answer a visa question outside your policy

Whether a role can sponsor a visa depends on the role, the country & a policy that can change. A confident wrong answer either raises false hope or turns away someone you could have hired.

In Skosh, every visa question comes to a person, in every mode.

4. Reply in a language nobody has checked

Tone carries a lot in a reply, & tone is the first thing lost in a language you cannot read. A polite reply can land as cold, & a joke can land as an insult. Someone who reads the language should see it before it goes.

In Skosh, a reply written in another language always comes to a person.

5. Contact someone again who already heard from you

A candidate who hears from the same team twice about the same kind of role concludes, fairly, that the team does not keep track. Whether to write again depends on how the last conversation ended, & that is a judgment call.

In Skosh, every send is checked against who has already heard from you, & Skosh does not contact the same person again unless a person on your team clears it. More on the outreach page.

6. Decide the candidates it cannot call

A good assistant knows when it is unsure. The borderline profile, the unusual career path, the title that means something different at every company: that is where your judgment matters most, & where a forced yes or no does the most damage.

In Skosh, Skosh checks each person against the must-haves you set: met, not met or unknown. Anyone who clearly misses a must-have goes to Does not meet, & anyone Skosh cannot call goes to Needs review, for a person to decide. Nice to haves & bonuses never fail anyone. Skosh never rejects anyone.

7. Pick a time for the candidate

Booking a call on someone's behalf takes away the only choice they have made so far. The candidate should pick the time, from a link you chose to share.

In Skosh, you approve the booking invite & the candidate picks a time from your link. Skosh then sees the booking on your calendar & marks the call booked.

8. Post in a community as you

Communities have their own rules & their own sense of who belongs. A post should come from a real member, in their own words, when they choose to post it.

In Skosh, Skosh drafts the community post & you post it yourself, from your own account.

What an assistant should do on its own

The flip side matters as much. The point of an assistant is the work nobody should do by hand: checking every profile against every criterion, drafting a message for each candidate, keeping track of who has heard from you, noticing a booking & sending the reminders.

Autonomy should be earned, stage by stage. In Skosh each stage runs hands-on or hands-free. Hands-free is off until a person turns it on for a role. Then Skosh sends outreach only from that role's approved template, & sends only the kinds of reply a person cleared. Pay, visa, a no thanks & any reply in another language always wait for a person.

Questions to ask any AI recruiting tool

Before you let a tool write to candidates, ask it these:

• Can I see exactly what will be sent, to whom, before it goes?
• Which replies always come to a person, in every mode?
• What stops a candidate from hearing from my team twice?
• What happens when the tool is not sure about a candidate?
• Who picks the time for a call: the candidate or the tool?
• Can I stop everything at once?

A tool with clear answers to all 6 is a tool you can hand real work to. A tool that answers with "it's smart enough to know" is asking you to find out the hard way.