Somewhere in your applicant pool right now is a great candidate no one on your team will ever see. It isn’t for lack of effort. Today, a single role can draw thousands of applications. According to Gem’s 2025 Recruiting Benchmarks Report, recruiters are receiving 2.7x the number of applications they did a few years ago. And recruiters only have time to closely review a fraction of them. I talk to talent leaders every week, and I hear the same thing: there’s no way to keep up.
On top of the volume challenge, résumés increasingly look alike, which makes the strongest people harder to spot. And if that isn’t enough, mixed in with the real candidates is a growing share of spam and fraud that takes time to rule out. Put all these factors together and it becomes clear that recruiters are dealing with a very noisy hiring top of funnel.
The AI features now built into most applicant tracking systems don’t solve these challenges. Sure, they can summarize a résumé, use some keyword matching, or give it a quick score to filter out some of the pile, but the results aren’t reliable. The real work still falls to recruiters: trying to find the best fits in a long list of resumes, where the order in which people applied plays an unintentional but all too real role in determining who moves forward to the next stage. The shortlist ends up being whoever was good enough among the first applicants a recruiter reached.
Introducing our application review agent, BrightHire Inbound
Today we’re introducing our new application review agent, BrightHire Inbound. Inbound evaluates every applicant against the nuanced criteria and context that matters to your team,and shows the evidence behind each recommendation. Inbound is built on Covey’s application review, which helped teams cut review time by 80%. BrightHire Screen, our AI interviewer, was our first step into the hiring top of funnel. Inbound is our next.
Together, BrightHire Screen and Inbound form the building blocks for a truly AI-native top of funnel:
- Review every applicant with BrightHire Inbound
- Identify the candidates that appear to be the strongest fits
- Interview them with BrightHire Screen to get a better understanding of the qualifications and experiences they list on their resume
- Filter out likely spam and fraud at every step, so your team spends its time with the best-fit candidates
These two products make sure the right candidates in your pool are seen – and moved forward quickly. Here’s how they work together:
Never miss your best applicants
Inbound comes from the team behind Covey, whose application review tool was trusted by hundreds of companies including DoorDash and Deel. Its best-in-breed application review is built to give every applicant a real look. It reads the job requisition from your ATS and drafts a rubric, which you can edit and approve. You can also describe, in plain language, the things you want it to look for, including nuanced attributes like a pattern of short tenures, so the application review reflects the requirements that matter to your team. This is not your average keyword filter or bolted-on AI.
Every application is evaluated against the same criteria, and the strongest fits rise to the top. This includes people whose experience suits the role even when their résumé doesn’t use the expected words. Likely fraud and spam is filtered out and each recommendation shows the evidence behind it, criterion by criterion, and your team decides who advances.
Surface candidate fraud signals early
Fraudulent applications are increasing, and they’re often hard to spot. Teams spend real time confirming that the people they’re about to speak with are legitimate, and every hour spent on that is an hour not spent with genuine candidates.
BrightHire Inbound flags likely spam and fraud as part of application review. Signals like phone and email reputation appear alongside each applicant’s fit evaluation so recruiters see everything in one place and can decide what deserves a closer look before any interview time is spent.
And fraud detection doesn’t stop at the application. It continues through AI interviews in BrightHire Screen and into your live interviews on Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet.
Cut review time and move faster
Identifying the right applicants is only half the work. Each of them still has to be moved to the next stage, and when a recruiter qualifies every candidate by hand, strong candidates wait.
With BrightHire Inbound, once you’ve reviewed the best applicants and decide who to proceed with, you can advance them to the next stage in your process with a few clicks. We’re building toward letting you set the criteria for when candidates advance, so your team’s judgment drives every step while candidates keep progressing. Two-way syncing keeps your ATS up to date at every step.
The context and evidence moves with the candidate too. Recruiters and hiring managers can see which requirements someone met, which are still unknown, and the reasoning behind each one, so the next conversation can focus on the gaps and probe deeper on areas that need more information.
Go beyond the resume with AI interviews
Once a recruiter has identified the applicants that move forward, then it goes to an AI interview with BrightHire Screen. Screen interviews candidates efficiently, at any time, and gives them the opportunity to tell their story so they can expand on their experiences and you can learn what a resume can’t tell you.
Every candidate gets the same questions and is assessed against the rubric your team sets for the role, so you get consistent results you can compare. And candidates like it, rating the experience 4.6 out of 5.
One connected system, from first application to final decision
With Inbound and Screen, BrightHire now combines best-in-class application review, AI interviews, and fraud detection into one hiring system, where each stage gives the recruiter a fuller picture. Together, they take your team from overwhelming candidate volume to qualified recruiter conversations, faster and with far less manual work.
Your team can evaluate every application, verify the evidence, interview when you need more signal, and move the right people forward. That leaves recruiters more time for the work that needs them: building relationships, making the hard calls, and closing great candidates.
We built BrightHire to help teams make better hiring decisions. Now that starts the moment someone applies, and carries through every interview. That’s the BrightHire hiring system, from first application to final decision.
Get a demo to see Inbound and Screen in action, and learn how they form the foundation of an AI-native top of funnel.
