Scoping a six-week recruiting automation pilot
In short: A pilot answers one question: on our data, with our reviewers, does this workflow produce results we would accept? Everything in the scope follows from that — one role family, a parallel baseline, named reviewers, acceptance criteria agreed before anything runs, and a written report at the end that may say 'do not expand'.
Choose one workflow, not a platform
Pilots fail when they try to prove a platform. Pick the workflow with the most repetitive preparation, the clearest inputs and the clearest output. For most recruiting teams that is resume screening plus structured interview evaluation for one role family with steady volume — at least fifty applications in the pilot window, so the measurements mean something.
Define the inputs
- Resumes or an ATS export for the role family, including recent closed requisitions with known outcomes (useful for a retrospective check).
- The job descriptions actually used, not the aspirational ones.
- Interview notes or transcripts, and the rubric interviewers are supposed to use (or the one you adopt for the pilot).
- Two to four named reviewers — recruiters or hiring managers — with time budgeted each week.
Define the deliverable
Be concrete: a reviewed structured profile for every application; a rubric-scored evaluation for every interview, each confirmed by a named interviewer; a weekly measurement log; an audit trail; a final acceptance report. If a vendor cannot name the deliverable in one sentence, the pilot is a demo.
Run in parallel
For four weeks, your current process continues unchanged and the new workflow runs beside it on the same applications. This costs reviewer time, and it is the only way to get a baseline you trust: the same people, the same candidates, the same weeks.
Agree acceptance criteria in week one
Typical criteria, with the understanding that the numbers are yours to set:
- Reviewer agreement with agent evaluations on a held-out sample above an agreed threshold.
- Zero candidates advanced or rejected without a logged human action.
- Minutes per application reduced against the parallel baseline by an agreed margin.
- No candidate or employee data outside the agreed tenant, and retention per the data processing agreement.
- Candidate notice issued where the jurisdiction requires it, with records to prove it.
Measure every week
Four numbers, logged weekly and shared: agent agreement rate, corrections by type (what the agent got wrong and how often), minutes per application, and selection rates by stage. Trends across four weeks matter more than any single week; agreement should rise as the rubric and prompts are adjusted to your data.
End with a decision, in writing
The acceptance report states what the workflow did, where it failed and why, what it cost in reviewer time and fees, what it saved against the baseline, and a recommendation — expand to another role family, adjust and re-run, or stop. A pilot that ends in "stop" with a clear reason is a successful pilot: it cost six weeks instead of a year.
This is the structure of the FlourishAIHR recruiting pilot, and we are happy for you to use it with any vendor.
Run this on your own hiring data
A six-week recruiting pilot measures exactly these things — parser accuracy, reviewer agreement, time per application and compliance records — on your role family, with your reviewers, before you decide anything.