Project

Application Screening Automation

Co-founder & Product Lead, Agenture

APPLICATION SCREENING AUTOMATION

Built screening automation that read every application within minutes of arrival, scored it against defined criteria, and ranked candidates so the team only reviewed the strongest.

  • Scoring ran on an explicit rubric with a per-criterion breakdown — hard rules for must-haves, LLM judgement for fit — and borderline cases routed to a human rather than auto-decided.
  • Every applicant got a fast, personalised response, removing the silence that damages a business's reputation when applications go unacknowledged.

Overview

When applications arrive in volume — candidates, tenants, programme applicants — the bottleneck is reading and ranking them fast enough to act. Through Agenture I built screening automation that read, scored, and ranked every application within minutes, so the team's time went to the shortlist and no applicant was left waiting.

The problem

High-volume application processing is slow and inconsistent by hand. Applications pile up, the best ones get buried under the average, and response times stretch out — which costs the business the strongest applicants, who don't wait around. Manual scoring also drifts: criteria get applied differently depending on who's reading and how tired they are.

What I built

  • Instant intake + scoring — every application was read within minutes of arrival and scored against a defined rubric.
  • Explainable, rule-plus-LLM scoring — deterministic rules handled must-haves (eligibility, location, hard requirements); an LLM assessed fuzzy fit; the output was a ranked score with a per-criterion breakdown.
  • Tiering + human review of the borderline — strong and weak extremes were auto-routed; anything near a threshold went to a person, so judgement was applied where it mattered.
  • Personalised responses — every applicant received a prompt, personalised reply rather than silence.

Impact

  • Cut application review from a backlog to a ranked shortlist available within minutes.
  • Made screening consistent and explainable rather than dependent on who was reviewing.
  • Protected the client's reputation by ensuring every applicant got a fast, human-quality response.