What an HR manager receives when a video agent runs the first interview

Imagine your inbox the morning after a vacancy goes live. Sixty applications, maybe more, and at first glance, every one of them is a person who deserves a proper first conversation. That is the reality of hiring in Flanders right now: the number of vacancies reported to VDAB (The Flemish Employment and Vocational Training Service) fell by 13 percent over the past year, while the number of people who registered as job seekers went up by 4 percent. Fewer openings and more candidates. That volume falls on the HR manager. 

Sixty applications means sixty CVs to read, which is where most of the cutting happens: a gap in the timeline, an unfamiliar employer, a cover letter that didn’t quite work. The ten or so who survive get an interview from whichever colleague had a free afternoon, with questions that drift from one call to the next and notes that are not structured the same way. By the time the shortlist is drawn up, strong candidates may already be gone due to judgement on paper, and the ones still in are being compared on impressions that are subjective and hard to compare. 

But what if every applicant got the same structured first interview, at a time that suited them, and the HR manager received one consistent, comparable report per candidate? That’s what HumanCast does: an AI-powered video agent to have the first conversation before the cut is made. And with a set of recent updates, the report that comes back does more of the thinking: it now includes a score, a recommendation, the points that need checking, such as a mismatch between the CV and what was said, and the questions worth asking in the next round. Let’s dig into how this works.

What the candidate sees

From the applicant’s side, the process is short and predictable. 

1. They click the link on the vacancy page and arrive in the HumanCast environment, branded for your company. 
2. They complete the intake form. The HR manager decides which questions are mandatory and which are optional, and whether a CV upload is required. 
3. They can add a LinkedIn URL. If they do, HumanCast generates a personality analysis to enrich the profile.  
4. They talk to the video agent. The agent introduces itself, then works through the conversation structure it was given: background, approach, motivation, whatever the role calls for. It listens, follows up on answers and adapts. Ten minutes is usually enough for a first round. 

The candidate does it when it suits them, and every candidate gets the same conversation.

What the HR manager receives 

When the interview session ends, the HR manager gets an email notification and can open the report in HumanCast or download it as a PDF. Every report is built the same way, which is what makes candidates comparable. It contains: 

• A score out of 100 and a recommendation. Proceed or not, with the reasoning written out. 
• Strengths and weaknesses. What the conversation and the form answers confirm, and what they leave open. 
• Points that need attention. This is one of the new additions. HumanCast checks the interview against the CV and the form answers and flags anything that doesn’t line up, such as a job title or a timeline that was described differently in the conversation. 
• Suggested questions for the next interview. Targeted at the gaps in this one, so the second round starts where the first one left off. 
• A summary, key points and next steps. The narrative version of the conversation, organised by theme. 
• The full transcript and the form answers. Everything the candidate said and submitted. 

Two pages from a HumanCast report for a fictional candidate.

What the HR manager controls 

Setting up an agent takes one screen. The HR manager chooses an avatar, then fills in: 

• Reference ID, so every conversation for this vacancy is grouped together 
• An attached file, such as the job description, which the agent uses as context 
• The agent’s name, description and introduction 
• Role and objective, where the conversation structure is defined in as much detail as needed. A built-in enhancement tool can help sharpen the instructions. 
• Session length and language 
• The intake form the candidate completes beforehand 
• The conversation overview template that determines how the report is structured 
• A mailing list of who receives the notification when a session ends 

Once the vacancy is filled, the Reference ID makes it possible to look back across all conversations for that role and compare how candidates performed as a group.