AI alone decides who to hire — true or false?

The distinction is fundamental legally and ethically. Decision support presents structured information; automated decision produces an effect (rejection, final ranking) without meaningful human review.

AI pre-screening that generates a summary and proposed score is the first case — provided process and contractual configuration prohibit the second.

Article 22 applies when three elements combine: (1) a decision, (2) based solely on automated processing, (3) producing legal effects or similarly significant impact.

Exceptions (contractual necessity, Union or member-state law, explicit consent) are narrow in external hiring. The safe path: never satisfy the solely automated condition.

In practice: AI score is a recommendation; the recruiter clicks advance or do not advance after reading — action logged in the ATS.

Article 14 requires high-risk systems to enable effective human oversight — not symbolic. Supervisors must understand system capabilities and limits, detect anomalies, intervene, disregard or override output.

Require a readable summary interface (not score alone), access to source answer excerpts, and documented override capability from your vendor.

• Understanding: recruiter knows which criteria were assessed.
• Detection: alerts on incomplete or inconsistent answers.
• Intervention: manual change of candidate status.
• Stop: ability to disable AI on sensitive roles.

Step 1 — Candidate completes Lucy interview (15–20 min). Step 2 — Automatic transcription and criteria scoring. Step 3 — Summary available in recruiter dashboard. Step 4 — Recruiter reads summary within 48h; listens to audio excerpt if needed. Step 5 — Recruiter decides: shortlist, hold, or reject — with optional comment. Step 6 — Decision synced to ATS; candidate email sent (human or approved template).

At no step does the system send final rejection without explicit human action.

Contractually and technically ban auto-rejection below threshold. Even a low-scoring candidate may have contextual elements (career change, atypical path) visible only in the transcript.

Internal policy should state: No candidate is eliminated without human review of an interview summary or CV. That sentence reassures candidates and regulators.

Every override must be possible and logged: who, when, prior score, new status, free-text reason. These logs are your defense in audits or complaints.

HiLucy retains summary, applied criteria, and associated human decision — reconstructing a candidate's full journey in minutes.