HR Agencies: Evidence-Based Shortlists in Hours

How HR Agencies Can Deliver Evidence-Based Shortlists in Hours, Not Days

Most HR agencies have heard some version of the same line from a skeptical client:

You just search LinkedIn and forward resumes, right?

That one sentence hits at the heart of the problem. If all you deliver is a stack of PDFs and a “here you go,” it is hard to justify premium fees, retainers, or exclusivity. The value of an agency is not in forwarding resumes. It is in understanding a role, reading between the lines of a CV, and turning noise into clear decisions.

The question is how to do that consistently, under time pressure, when you have dozens of open roles and a team with mixed levels of experience.

That is where Screentico comes in. It is not a replacement for recruiters. It is a tool that lets an agency move from "CV forwarder" to trusted advisor by delivering evidence-based shortlists that are fast, defensible, and easy for clients to act on.

The Agency Trust Gap

From the outside, clients often see only the visible tip of the work:

• A job spec they wrote and refined with you
• A shortlist of candidates with attached resumes

Everything in the middle is invisible. Reviewing 120 resumes. Decoding vague titles. Checking whether "project management" actually means owning delivery or just updating a Jira board. Deciding who gets a call and who does not.

If your final output looks the same as what they would get from a keyword search, they will assume that is all you did.

To change that perception, you have to change the deliverable.

An evidence-based shortlist makes your work explicit. It does not just say “here are five people to interview.” It shows:

• Why each candidate is a strong or weak fit
• Where the risks and gaps are
• How they compare across consistent criteria

Once clients see that, the conversation shifts from “what am I paying for” to “can you help me fill two more roles like this.”

What Evidence-Based Shortlists Look Like

Think about the best debrief sessions you have had after a long hiring process. The ones where everyone was aligned and the decision felt obvious. Usually there was some kind of structure:

• Clear must-haves vs nice-to-haves
• A shared sense of which risks were acceptable
• Specific examples from CVs or interviews that supported the decision

Now imagine packaging that level of clarity directly into the shortlist you send to the client on day three, not week four.

A one page Screentico-powered shortlist might look like this:

The client still sees the resumes. But they also see a structured, comparable view that clearly reflects thoughtful work. That is what builds trust.

Where Screentico Fits In

Doing this level of analysis by hand is possible, but expensive. It requires a very strong recruiter or consultant for every search and a lot of time per role.

Screentico is designed to handle the heavy lifting across large volumes of resumes, so your team can stay focused on the human parts.

At a high level, Screentico:

1. Parses each resume and the job description into structured data.
2. Compares skills, experience, seniority and domain fit against the role.
3. Highlights strengths, gaps and potential risks in plain language.
4. Produces a concise summary and a fit score per candidate.

You still decide which candidates move forward, how to interpret edge cases, and how to present recommendations to your client. Screentico just gives you consistent, explainable evidence in minutes instead of hours.

The actual Screentico image (click image to enlarge)

A Before and After Scenario

Imagine an agency with a busy tech recruiter handling six open roles:

• Senior backend engineer
• Two mid-level full stack roles
• A DevOps engineer
• A product manager
• A data analyst

For each role, they might receive between 80 and 200 resumes in the first 48 hours. The classic workflow looks like this:

1. Download resumes from the ATS or email.
2. Skim as fast as possible, looking for keywords.
3. Mark candidates as “yes / maybe / no” in a spreadsheet or ATS.
4. Try to remember why someone looked good two days later when the client asks.

Even with experience, this quickly turns into fatigue. By the time the recruiter reaches the 90th resume of the day, their ability to spot a strong-but-unusual profile drops sharply. Consistency is almost impossible.

Now layer Screentico into the same workflow.

For a new role, the recruiter:

1. Uploads the job description into Screentico, it automatically populates the required fields.
2. Imports or syncs the batch of resumes.
3. Lets Screentico analyze and score each candidate against the role.
4. Focuses their time on the top 15 to 20 candidates, reading AI summaries and original CVs together.

Instead of "open 100 PDFs and hope for the best", the recruiter sees something like:

• 12 candidates with fit score above 8.0
• 19 candidates in the 6.5 to 8.0 range (maybes)
• The rest clearly below threshold, with reasons like “strong QA profile, light on backend,” or “senior but in the wrong tech stack.”

The recruiter reviews the Screentico summaries, applies their own judgment, and builds a shortlist:

• 5 to 7 candidates to present to the client
• Each with a short explanation of strengths and risks
• All with traces back to the underlying resumes

The output looks like high-touch consulting. The effort feels like a fraction of the old manual process.

Example: A One Page Shortlist Your Client Will Love

Here is a stripped down example of what an agency could send for a VP of Sales role:

The email or document can end with a sentence like:

The client sees:

• Volume (you did not just “poke around on LinkedIn”)
• Structure (fit scores and consistent language across candidates)
• Judgment (you still chose who to recommend)

That is what trusted advisor work looks like.

Why This Matters For HR Agencies

Agency businesses live on repeat business and referrals. The more your clients see you as a strategic partner, the less they argue over fees and the more they call you first when something urgent appears.

Evidence-based shortlists help you:

• Respond faster without sacrificing quality.
• Show your process instead of defending your price.
• Train junior recruiters to think like senior ones, because Screentico exposes explicit reasons, not just gut feeling.

Screentico does not change what great recruiters do. It makes it visible, repeatable, and scalable. You still own the relationship, the context, and the final call. Screentico just gives you the evidence and speed to look like the expert you already are.

You can try Screentico for free.