What happened when applications closed?
This is an illustrative scenario, not a customer account. The people and the company are invented; every event in it maps to a real mechanism on ftes.ai, named as it happens.
The company is a mid-sized services firm hiring for an operations role with steady inbound applications. The role's applications closed at midnight. The Recruiter FTE, connected to the applicant tracking system through a dedicated account scoped to the pipeline with permission to read and draft but not to change a status, screened every application against the scorecard the hiring manager wrote, version two, because a criterion was rewritten after last month's send-backs. Each criterion was scored with the passage from the application behind it; hard requirements were marked evidenced, not evidenced, or awaiting verification. One application described experience the scorecard has no criterion for and was flagged rather than ranked.
The proposed shortlist, with the flag beside it, waited in the Approvals tab. Nobody had been contacted.
What does the hiring manager see?
The morning brief in the first person: the batch screened, the shortlist proposed, the flag, one credential marked awaiting verification, and the spend line. The manager opens the shortlist. For each candidate the scores sit beside the passages that support them, so the manager reads the evidence rather than trusting a rank. One score looks wrong: the criterion asks for a kind of experience the candidate clearly has, described in different words. The manager challenges that criterion with a reason, which is recorded as a send-back and, because it is the second time this criterion has been challenged, will become a scorecard revision, version three, at the review.
The flagged candidate is read by the manager, who decides to interview; the FTE never ranked them, because a flag is a question for a person.
How are interviews scheduled?
Interview scheduling is the one class the Promotion Standard allowed last month, because it changes no outcome. Once the manager approves the shortlist, the FTE offers slots from the interviewers' connected calendars within the rules the team set, confirms bookings with the approved template, and handles one reschedule the same afternoon. The calendar fills without anyone in the team sending an email. The candidate whose credential is awaiting verification is booked too; the FTE has noted in the summary that verification with the issuing body is a human step before any offer, and the coordinator picks it up.
The FTE did not verify the credential. It flagged that someone must.
- Shortlist: approved after one criterion challenge
- Scheduling: within rules, promoted class, logged
- Verification: flagged for a person
What about the candidates not shortlisted?
The FTE drafted an update for each, from the approved template, courteous and specific about timing, and queued them for the manager. The manager reads them, approves the batch, and sends them; rejections and offers are on the platform's never-automated list at every level, so the FTE's draft is where its involvement ends. Every candidate received an update within the window the team set, which is one of the companion measures the Performance tab tracks beside time to shortlist.
One applicant had replied to the acknowledgement with a question about the role. That reply went to the coordinator with the thread; the FTE does not continue conversations with candidates.
What does the head of talent do with the day?
Reads the criteria send-back reasons across roles in the workforce view and notices that the challenged criterion has been challenged in two roles; that is a scorecard wording problem, not a screening problem, and the fix is a revision. Adds a note to the quarterly fairness audit: sample this role's shortlists, compare outcomes across groups, open the scorecards, and see whether the rewritten criterion changes anything. Confirms with the data protection lead that the ATS connection's scope is still read and draft, and records the confirmation with the date for the quarterly connection review.
None of this is about a candidate. All of it is about the criteria and the access.
What does the record show at the end of the day?
The audit trail: the batch screened against scorecard version two, every score with its evidence, the flag, the criterion challenge with its reason, the manager's approval of the shortlist, the interviews booked within rules by the promoted class, the credential flagged for verification, and the updates approved and sent by the manager. The Performance tab: time to shortlist for the role against the last two rounds, hard-requirement match rate for the interviews booked, communication within window, and the criteria approval rate with reasons. At the monthly review the manager will revise the scorecard and read all four.
The library's piece on how a Recruiter FTE works describes each mechanism outside the story; the bias and fairness piece describes the audit the head of talent noted.