AI for hiring through email
Candidates judge you by response time, and CVs scattered across forwarded threads make everyone slow. Your assistant keeps the pipeline moving — summaries, stages, drafts — while people make the actual calls.
What you'll end up with
- Every application a card with a three-line summary of the candidate, on a stage list.
- No candidate waiting silently: quiet cards surface with a draft update ready.
- Interview scheduling drafts prepared against your availability sentence.
Before you start
- Sortd set up in Gmail — a Hiring board with stage lists (Applied, Screen, Interview, Offer, Hired).
- Your assistant connected — two minutes, one browser approval: Connect your AI. Everything below works in Claude, ChatGPT, or any connected assistant.
- The right permissions — when you connect you tick what the assistant may do — send permissions start unticked. For this guide: reading email, reading and updating the board, and preparing drafts (drafts never send by themselves).
Set it up by talking to your assistant
Each step is something you type (or say) to your assistant — copy them as they are, or change the names to match your own boards and lists. You don't need to know what happens behind the scenes, but we explain it anyway.
1. Summarise the applications
The first read, done consistently for every candidate.
Check for new applications. Make each a card on Hiring / Applied, and add a note with a three-line summary: background, the strongest relevant experience, and anything unusual worth a look.What happens: Every card starts with the same, comparable summary — screening starts from level ground.
2. Move with the process
The stage list should always answer "where is everyone?"
Where a thread shows we've invited someone to a screen or interview, move their card to the matching list. Flag anyone in Applied for over a week with no reply from us.What happens: Stages follow the email evidence, and the "we forgot to reply" list is one prompt away instead of a surprise.
3. Draft the scheduling
The tedious middle bit of hiring, prepared for you.
For candidates moving to Interview, draft invitations offering Tuesday and Thursday afternoons next week, 45 minutes, with a video link placeholder. Leave the drafts for me.What happens: Personalised drafts appear on each candidate's thread — check the slots, paste the link, send.
4. Keep candidates warm
Silence is how you lose the good ones.
For anyone in Screen or Interview we haven't written to in 5 days, draft a short friendly status update. Nothing sends without me.What happens: Waiting candidates get a human-approved touchpoint instead of silence.
Put it on autopilot
Once a run works when you ask for it, schedule it — a daily check keeps the pipeline and the candidates warm.
Every weekday at 9, summarise new applications onto Hiring / Applied, move cards whose stage changed, flag anyone waiting on us over 5 days, and draft the updates.Claude (Cowork scheduled tasks) and ChatGPT (scheduled tasks) can both do this — cadences, tips and more recipes are on AI Schedule.
You stay in control
- Drafts by default. Unless you granted a send permission, the assistant can only prepare replies — they wait in Gmail for a human to send.
- Everything is visible. Every card the assistant creates or moves shows up on the board instantly, exactly as if a teammate did it — same statuses, same history, same audit trail.
- Easy to undo, easy to unplug. Moves and statuses can be changed back on the board, and you can disconnect the assistant at any time from the same place you connected it.
More: AI for client service · every action the assistant can take, with example prompts: AI Reference · all use cases: AI guides