For recruiters and hiring managers
Get the link. Send the link. Get a ranked shortlist.
WorkProbe turns your job description into a 45-minute realistic work simulation. Candidates do the actual work — with documents, AI tools and simulated colleagues. You get them ranked on the skills a CV can’t show.
Curious what candidates see? Try the candidate experience →
Top 100 Innovations · ARCTIC15 2026 — Method grounded in peer-reviewed research (MIT, Harvard, Nature Human Behaviour)
Between your basic filters and your interviews.
WorkProbe is not another top-of-funnel filter. Screen out the clearly unqualified the way you do today, then send the WorkProbe link to everyone who clears the bar. Recruiters told us the real job isn’t picking number one — it’s getting from a pile of plausible CVs to the few candidates worth an interview. That is what the shortlist is for.
How it works
- 1
Send us the job description
We generate a realistic work scenario from it. Ready in one day.
- 2
Candidates take the simulation
45 minutes of real work: a task, noisy documents, an AI assistant, simulated colleagues, and a boss with an agenda. Each candidate registers with the email they used to apply — so your shortlist matches your pipeline with zero work on your side.
- 3
You get the ranked shortlist
Ranked on four skill areas when the role closes. Full per-candidate report — including an interview prep guide — on request.
Your total effort per role: paste one link into the email your ATS already sends, and read the shortlist. Two touches. Nothing scales with applicant volume.
The shortlist
One screen. Everyone ranked on what actually matters.
Role: Senior Operations Analyst — scenario generated from the employer’s job description. This is not CV analysis — every row is built from observations of ~30 minutes of real work in a simulation.
Example shortlist — illustrative data. Fictional candidates; WorkProbe holds no applicant data until an employer opens a role.
| Rank | Candidate | Role Skills | AI Collaboration | Critical Verification | Judgment under Uncertainty | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A. Fedorov | Strong | Strong | Strong | Acceptable | Found the real cause of the problem in the data, spotted both wrong AI answers, and corrected the boss’s mistaken brief with evidence |
| 2(tie) | M. Silva | Strong | Strong | Acceptable | Acceptable | Used AI well; at first accepted the boss’s wrong assumption, but caught it after checking the documents |
| 2(tie) | K. Tanaka | Acceptable | Strong | Acceptable | Strong | Reached the correct answer; relied heavily on colleagues and kept the boss informed throughout |
| 4 | D. Novak | Acceptable | Weak | Acceptable | Acceptable | Worked alone and slowly; missed two relevant documents, final memo was thin |
| 5 | S. Ivanova | Weak | Poor | WeakRed flag: delivered an unverified wrong AI answer to the boss. | Poor | Followed the boss’s wrong steer to the end; passed an unchecked AI answer to the boss as fact |
Role Skills
StrongAI Collaboration
StrongCritical Verification
StrongJudgment under Uncertainty
AcceptableFound the real cause of the problem in the data, spotted both wrong AI answers, and corrected the boss’s mistaken brief with evidence
Role Skills
StrongAI Collaboration
StrongCritical Verification
AcceptableJudgment under Uncertainty
AcceptableUsed AI well; at first accepted the boss’s wrong assumption, but caught it after checking the documents
Role Skills
AcceptableAI Collaboration
StrongCritical Verification
AcceptableJudgment under Uncertainty
StrongReached the correct answer; relied heavily on colleagues and kept the boss informed throughout
Role Skills
AcceptableAI Collaboration
WeakCritical Verification
AcceptableJudgment under Uncertainty
AcceptableWorked alone and slowly; missed two relevant documents, final memo was thin
Role Skills
WeakAI Collaboration
PoorCritical Verification
WeakRed flag: delivered an unverified wrong AI answer to the boss.Judgment under Uncertainty
PoorFollowed the boss’s wrong steer to the end; passed an unchecked AI answer to the boss as fact
Ordinal grades only — no invented scores or percentages. Ties are shown honestly. We rank; your team decides.
Ranked on the four skills employers say they can’t assess from a CV.
Role Skills
Competence on the actual tasks of your vacancy, observed in the scenario. Taken from your job description, not a generic test.
AI Collaboration
How well the candidate works with AI: precise questions, awareness of its limits, no blind copy-paste.
Critical Verification
Does the candidate check information before passing it on? Spotting wrong data, catching AI mistakes, never sending unverified answers upward.
Judgment under Uncertainty
How the candidate acts when information is incomplete and there is no obviously right answer.
The report
The report doesn’t just rank the candidate — it preps your interview.
Every employer report includes “What to ask, what to discuss”: 3–5 interview questions anchored to what the candidate actually did in the session — what they checked, what they skipped, where they pushed back, where they followed a wrong steer. A 40-minute session becomes a 10-minute prep sheet. And a stand-in can’t discuss a session they never sat.
What to ask — M. Silva
- 1
You initially accepted the framing that the Android update caused the drop, then reversed after reading the changelog. What changed your mind?
- 2
You asked the AI assistant to verify the retention figures against the raw export. What would you have done if they conflicted?
- 3
You skipped the user-interview file entirely. Walk me through that call.
Impersonation isn’t blocked. It’s made pointless.
- Candidates know upfront: the interview will reference their session in detail. Whoever sits the session had better sit the interview.
- The session link is bound by verified email to the address the candidate applied with.
- Integrity signals — device, timing, paste patterns — are logged from the first session and surface as flags for your interviewer to probe, not verdicts.
- No webcam, no proctoring, no ID upload. Candidates stay human; cheating stays unprofitable.
WorkProbe is cheat-resistant by structure. We do not claim identity verification.
No integration. That’s the feature.
- No IT approval, no security review, no vendor onboarding, no access to your candidate data — we never see your ATS.
- Candidates register with the email they applied with, so the shortlist matches your pipeline by itself.
- Optional: if your ATS stage-email supports merge tags, the link arrives pre-filled per candidate.
- When the role closes, the link deactivates and your shortlist freezes — a deliverable you keep, plus CSV export.
Built so candidates complete it.
Candidates see the premise before they start: you’re stepping into a role for 45 minutes — here’s your task, here’s your team, here’s your deadline. Every candidate — advanced or not — leaves holding their own skill report. Something real in exchange for 45 minutes. Candidates are told upfront that AI use is allowed and observed, and that their results go to you. Consent is explicit.
Grounded in the research
Peer-reviewed work from MIT, Harvard, Nature Human Behaviour and CHI. Not decorative citations — the reason the method works.
“Human–AI teams underperform on decisions unless humans retain independent judgment”
Vaccaro et al., Nature Human Behaviour, 2024
“Overconfident professionals are the highest-risk group for AI overreliance”
He et al., CHI 2023
“The only proven intervention is cognitive forcing — requiring independent reasoning before AI exposure”
Buçinca et al., Harvard, 2021
“Even a mathematically ideal reasoner is vulnerable to AI sycophancy”
Chandra et al., MIT, 2026
Grounded in 9 peer-reviewed studies spanning 106+ experiments and 48,000+ survey respondents.
Questions recruiters ask
- How fast is setup?
- One day from job description to live link. We generate, stress-test and validate the scenario; you paste one link.
- Where does it fit in our process?
- After your basic filters, before your interviews. You screen out the clearly unqualified as you do today; WorkProbe tells you which of the remaining candidates can actually do the work — so you interview five people instead of fifteen.
- Why are grades like “Strong” instead of a score out of 100?
- A number implies precision the evidence doesn’t have — and inventing decimal places is exactly the kind of overclaiming this product exists to prevent. Ordinal grades are honest about what 45 minutes of observed work can and cannot tell you. Regulators in the EU and US are moving the same direction: qualitative, explainable comparisons over opaque scores.
- Why are some candidates tied?
- We use ordinal grades and refuse to invent decimal places the evidence doesn’t support. With small batches, honest grading produces ties. The report shows what distinguishes tied candidates.
- Why is there no communication score?
- Conversation quality doesn’t reduce honestly to a grade. What the candidate said and did with colleagues and the boss appears as observed evidence in the summary and report — you judge it yourself.
- Isn’t it contradictory to use AI to evaluate how people use AI?
- The difference is verifiability. A candidate pasting an unchecked AI answer produces a claim nobody can trace. WorkProbe’s assessment is the opposite: every conclusion links to logged actions from the session — what was opened, asked, checked, and sent. You can audit any line of the report against the log. The AI compiles evidence; it doesn’t render verdicts — your team decides.
- What if a good candidate just has a bad day?
- Then the shortlist absorbs it. WorkProbe is decision support, not a verdict: ordinal grades, visible evidence, and your judgment on top. Recruiters we work with use the ranking to decide where to spend interview time — not to auto-reject anyone. A candidate who underperformed for 45 minutes but looks strong elsewhere is exactly the case the evidence log helps you judge fairly.
- Is this an AI detector?
- No. Candidates are encouraged to use the built-in AI assistant. We measure whether they think for themselves or paste back whatever the AI says — a skill, not a suspicion.
- Is it fair to candidates?
- Candidates get a realistic preview of the job, explicit consent about where results go, no surveillance, and their own skill report at the end. Most tests take from candidates; this one gives something back.
- Do you integrate with our ATS?
- We deliberately sit beside it, not inside it: one link out, one shortlist back. Nothing to install, nothing to approve. Deeper ATS integration is on the roadmap; today the product works with any ATS that can send an email.
- What does it cost?
- One flat fee per role — scenario generation, all candidate sessions, the ranked shortlist and full reports included. First role is priced as a paid pilot. Talk to us.
Run your next shortlist through WorkProbe.
Setup from your job description in one day.