AI guidelines

Using AI at Greenhouse

At Greenhouse, our mission is to make hiring work for everyone. To help achieve that mission, we’re committed to building innovative products and transforming the way we work through AI. We’re looking for team members who are excited to do the same. This page covers our guidelines for how Greenhouse employees and candidates can leverage AI throughout the hiring process.

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What it means to be an AI-powered company

Becoming AI-powered is an ambitious goal that requires everyone at Greenhouse to transform how they work through AI. If you join our team, here’s what that looks like in practice:

Access to pre-vetted, innovative AI tools for your day-to-day work
A safe space, supported by leadership, to experiment with AI and solve real problems
Enablement and ongoing support for using AI responsibly

We don’t expect you to be an expert on day one. We do expect curiosity, active contribution and continuous innovation. Everyone we hire needs some level of proficiency with AI tools, though the depth of experience will depend on the role, and you can expect that we’ll ask about your experience with AI during your interviews.

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Our guiding principles for AI in hiring

We still want you to be your authentic self

Every candidate brings a unique mix of experiences, skills and perspectives. Our interviews are designed to help us understand how you think, collaborate and problem-solve in real-time settings based on your lived experiences – and how those align with, and add to, our company values.

We believe in two-way accountability

We encourage (and expect) candidates to also leverage AI responsibly during the interview process. However, it’s important that your work product reflects your unique perspective, even when using AI-generated content. We expect candidates to follow the policies detailed below when using AI while interviewing at Greenhouse. In turn, we’ve outlined how we use and plan to use AI in our hiring processes.

We encourage preparation

We know that how you perform in an interview can be enhanced by how you prepare. We encourage you to use resources available to you, including doing online research, tapping into your networks, asking your recruiter clarifying questions and using AI. However, we ask that you do not use AI to supplement your performance in a live interview unless otherwise instructed or agreed upon.

How candidates can use AI

Candidates are increasingly using AI to support them in their job searches, and we want to understand how you plan to use AI in your interviews with Greenhouse.

If we determine in any stage of our interviews that AI is being used outside of the guidelines below without disclosure or citation, your candidacy may be disqualified. We also may contact references to verify key qualifications and experiences you’ve represented in our interview process, and we’ll let you know before we do. Regardless of how AI may evolve, Greenhouse does not tolerate plagiarism or misrepresentation of job-related skills.

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Application materials

Using AI to assist you in building your CV or cover letter has become a standard practice. However, application materials you submit must represent your professional experience, qualifications and skills accurately. If we determine that these have been misrepresented, your candidacy may be disqualified.

Interviews

Our interviews are designed to assess the skills needed for the role. We’re looking to understand your interpersonal abilities, how you collaborate and how that translates into the job. We ask that you engage in our interviews without reading from or referencing AI-produced answers. If we detect that you are doing so without permission or advance disclosure, your candidacy may be disqualified.

Work assessments

For certain interviews, you’ll be encouraged to use AI – to research a topic, iterate on content or complete a coding exercise. That being said, the final assessment you submit should reflect your own synthesis, decisions and point of view, not unedited AI output. Expect to walk us through your thinking, including how you used AI and the rationale behind it.

If you are interviewing with Greenhouse and have any questions about our policies or guidelines above, please contact the Talent Acquisition Manager or Candidate Experience Specialist facilitating your process.

How Greenhouse’s Talent Acquisition team uses AI

Human-first, AI-powered

We’re intentional with how we embed AI into our hiring processes – elevating effectiveness while keeping humans at the centre of key decisions. We recognise both the promise and limitations of AI and review AI outputs diligently to ensure human accountability is never lost.

Here’s a comprehensive outline of how we use AI in our hiring processes

Content creation

For job descriptions – Our hiring managers and recruiters may use AI-generated content as a starting point for developing accurate and inclusive job descriptions.

For interview questions – Our recruiters may use AI to assist in building questions that are relevant to the attributes being tested for in an interview process.

For sourcing messages – Our hiring teams may use AI tools to help create compelling messaging for prospective candidates.

For all of the above – Our final product does not reflect an unaltered AI-produced output in that it always incorporates critical human input.

Application screening

Talent matching helps our recruiters prioritise candidates whose backgrounds align with the skills and experience we’ve defined for the role, so qualified applicants get a closer look, faster. Talent matching does not make autonomous hiring decisions.

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CV parsing

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Greenhouse uses AI in our CV parsing process to identify candidate details that support our resume anonymisation functionality. This means certain information, like names, is kept anonymous to support a fair and equitable evaluation of candidates.

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Agentic interviewing

For certain positions, we use Voice AI (agentic interviewing) to get a better signal of a candidate’s experience beyond their written CV. Hiring teams clearly define the questions and rubric that Voice AI uses, with the goal of bringing structure to the top of the hiring funnel. The hiring team then evaluates Voice AI’s results to provide additional context into a candidate’s skills before making a decision.

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Interview transcription and summarisation

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With candidate and interviewer consent, we use AI to transcribe and summarise interviews. This lessens the reliance on the note-taking skills of an interviewer and mitigates the hiring delays and potential unconscious bias caused by incomplete interview feedback. We’ve seen positive time savings by streamlining this process.

Important disclaimers

As AI continues to evolve, we’ll regularly review our approach to stay aligned with current legislation and mitigate potential biases in our processes.

Please note that the principles and policies below reflect the position of Greenhouse Software, Inc., as it relates to our own hiring. Customers who use Greenhouse to power their talent acquisition processes are entitled to their own principles and policies.

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Connecting you with more information

For more information on how Greenhouse approaches responsible AI in our product, read about our AI principles.