When we posted our Founding Engineer role, we got 1,000 applications.
My first thought? There’s no way we’re reading all of these properly. And honestly, that felt terrible. Every person took time to apply. They deserve better than a quick skim or an auto-reject.
But 1,000 resumes? That’s weeks of work.
So we built something that actually works.
What We Did
We created a workflow that handles the initial screening, so we can spend real time on candidates who are actually a good fit.
Here’s how it works:
Upload all the CVs to Needle. Set up scoring criteria based on what matters for the role. Education background (0-15 points), relevant experience (0-10 points), communication skills (0-15 points), technical skills (0-15 points).
An AI agent reads through every single resume and scores them based on your criteria. You get a ranked list of candidates.
We take the top 50 and that’s where we spend our time. Real conversations. Actual evaluation. Thoughtful decisions.
Why This Actually Works
Here’s what happened: instead of spending three weeks doing surface-level screening and getting progressively more tired and less accurate, we spent three hours setting this up.
Now we respond to candidates faster. We spend quality time with people who could genuinely be a fit. Our team doesn’t burn out reading resumes.
The boring, repetitive part gets automated. The important part (talking to humans, understanding who they are, making real hiring decisions) gets our full attention.
The Results
We went from 1,000 applications to 50 strong candidates worth deep evaluation. Those 50 got our best effort. Better for them, better for us.
And the 950 who weren’t a fit? They got faster responses instead of sitting in limbo for weeks.
Try It Yourself
We made this a template in Needle. Start here and go to the HR section to find “CV Ranker.”
Set up your collection, upload your CVs, customize the scoring for what you care about, and run it.
You’ll have your shortlist in minutes instead of weeks.
It’s one of those things where once you use it, you can’t imagine going back to the old way.
Check out the full documentation if you want to see everything Needle can do beyond hiring workflows.
Let me know how it goes if you try it. Always curious to hear what’s working for other teams.
