We run a live search with you, end to end. Nothing is sent to candidates.
Book a demo (opens in a new tab)Both interview candidates by voice. HireVue interviews every applicant who arrives; EmployLabs finds the people who were never going to apply, reaches them and then interviews them. Which you need depends on whether your problem is volume or supply.
HireVue interviews and assesses applicants who arrive with two-way AI voice interviews scored against IO-validated rubrics, plus compliance artefacts and Workday distribution. EmployLabs finds people who were not looking, emails them, calls Indian numbers by AI and holds the conversation, then interviews them by voice in the browser. Choose HireVue for applicant volume; EmployLabs when the right people never apply.
HireVue calls itself the global leader in skills-based hiring, and its principle is stated plainly: AI assists human decision-makers, it does not replace them. Its AI Interviewer, launched in June 2026, holds dynamic two-way voice interviews with every applicant around the clock and scores the answers against rubrics validated by industrial-organisational psychologists, producing a ranked list and an auditable view of every applicant. Around it sit assessments, a Talent Engagement agent that matches applicants to best-fit roles, and automation and scheduling.
EmployLabs also interviews by voice, so the distinction is not the interview. It is who gets interviewed. HireVue interviews the people who applied. EmployLabs finds people who were not looking, approaches them, holds the conversation, and then interviews them — and it screens its own inbound applicants through the same scoring as well.
One product is built to assess a large stream of applicants fairly and at volume. The other is built to create the stream for a role where the right people will never apply.
Many organisations have both problems in different parts of the business. They are still two problems, and it is worth knowing which one a given requisition has before buying for it.
| Outcome | HireVue | EmployLabs |
|---|---|---|
| What lands on your desk | Every applicant interviewed, their answers scored against IO-validated rubrics into a ranked list, with an auditable view of each one. | Candidates who never applied, found, contacted and interviewed, each with a report carrying a five-level alignment rank with rationale, skill depth with quotes, spoken-English level and the risks. |
| What you still do yourself | Filling the top of the funnel: the applicants have to arrive. Then the decision, which HireVue is explicit stays with a person. | The decision, the hiring-manager conversation, client rounds and the offer, plus any intervention the system raises when a judgement is needed. |
| Time to the first useful thing | Not described in published product material; also available inside Workday through its AI agent partner network. | Days on one role: brief, a sample of real profiles, arm, then contact and interviews. |
| What you keep afterwards | A consistent, auditable assessment record across your applicant volume. | The sourced pool, the scoring with its evidence, every conversation and every interview report, for this role and the next. |
| Where it fails you | A role nobody suitable applies to. A strong interviewer cannot assess a candidate who never arrived. | A brief nobody thought hard about. Aimed at a badly specified role, it interviews the wrong people well. |
Job by job. Where HireVue’s published product material does not describe a capability, the row says so rather than reading an absence into it.
| Job in the hiring process | HireVue | EmployLabs |
|---|---|---|
| Turn the job description into a search | Not described in published product material. | Meera, the recruiter copilot, turns the JD into one role definition that drives both the search and the scoring, with each must-have recorded in the JD's own words and marked as checkable from the profile or only from the candidate. |
| Find people who have not applied | Outbound sourcing from an external profile database is not described in published product material. The Talent Engagement agent matches applicants already in the process to best-fit roles. | People search across major professional-profile data providers, previewed on a sample of real profiles before anything is sourced at volume, in a pool that pages forward and never buys the same person twice. |
| Screen applicants who arrive | Its home ground: every applicant can be interviewed and assessed, and matched to other roles they fit. | A public jobs board and Zia-run apply sessions that read the résumé, ask mandatory screening questions and score the applicant against the same role definition as sourced candidates. |
| Judge a candidate against the requirements | Answers scored against IO-validated rubrics, alongside its assessments. | Each must-have judged met, contradicted or not stated; only evidence of a mismatch disqualifies, and silence becomes a question to the candidate. Seven anchored, role-specific dimensions, each judgement carrying its evidence line. |
| Reach a passive candidate | Cold multichannel outreach to passive candidates is not described in published product material. | A four-email sequence over a week — first email, same-thread follow-up, a new angle, a closing note — and, once an email has provably reached a candidate with an Indian number, one AI phone call inside TRAI calling hours. Outside India, outreach is the email sequence, and Zia continues the conversation on email or WhatsApp once a candidate engages. |
| Hold the conversation | Talent Engagement agent with AI matching, plus automation and scheduling for applicants. | Zia, one conversational engine across email, WhatsApp, phone and web, answers questions about the role, uses India salary benchmarks by role, city and seniority, and asks the must-haves the profile left unverified. |
| Interview the candidate | AI Interviewer: dynamic two-way voice interviews with every applicant, around the clock, scored into a ranked list with an auditable view of each. | Naira: a multi-module browser voice interview with phases enforced by a conductor. Technical candidates write code in a live editor and explore a real repository with Naira, read and discussed; non-technical roles get document exercises; a take-home with a defence call is an option. |
| Assess with validated instruments | Assessments, alongside interview rubrics validated by IO psychologists. | Not offered as a separate assessment library; evidence comes from the structured interview and its exercises. |
| Produce something a hiring manager can act on | A ranked list with an auditable view of every applicant. | A report with a five-level alignment rank and written rationale, role fit, skill depth with quotes, CEFR spoken-English level, risks with severity and topics never probed marked 'Not assessed', on a share link that needs no seat. |
| Explain and evidence the decision | A published AI explainability statement; ISO/IEC 27001 and 27701 and an annual SOC 2 Type 2; an external auditor engaged for a bias audit in 2023. | An append-only record of every automated decision and human override, with the override rate per role. |
| Run inside your HR system | Available inside Workday through Workday's AI agent partner network. | One live connector, Zwayam, submitting finalists with a generated CV after a dry run. Workday, Greenhouse and Lever connectors are not built. |
An interviewer at the door assesses who arrives. Ours goes and gets the person first.
The split is by requisition, not by preference. High-volume roles with a healthy applicant flow stay on HireVue, interviewed and ranked at the door. Specialist and senior roles where the applicant flow is thin or wrong come to EmployLabs as a brief, armed with their own caps on sourcing, finalists and spend, and come back as interview reports on a share link your hiring manager can open. On a given requisition the two rarely compete for the same candidate: one interviews people who came to you, the other brings people who would not have.
If the people you need are applying and the work is assessing all of them consistently and defensibly, buy HireVue; its assessment science, volume and compliance record are the reason to. If the people you need are not applying, an interviewer at the door has nobody to interview — buy the system that finds them, reaches them, and interviews them with the evidence attached. That is EmployLabs.
Bring a live role. We will show you the search, the outreach and an interviewed finalist's report before you commit to anything.
