Zia screens the candidate before you spend an interview slot

The interview that was never going to work

A candidate looks strong on paper, clears the bar, accepts the invitation, and forty minutes later you discover they cannot relocate, or their notice is four months, or the number they need is well above the band.

None of that required an interview to find out. All of it required someone to ask, and asking twenty candidates the same four questions is exactly the work that gets skipped when a role goes hot.

You write the must-asks. Zia gets the answers.

Every role carries a set of screening questions you control: location reality, notice period, compensation expectation, visa status, whatever genuinely gates this particular job. You can edit them, add to them, or clear them entirely.

Zia has real answers to those before anyone reaches an assessment or an interview slot. Not inferred from a profile, asked in a conversation and recorded against the candidate.

A four-month notice period is not a difficult thing to discover. It is a difficult thing to remember to ask twenty times.

And the questions this particular candidate raised

Beyond your standard set, the scoring already knows which requirements it could not verify for each individual. Those become extra questions in that person’s conversation.

So a candidate whose profile said nothing about team leadership gets asked about team leadership, and the answer comes back to the same record. The recruiter never has to notice the gap, decide it matters, and remember to raise it.

What this changes

• Interview slots go to candidates who can actually take the job. The constraint questions are answered before the calendar is involved.
• The offer conversation holds fewer surprises. Expectation and notice are on the record from the first conversation rather than discovered at the end.
• Your screening is consistent. Every candidate gets the same must-asks, which is not true of a human screening twenty people across a busy week.

How to use it

1. Write the must-asks as genuine gates, not as a wish list. Each one should be something that would stop you interviewing the person.
2. Keep them short. Four questions answered honestly are worth more than nine that make the conversation feel like a form.
3. Read the answers before you approve an interview. That is the whole point, and it takes about thirty seconds per candidate.