“New skills-first platform lets employers see candidate work before CVs, using behavioural engagement signals to surface genuine effort”
FirstLook, a newly launched hiring platform, has entered the market with a direct response to the escalating problem of AI-generated job applications overwhelming employer recruitment inboxes. The platform asks candidates to complete a brief skills assessment before their CV is made visible to any employer, and tracks a set of behavioural signals throughout the process to generate an individual authenticity score for every submission received.
The scale of the problem the platform has been built to address is considerable. According to Ashby’s 2025 Talent Trends Report, the number of applications received per hire has nearly tripled since 2021, whilst research published by Greenhouse in November 2025 found that 75% of job seekers are now using AI tools to produce their applications. The consequence is that recruiters are spending an average of 23 hours screening candidates for each hire, frequently finding it impossible to separate those who have applied with genuine intent from those submitting AI-generated content at scale.
FirstLook’s model turns the conventional hiring process on its head. Rather than beginning with a review of CVs and moving to skills tests later, employers using the platform start by creating a single assessment question that every candidate must answer before anything else is considered. As the candidate works through the assessment, FirstLook captures behavioural engagement signals and converts these into a process score that reflects how the work was approached and completed, rather than what was ultimately submitted. Candidates are then ordered by their level of engagement, allowing recruiters to focus their attention on those who have demonstrated genuine effort and investment in the process. The judgement of the actual quality of a candidate’s work remains entirely in human hands.
“We hire people regularly, and what we’re seeing more and more is hundreds of CVs landing in the inbox, all sounding the same,” said Alex Cohen, co-founder of FirstLook. “It’s clear people are going straight to AI tools and sending in whatever it produces. That makes it incredibly hard for recruiters to see who’s good and who isn’t and it’s not fair to the candidates who put genuine effort in either.”
“Our scoring doesn’t try to judge the quality of someone’s answer. It measures whether a real person sat down and did the work,” said Christian Jones, co-founder of FirstLook. “If you spent fifteen minutes thinking and typing and editing, that shows up. If you pasted in an AI response in ninety seconds, that shows up too. It gives candidates who take the time a genuine advantage, which is how hiring should work.”
FirstLook sets itself apart from the assessment tools already available on the market in one fundamental way: it does not deploy AI to evaluate or rank the quality of candidate responses. Every submission made through the platform is stored in full and remains reviewable by the employer at any point. No candidate is ruled out automatically without a human first making that determination. Candidates are made aware that behavioural data is being collected during the assessment process. Scores are intended solely to help employers organise and prioritise their review queue, no candidate is automatically rejected on the basis of a score, and applicants are never shown their own scores at any stage.
The platform is launching with two assessment formats available from the outset, a written response option and a code challenge, with audio and video assessment formats planned for release in due course.
In terms of pricing, FirstLook offers a free tier covering one active role at no cost. For those requiring more, a pay-per-role option is available at £49, a Starter plan providing five active roles is priced at £79 per month, and a Professional plan covering 20 active roles is available at £199 per month. Every plan, regardless of price, includes access to the platform’s complete feature set with no restrictions applied.
