Skip to content
ppl

A recruiter that explains its reasons and leaves the call to you

PPL works like an in-house recruiter for teams that hire without one, from the first conversation about the role to the day you choose who to hire.

My first question, as your recruiter

Before I write the job description, I want to know what this hire has to achieve. Tell me about the role the way you would tell a trusted friend: why now, what has to be true in a year, and what is hard about it. Notes or a rough draft work too, and I will come back for anything missing.

Create your account and the conversation continues from this answer. You can stop at any point and pick it up later.

How PPL differs from the tools around it

The tools around PPL are built for volume. They count the applications they handle and hand each step to automation.

PPL works on judgement. It gives you fewer candidates, each one better understood, and shows its reasoning next to yours so you can see how you decide.

One hire, from the first conversation to the decision

This example follows one hire through PPL step by step. Where a step asks you for work, you can skip it and rely on PPL's draft.

These screens are an example with fictional people and a fictional company.

  1. The role conversation

    PPL talks with you about the role the way a good recruiter would. It asks the missing questions together in a few rounds and shows what the role definition still needs, and you can stop whenever you want.

    Brief

    A founding CTO to take an AI listing tool from prototype to a paid public launch by March.

    Mission and why now: Turn the prototype into a product people rely on without me holding it together, before a public launch at the end of March.

    Still needed: which result matters most

  2. The job description, in two lengths

    PPL writes a long job description for your company page and job boards, and a short version for your LinkedIn post, candid about the work and discreet about the company. Where your brief is thin, PPL proposes the missing parts and you confirm each one before you publish.

    The job description

    Founding CTO

    Live for 40 pilot shops and 200 public sign-ups by the end of March, with at most one hour of downtime a month.

    The hardest part: a prototype with no tests and a data model built for one shop.

    Pay: no figure yet. PPL asks you once for a range and leaves pay out of the job description until you give one.

  3. Candidates and their questions

    PPL screens applicants and sends each candidate questions built for this role and for you. You see a label for every candidate with its reasons, and PPL tells you what it noticed about AI use in the answers without marking anyone down for it.

    Candidates

    • Ana FerreiraFit nowA strong builder with two launches behind her; hire only if a trial shows she can lead.
    • Ben OkaforFit nowHas led small teams through two launches; check how deep he still goes in the code.
    • Mariam HaddadNeeds your readRebuilt a payments system alone; her answers on leading a team point both ways.

    4 of 12 candidates assessed. Start with the top of the list.

  4. The interview checklist and the debrief

    Before each interview, PPL gives you a checklist to keep open while you talk, including the questions that test any experience that does not match the CV. Afterwards it helps you write up what you saw.

    Interview kit

    • Show us the last production code you personally wrote and shipped, and what broke after.
    • In your written answer you chose to skip tests to hit the date. Where would you draw that line on a codebase that paying shops depend on?

    Why

    You said you trust how a candidate comes across early, and looking the part often measures very little.

    Holds up

  5. The decision

    PPL sets the evidence on your finalists beside your own scores and shows where the two differ, so you make the decision with both in view.

    Decide

    Your scores favour Ana on leading; the evidence favours Ben.

    Ana FerreiraFit nowFit later(your call)

    Ana's leadership rests on your impression alone.

AI in the answers

A tool that marks candidates down for their writing style or how they typed penalises the honest candidate who polished their answers with AI, and lets through the candidate who typed an invented story slowly by hand.

PPL notices AI use and tells you what it saw. AI use does not count against a candidate.

What counts against a candidate is experience they did not have. PPL checks the experience in the answers against the CV and tests it in the interview, so the invented story is the one that gets caught.

The research

Researchers at Stanford tested seven widely used AI-text detectors. The detectors were near-perfect on essays by US students, and labelled more than half of 91 English essays by non-native speakers as written by AI.
Liang and colleagues, Stanford University. "GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers". Patterns, July 2023. Read the study

Interview checklist for Ana Ferreira

Show us the last production code you personally wrote and shipped, and what broke after.

Tests a claim in the CV

PPL learns how you hire

PPL keeps a picture of how you hire: what you weigh and what you tend to miss. It starts from five short questions and uses the picture to shape the questions for your candidates and your interviews.

The picture updates after every interview and decision, so PPL knows you better the longer you use it. You can read it in your account at any time.

How you hire

You trust first impressions and act late on bad hires.

What repeats

  • You decide in the first ten minutes and spend the rest of the interview confirming it: "I knew in the first ten minutes".

    Why

    You said you trust how a candidate comes across early, and looking the part often measures very little.

    Holds up

  • You wait months before acting on a hire that is not working.

The call is yours

PPL gives every candidate a label with its reasons, and you can overrule it at any stage, with a reason if you want to give one. Both labels stay side by side, and PPL learns from your reasons.

Ana Ferreira

A strong builder with two launches behind her; hire only if a trial shows she can lead.

PPL
Fit now
Your call
Fit later(your call)

PPL: Fit now. Your call: fit later.

What PPL leaves to you

  • You choose who to hire

    PPL prepares the evidence and gives its view, and the choice stays with you because you are the one who will work with this person.

  • You judge the quality of the work

    For roles judged by their work, PPL asks for work samples and treats them as evidence to question in the interview, and the judgement of their quality stays yours.

  • Every point shows its reasons

    Each point PPL makes can open to its why, which rests on facts and on sourced research and studies on hiring.

Built on real hiring

Tens of thousands
of candidates
Hundreds
of briefs

From PPL's first version in the market.

Who built PPL

Shakib Hammad, a founder and recruiter who placed several hundred people over close to two decades, built PPL for teams that hire without a recruiter.

Start with the role you are hiring for

My first question, as your recruiter

Before I write the job description, I want to know what this hire has to achieve. Tell me about the role the way you would tell a trusted friend: why now, what has to be true in a year, and what is hard about it. Notes or a rough draft work too, and I will come back for anything missing.