§ The result
Employment Hero leads Cognisess on all 7 criteria.
Employment Hero finishes 18 points clear of Cognisess under rubric v1.0 — 48 against 30 — across the Screening and Assessment cohorts. Employment Hero leads every one of the 7 criteria and 3 of them by 20 raw points or more, Article 11 Technical Documentation among them; Cognisess leads none. Article 11 Technical Documentation is the widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing at once (Cognisess 25, Employment Hero 50, 20% weight), but it accounts for only 28% of the weighted advantage Employment Hero holds across the 7 criteria on that side of the table.
Vendor profile
Cognisess
UK talent-analytics platform that scores candidates and employees with 50+ game-based and questionnaire assessments and weighted job-fit 'profilers', can auto-pass or auto-reject applicants against score thresholds, and runs recorded video interviews with optional DeepLearn video analytics.
Vendor profile
Employment Hero
SmartMatch is Employment Hero's AI candidate-matching engine. Since March 2026 it has been surfaced through Find Talent and ATS applicant scoring, where it ranks job seekers and applicants against employer criteria and feeds a Recruitment Agent that auto-shortlists candidates and runs AI video and phone screening interviews.
§ The record
Cognisess is filed under Assessment AI, Employment Hero under Screening AI. They also share 1 secondary category: Video interview.
Both are in scope of NYC LL 144, Illinois HB 3773, EU AI Act, Colorado AI Act and Mobley v. Workday.
| Record | Cognisess | Employment Hero |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Mid |
| Headquarters | GB | AU |
| Founded | 2011 | 2014 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
20% weight · 28% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Cognisess 25 · Employment Hero 50
5.0 weighted points to Employment Hero
18% weight · 43% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Cognisess 20 · Employment Hero 35
2.7 weighted points to Employment Hero
12% weight · 56% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
Cognisess 42 · Employment Hero 62
2.4 weighted points to Employment Hero
12% weight · 68% of the movement so far
Post-Market Monitoring
Cognisess 32 · Employment Hero 50
2.2 weighted points to Employment Hero
15% weight · 80% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
Cognisess 42 · Employment Hero 56
2.1 weighted points to Employment Hero
15% weight · 90% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
Cognisess 20 · Employment Hero 32
1.8 weighted points to Employment Hero
8% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Cognisess 40 · Employment Hero 62
1.8 weighted points to Employment Hero
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 7 figures above sum to -17.9 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 17.9 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -18 beside that -17.9.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Cognisess minus Employment Hero.
| Category | Weight | Cognisess | Employment Hero | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 25 | 50 | -25 | -5.0 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 20 | 35 | -15 | -2.7 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 20 | 32 | -12 | -1.8 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 42 | 56 | -14 | -2.1 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 42 | 62 | -20 | -2.4 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 32 | 50 | -18 | -2.2 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 40 | 62 | -22 | -1.8 |
| Total | 100% | 30 (F) | 48 (F) | -18 | -17.9 |
§ Evidence
Cited sources and documented absences, criterion by criterion.
An absence is a finding, not a blank: the reviewer looked for a named artefact and recorded that it is not located. Where a source sits is a fact about hosting only.
| Criterion | Weight | Cognisess | Employment Hero | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 4 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 2 | 1 | — | 3 | 1 | — |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 6 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 5 | 0 | Sources on a separate domain | 7 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 4 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 21 | 5 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 31 | 4 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
Cognisess has 26 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 21 with a source URL, 5 documented absences; Employment Hero has 35 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 31 with a source URL, 4 documented absences; some documentation or audit rows for Cognisess sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 61 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 26 for Cognisess, across 5 distinct source domains, and 35 for Employment Hero, across 1 distinct source domain.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Cognisess last reviewed
- September 25, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- Employment Hero last reviewed
- September 25, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
HireAIScore scores are editorial research, not legal advice, and no vendor pays for placement, scoring or removal — see the methodology, conflicts policy and terms.
§ Where next