§ The result
impress.ai leads Cognisess on 6 of the 7 criteria.
Under rubric v1.0, impress.ai, filed under Screening, finishes on 38 and Cognisess, filed under Assessment, on 30, 8 points apart. Cognisess is ahead on none of the 7 criteria: impress.ai takes 6, the remaining criterion is level, and the nearest of those 6 is Bias Audit Transparency, Cognisess 20 to impress.ai 22. The widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing fall on different criteria: Customer Documentation (Cognisess 40, impress.ai 58) and Article 11 Technical Documentation at 20% (Cognisess 25, impress.ai 35), the second being 26% of the weighted advantage impress.ai holds across the 6 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
impress.ai
impress.ai is a Singapore-headquartered recruitment automation platform that uses conversational AI assistants, resume parsing and scoring, and structured competency-based screening to filter, rank and shortlist job candidates, integrating with enterprise ATS systems.
§ The record
Cognisess is filed under Assessment AI, impress.ai 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 | impress.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | High |
| Headquarters | GB | SG |
| Founded | 2011 | 2017 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
20% weight · 26% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Cognisess 25 · impress.ai 35
2.0 weighted points to impress.ai
15% weight · 51% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
Cognisess 42 · impress.ai 55
1.9 weighted points to impress.ai
8% weight · 70% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Cognisess 40 · impress.ai 58
1.4 weighted points to impress.ai
12% weight · 86% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
Cognisess 42 · impress.ai 52
1.2 weighted points to impress.ai
15% weight · 95% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
Cognisess 20 · impress.ai 25
0.8 weighted points to impress.ai
18% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Cognisess 20 · impress.ai 22
0.4 weighted points to impress.ai
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 6 figures above sum to -7.7 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 7.7 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -8 beside that -7.7.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Cognisess minus impress.ai.
| Category | Weight | Cognisess | impress.ai | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 25 | 35 | -10 | -2.0 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 20 | 22 | -2 | -0.4 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 20 | 25 | -5 | -0.8 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 42 | 55 | -13 | -1.9 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 42 | 52 | -10 | -1.2 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 32 | 32 | - | - |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 40 | 58 | -18 | -1.4 |
| Total | 100% | 30 (F) | 38 (F) | -8 | -7.7 |
§ 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 | impress.ai | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 2 | 1 | — | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| 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 | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 5 | 0 | Sources on a separate domain | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 1 | 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 | 18 | 7 | 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; impress.ai has 25 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 18 with a source URL, 7 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 51 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 26 for Cognisess, across 5 distinct source domains, and 25 for impress.ai, across 1 distinct source domain.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Cognisess last reviewed
- September 25, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- impress.ai last reviewed
- August 2, 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