§ The result
Stepstone leads Cognisess on all 7 criteria.
Stepstone finishes 19 points clear of Cognisess under rubric v1.0 — 49 against 30 — across the Screening and Assessment cohorts. Of the 7 criteria Cognisess wins none, and the narrowest lead Stepstone holds is on Post-Market Monitoring, Cognisess 32 to Stepstone 38. Even Article 11 Technical Documentation, the widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing (Cognisess 25, Stepstone 55, 20% weight), is only 32% of the weighted advantage Stepstone builds across the 7 criteria it leads.
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
Stepstone
Stepstone is a German job marketplace whose Stepstone Recruit employer platform includes an AI Screening Agent, which rates each application against requirements taken from the job ad, and a Talent Finder, which recommends candidates from a CV database of more than 4 million profiles.
§ The record
Cognisess is filed under Assessment AI, Stepstone under Screening AI. They record no secondary category in common.
Both are in scope of NYC LL 144, Illinois HB 3773, EU AI Act and Colorado AI Act. Only Cognisess is in scope of Mobley v. Workday.
| Record | Cognisess | Stepstone |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Mid |
| Headquarters | GB | DE |
| Founded | 2011 | 1996 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
20% weight · 32% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Cognisess 25 · Stepstone 55
6.0 weighted points to Stepstone
18% weight · 60% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Cognisess 20 · Stepstone 50
5.4 weighted points to Stepstone
15% weight · 71% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
Cognisess 42 · Stepstone 55
1.9 weighted points to Stepstone
12% weight · 81% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
Cognisess 42 · Stepstone 58
1.9 weighted points to Stepstone
15% weight · 89% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
Cognisess 20 · Stepstone 30
1.5 weighted points to Stepstone
8% weight · 96% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Cognisess 40 · Stepstone 58
1.4 weighted points to Stepstone
12% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Post-Market Monitoring
Cognisess 32 · Stepstone 38
0.7 weighted points to Stepstone
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 7 figures above sum to -18.9 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 18.9 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -19 beside that -18.9.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Cognisess minus Stepstone.
| Category | Weight | Cognisess | Stepstone | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 25 | 55 | -30 | -6.0 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 20 | 50 | -30 | -5.4 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 20 | 30 | -10 | -1.5 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 42 | 55 | -13 | -1.9 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 42 | 58 | -16 | -1.9 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 32 | 38 | -6 | -0.7 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 40 | 58 | -18 | -1.4 |
| Total | 100% | 30 (F) | 49 (F) | -19 | -18.9 |
§ 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 | Stepstone | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 2 | 1 | — | 3 | 1 | Audit reportSources on a separate 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 | 6 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 5 | 0 | Sources on a separate domain | 5 | 0 | 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 domainSources on a separate domain |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 21 | 5 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 29 | 4 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
Cognisess has 26 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 21 with a source URL, 5 documented absences; Stepstone has 33 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 29 with a source URL, 4 documented absences; some documentation or audit rows for Cognisess and Stepstone sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 59 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 26 for Cognisess, across 5 distinct source domains, and 33 for Stepstone, across 6 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Cognisess last reviewed
- September 25, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- Stepstone 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