§ The result
Stepstone takes the total, Employment Hero takes more of the criteria.
Within the Screening cohort, Stepstone edges Employment Hero by 1 point under rubric v1.0, 49 to 48. Employment Hero leads more of the criteria, 5 against 2 for Stepstone, yet Stepstone takes Bias Audit Transparency, which carries 18% of the rubric, and the weighted sum with it. Bias Audit Transparency is both the widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing — Employment Hero 35, Stepstone 50 — and at an 18% weight it carries 73% of the weighted advantage Stepstone holds across the 2 criteria on that side of the table.
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.
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
Employment Hero and Stepstone are both filed under Screening AI. They also share 1 secondary category: Sourcing.
Both are in scope of EU AI Act, NYC LL 144, Colorado AI Act and Illinois HB 3773. Only Employment Hero is in scope of Mobley v. Workday.
| Record | Employment Hero | Stepstone |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Mid |
| Headquarters | AU | DE |
| Founded | 2014 | 1996 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
18% weight · 42% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Employment Hero 35 · Stepstone 50
2.7 weighted points to Stepstone
12% weight · 65% of the movement so far
Post-Market Monitoring
Employment Hero 50 · Stepstone 38
1.4 weighted points to Employment Hero
20% weight · 80% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Employment Hero 50 · Stepstone 55
1.0 weighted points to Stepstone
12% weight · 88% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
Employment Hero 62 · Stepstone 58
0.5 weighted points to Employment Hero
8% weight · 93% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Employment Hero 62 · Stepstone 58
0.3 weighted points to Employment Hero
15% weight · 98% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
Employment Hero 32 · Stepstone 30
0.3 weighted points to Employment Hero
15% weight · 100% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
Employment Hero 56 · Stepstone 55
0.1 weighted points to Employment Hero
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 7 figures above sum to -1.0 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 6.4 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -1 beside that -1.0.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Employment Hero minus Stepstone.
| Category | Weight | Employment Hero | Stepstone | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 50 | 55 | -5 | -1.0 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 35 | 50 | -15 | -2.7 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 32 | 30 | +2 | +0.3 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 56 | 55 | +1 | +0.1 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 62 | 58 | +4 | +0.5 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 50 | 38 | +12 | +1.4 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 62 | 58 | +4 | +0.3 |
| Total | 100% | 48 (F) | 49 (F) | -1 | -1.0 |
§ 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 | Employment Hero | Stepstone | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 4 | 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% | 3 | 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% | 6 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 6 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 7 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 4 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 31 | 4 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 29 | 4 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
Employment Hero has 35 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 31 with a source URL, 4 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 Stepstone sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 68 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 35 for Employment Hero, across 1 distinct source domain, and 33 for Stepstone, across 6 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Employment Hero 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