§ The result
SHL leads Mercor on all 7 criteria.
Rubric v1.0 puts 28 points between SHL (Assessment) and Mercor (Screening): 51 for SHL, 23 for Mercor. SHL leads every one of the 7 criteria and 5 of them by 20 raw points or more, Article 11 Technical Documentation among them; Mercor leads none. The widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing fall on different criteria: Bias Audit Transparency (Mercor 10, SHL 50) and Article 11 Technical Documentation at 20% (Mercor 22, SHL 60), the second being 28% of the weighted advantage SHL holds across the 7 criteria on that side of the table.
Vendor profile
Mercor
Mercor is an AI talent platform that runs automated 20-minute AI video interviews and semantic resume/profile matching to vet, score, and place candidates and expert contractors, and offers an enterprise applicant-screening product that scores employers' applicant pools against role rubrics with pass/fail recommendations.
Vendor profile
SHL
SHL is a global talent-assessment provider offering AI-scored cognitive ability, personality, behavioral, situational-judgement, coding, and video-interview assessments that score, rank, and recommend candidates for hiring and development decisions.
§ The record
Mercor is filed under Screening AI, SHL under Assessment AI. They also share 1 secondary category: Video interview.
Both are in scope of EU AI Act, NYC LL 144, Colorado AI Act, Illinois HB 3773 and Mobley v. Workday.
| Record | Mercor | SHL |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Enterprise | Enterprise |
| Headquarters | US | GB |
| Founded | 2023 | 1977 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
20% weight · 28% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Mercor 22 · SHL 60
7.6 weighted points to SHL
18% weight · 54% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Mercor 10 · SHL 50
7.2 weighted points to SHL
15% weight · 73% of the movement so far
Data Governance Disclosure
Mercor 22 · SHL 58
5.4 weighted points to SHL
12% weight · 82% of the movement so far
Post-Market Monitoring
Mercor 20 · SHL 40
2.4 weighted points to SHL
12% weight · 89% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
Mercor 42 · SHL 58
1.9 weighted points to SHL
8% weight · 95% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Mercor 40 · SHL 60
1.6 weighted points to SHL
15% weight · 100% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
Mercor 20 · SHL 30
1.5 weighted points to SHL
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 7 figures above sum to -27.6 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 27.6 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -28 beside that -27.6.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Mercor minus SHL.
| Category | Weight | Mercor | SHL | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 22 | 60 | -38 | -7.6 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 10 | 50 | -40 | -7.2 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 20 | 30 | -10 | -1.5 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 22 | 58 | -36 | -5.4 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 42 | 58 | -16 | -1.9 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 20 | 40 | -20 | -2.4 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 40 | 60 | -20 | -1.6 |
| Total | 100% | 23 (F) | 51 (F) | -28 | -27.6 |
§ 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 | Mercor | SHL | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 1 | 1 | — | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 1 | 2 | — | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 2 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 1 | 1 | — | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 10 | 8 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 15 | 4 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
Mercor has 16 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 10 with a source URL, 8 documented absences; SHL has 19 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 15 with a source URL, 4 documented absences.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 35 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 16 for Mercor, across 4 distinct source domains, and 19 for SHL, across 1 distinct source domain.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Mercor last reviewed
- June 7, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- SHL last reviewed
- June 7, 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