ClearCo (ClearCompany)
HireAIScore rates ClearCo (ClearCompany) 46 out of 100 (grade F, Substantial gaps) under rubric v1.0, last reviewed September 25, 2026. ClearCo (ClearCompany) ranks 39 of 77 vendors rated in ATS-integrated AI, against a category average of 47. That score is drawn from 38 evidence items across 7 rubric criteria for ClearCo (ClearCompany) — 31 with a cited source, 7 recording that nothing was located.
Score breakdown
ClearCo (ClearCompany), criterion by criterion
Each rubric criterion is scored out of 100 on the cited evidence, then weighted into the total.
Weighted contribution shown to the right of each bar.
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Weight 20% · category avg 51
56
+11.2
Bias Audit Transparency
Weight 18% · category avg 41
28
+5.0
FRIA Support
Weight 15% · category avg 32
30
+4.5
Data Governance Disclosure
Weight 15% · category avg 54
57
+8.5
Human Oversight Design
Weight 12% · category avg 57
63
+7.6
Post-Market Monitoring
Weight 12% · category avg 42
37
+4.4
Customer Documentation
Weight 8% · category avg 59
60
+4.8
Total weighted score
46.1(rounded to 46 for display)
Category avg is the mean raw score on that criterion across the 77 ATS-integrated AI vendors in scope of this rubric, this one included.
Strongest criterion
Human Oversight Design
63raw / 100
Contributes 7.6 to the total. 63 against a 57 category average.
Weakest criterion
Bias Audit Transparency
28raw / 100
Contributes 5.0 to the total. 28 against a 41 category average.
Cited evidence
The evidence behind the score
Every score is backed by at least one cited piece of evidence. Open a criterion to see what was found, when, and where.
Download diligence recordEvidence ledger
- Items
- 38
- Documentation
- 25
- Public statement
- 6
- Absence
- 7
- With a source URL
- 31 of 38
- Source hostnames
- 4
- Fewest items
- 4
- FRIA Support
These figures measure how thoroughly ClearCo (ClearCompany) was reviewed, not how ClearCo (ClearCompany) performed — an absence row, recording that nothing was located, is counted like any other item.
Article 11 Technical Documentation
5 items56
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
ClearCo's public help-center article on AI Talent Match (edited 27 March 2026) works partly as instructions for use: it says a 'ClearCompany AI vector model' compares skills and job titles parsed from the resume and requisition, that only English is supported, and which conditions trigger scoring and re-scoring.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/27643465473819-AI-Assisted-Talent-Match-Overview
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The 'ClearCo & AI Overview' help article (edited 31 March 2026) says in-house machine-learning models built on '20 years worth of data' score resume relevance 'without the use of an LLM', but gives no model description, training-set composition, validation results or accuracy metrics.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/18811923433371-ClearCo-AI-Overview
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The public AI Addendum (last updated 15 July 2026) defines AI Features to include 'algorithmic decision-making technologies', names AI providers including OpenAI, Recall.ai and Ninjahire, and sets use restrictions such as barring AI output as the sole basis for hiring decisions.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
An August 2023 post sets out five 'Pillars of AI Ethics' (Compliance, Security, Privacy, Compassion, Purpose) and an internal 'Ethical Assurance' process covering model validation and monitoring, without referencing NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001 or any other framework.
https://clearcompany.com/resources/blog/transforming-hr-with-responsible-ai-clearcompany-vision
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No model card, system card, Annex IV-style technical file, whitepaper or ISO/IEC 42001 certification was found across the clearcompany.com sitemap, the security and legal pages or the public help center, and the Sourcing Agent's scoring categories and underlying model are not documented anywhere public.
Bias Audit Transparency
5 items28
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No NYC Local Law 144 bias-audit summary or independent audit of AI Talent Match or the Sourcing Agent was found: the clearcompany.com sitemap has no audit page, guessed paths such as /bias-audit return 404, Warden AI's dashboard returns 404 for 'clearcompany' and 'clearco', and a help-center search for 'bias audit' returns only a FAQ that contains no audit.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The help-center FAQ headed 'AI bias audit or Title VII compliance for AI Talent Match' provides no audit, saying instead that the tool uses only job titles and skills, neither ingests nor infers Title VII characteristics, and that each customer bears responsibility for lawful use.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/18811923433371-ClearCo-AI-Overview
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
An October 2024 post markets AI Talent Match as delivering 'unbiased scoring' that ignores name, gender and age, citing no audit, adverse-impact analysis or independent validation.
https://clearcompany.com/resources/blog/fast-fair-hiring-with-clearcompany-ai-talent-match
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The August 2023 responsible-AI post says ClearCompany ensures its systems process information 'fairly across sensitive groups' and that 'discriminatory models never make it to production', but publishes no test results, metrics or auditor.
https://clearcompany.com/resources/blog/transforming-hr-with-responsible-ai-clearcompany-vision
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
ClearCo's July 2026 'Agentic AI: Due Diligence Guide for the C-Suite' scores a vendor that has 'a named bias-testing method' but 'no reviewable report' at only 2-3 out of 5 on Risk and Compliance, which is the band ClearCo's own public record falls into.
FRIA Support
4 items30
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No EU AI Act Article 27 FRIA template, Article 26 deployer guidance or EU AI Act statement was found on clearcompany.com (sitemap, security, GDPR and CCPA pages, AI Addendum, terms) or in the public help center, where a search for 'AI Act' returns no results.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Section 7.3(c) of the AI Addendum makes the customer responsible for 'independent human review' and for any legally required notice, explanation, opt-out, appeal or human reconsideration before AI supports a significant employment decision, assigning deployer duties without providing templates.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A GDPR page written for the 2018 deadline gives deployers privacy guidance on controller and processor roles, candidate consent, notifying sourced candidates within one month and US data storage, but says nothing about AI or automated decisions.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A May 2026 ClearCo brief tells buyers that 'The EU AI Act requires six-month AI decision logs, continuous monitoring, and transparency in automated decisions' but offers only generic next steps rather than ClearCo-specific deployer guidance.
Data Governance Disclosure
6 items57
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The AI Addendum commits that ClearCo 'will not access, use, or retain Input or Output to train, retrain, or fine-tune' any AI model, keeps caches and retrieval systems logically separated per customer and processes inference transiently, subject to carve-outs for operational monitoring and aggregated anonymous data.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The same addendum names AI providers (OpenAI, Recall.ai, Ninjahire, Forethought, Mindset, Coassemble) and bars customers from submitting health, biometric, government-ID or financial data to AI features, but its link to the full AI-provider list leads to a Zendesk page that does not exist.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The help center states that Talent Match does not ingest or infer race, color, religion, sex or national origin and that its in-house models were trained on '20 years worth of data', without saying whose data it is, how it was de-identified or on what legal basis it was used.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/18811923433371-ClearCo-AI-Overview
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The security page says ClearCo holds an annually audited SOC 2 Type II report, encrypts sensitive PII at rest with AES-256 on AWS and runs at least two penetration tests a year, but lists no ISO 27001, ISO 27701 or ISO 42001 certification of its own.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The sourcing help article says prospects come from 'over 800 million candidate records' held by an unnamed 'trusted provider' and drawn from public records, the public internet and social media, and answers 'No' when asked whether a person can be kept out of cold-prospect search.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/27641372571163-AI-Assisted-Candidate-Sourcing-Overview
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The privacy policy (last modified 23 June 2026) says ClearCompany processes candidate data on customers' behalf under contract and relies on Standard Contractual Clauses for EU, UK and Swiss transfers, with a named DPO contact.
Human Oversight Design
7 items63
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
In AI Talent Match, the score only sorts the New Applicants list, hovering over it shows 'the job titles and skills used in calculating the score', HR Admins can switch the feature off, and the FAQ states 'The AI doesn't decide who you should hire'.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/27643465473819-AI-Assisted-Talent-Match-Overview
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Sourcing Agent returns candidates sorted by 'automated performance grades' with per-category scores, full transcripts and call summaries explaining each rank, and it 'cannot move candidates to final hiring stages without your approval'.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
ClearCo documents that agents 'cannot make permanent changes, advance candidates, or send emails without your explicit approval' and that a two-step confirmation is enforced for changes that trigger permanent downstream workflows.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The agents' control article describes a human-in-the-loop model with change summaries and affected-record counts, but notes that moving a candidate to a disposition stage still sends any automated emails configured for that stage.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/51640940059675-How-ClearCo-agents-keep-you-in-control
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The June 2026 launch release says agents can be triggered by the system itself, for example when 'a candidate reaches a specific stage', 'with no human intervention required', and the public documentation does not set out the limits of that trigger path.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The AI Addendum bars customers from relying on AI features or output as 'the sole basis' for hiring decisions and requires 'adequate, appropriate, and independent human review'.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No per-jurisdiction AI controls, candidate-notice tooling for Talent Match or the Sourcing Agent, or exportable AI decision logs were documented in the product pages or the public help center, where searches for 'audit log' and 'Local Law 144' returned no such features.
Post-Market Monitoring
6 items37
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No public status page exists: status.clearcompany.com points to Site24x7 StatusIQ but displays 'No status page found with this domain mapping', clearcompany.statuspage.io and clearco.statuspage.io redirect to Atlassian's marketing site, and the website links to no status page.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No security.txt (clearcompany.com/.well-known/security.txt returns 404), vulnerability-disclosure program or security contact email was found on the security page or elsewhere on clearcompany.com.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The AI Addendum invites customers to report 'inaccurate, harmful, biased, unfair, offensive, or inappropriate' output to support@clearcompany.com and reserves operational monitoring of inputs and outputs to catch malfunctions or 'abnormal performance'.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Public monthly release notes in the help center record AI launches such as the June 2026 introduction of ClearCo Agents, but log no model versions, retraining events or fairness-monitoring results.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/50535546434715-2026-6-Release-Notes
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
In-product EEO and gender-by-stage dashboards, documented in September 2026, let customers look for demographic drop-offs between New Applicants and Hired, although none of the documented views breaks outcomes down by Talent Match score or Sourcing Agent rank.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The security page says all services are monitored internally and externally for uptime and that IDS alerts go to a 24/7 third-party SOC, but none of this monitoring is exposed publicly.
Customer Documentation
5 items60
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The public Talent AI page describes AI Talent Match, the AI sourcing engine, the Sourcing Agent's screening calls with results ranked by score, and the Interview Agent, and states that 'Every consequential step waits for human confirmation'.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The public help center documents how each AI feature works in practice, including the AI Notetaker's candidate disclaimer text for invites and meeting chat, the steps for candidates to opt out and the admin switch that disables it.
https://clearco.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/35623156259099-AI-Notetaker-Overview
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A public AI Addendum (updated 15 July 2026) sets out AI data handling, responsibilities for agentic features and use restrictions without requiring a sales contact.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
GDPR and CCPA guidance pages advise deployers on data-subject rights, candidate consent and notices to sourced candidates, but date from 2018-2020 and do not address AI.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No NYC Local Law 144, EU AI Act, Illinois, Colorado or California deployer guidance, candidate-notice template for Talent Match or the Sourcing Agent, public DPA, public pricing or working sub-processor list was found on clearcompany.com or in the help center.
Editorial notes
Company overview
ClearCo is the name ClearCompany adopted in March 2026. Founded in Boston in 2004 as an applicant tracking system, it now sells a unified talent suite covering recruiting, background checks, onboarding, performance, engagement, learning and compensation. The contracting entity is still ClearCompany, LLC, and the company says more than 3,000 organizations use the platform. Pricing is by quote only, sold as packages such as ClearRecruit and TotalTalent. Its main hiring AI is AI Talent Match, launched in 2024. An in-house vector model scores each new applicant by comparing resume skills and job titles with the requisition, and the new-applicant list is sorted by that score together with a non-AI Location Match based on postal code. Alongside it sit an AI sourcing engine covering more than 800 million external profiles, a Virtual Recruiter chatbot that asks recruiter-written knockout questions and books interviews, and an AI Notetaker. The Agent Platform, generally available since 16 July 2026, adds a Sourcing Agent (part of the AI Sourcing Max add-on). It runs AI-conducted phone screening calls and returns applicants ranked by score, with category breakdowns and transcripts. The platform also includes Req, Interview and Review agents and agents that customers build themselves.
Regulatory exposure
AI Talent Match and the Sourcing Agent both rank applicants to set the order in which recruiters review them. NYC employers that rely on them are therefore likely using automated employment decision tools under NYC Local Law 144, yet no bias audit or published summary exists for either tool. ClearCo's help-center answer to 'AI bias audit or Title VII compliance' says only that the model reads job titles and skills and that customers are responsible for compliance. This comes as DCWP has committed to tougher enforcement after a December 2025 State Comptroller audit found its enforcement ineffective. Under the EU AI Act, both tools are Annex III high-risk systems. The Digital AI Omnibus deferred those obligations to 2 December 2027 without changing them. ClearCo publishes no EU AI Act material and does not say what its AI-conducted screening calls score, which EU deployers need to check against the ban on workplace emotion recognition in force since February 2025. Illinois HB 3773 has required notice of AI use since 1 January 2026 and bars using zip codes as proxies for protected classes, so Illinois employers should examine Location Match's postal-code ranking. Colorado's SB 26-189 adds disclosure duties from 1 January 2027. California's FEHA automated-decision rules require records to be kept for four years, which does not fit well with ClearCo's 2024 statement that Virtual Recruiter keeps no data on applicants who fail its knockout questions. ClearCo's July 2026 AI Addendum places notice, explanation, opt-out and human-review duties on the customer and disclaims responsibility for bias in outputs, yet ClearCo provides no jurisdiction-specific templates for meeting those duties.
Path to a higher score
The most valuable step would be an independent bias audit of AI Talent Match and the Sourcing Agent, published without a form. It should name the auditor and the date and give selection rates and impact ratios by sex, by race/ethnicity and by the two combined. ClearCo's own July 2026 due-diligence guide gives only 2-3 out of 5 to vendors that have 'a named bias-testing method' but no 'reviewable report', and that is where ClearCo's public record sits. Second, publish model cards. For Talent Match, explain what the '20 years worth of data' behind the vector model contains, how it was de-identified, and the model's validation and error rates. For the Sourcing Agent, publish its scoring categories, what the call scoring evaluates, the underlying AI provider and the alternative offered to candidates who decline an AI call. Third, fix the dead sub-processor link in the AI Addendum, publish the DPA, name the provider of the sourcing data and let people who have been sourced remove themselves from it. Fourth, the Addendum already hands compliance duties to customers, so ClearCo should give them the tools: LL 144 notice text and exports of audit data, Illinois notice language with guidance on Location Match, Colorado and California disclosure templates, and an EU AI Act Article 26/27 pack with a FRIA template. Finally, switch on the StatusIQ status page that its DNS already points to, publish a security.txt and a vulnerability-disclosure contact, and log model changes to Talent Match and the agents in the public release notes.
Regulatory frame
What applies to ATS-integrated AI.
Ranking features are inside EU AI Act Annex III §4 (high-risk) and inside NYC Local Law 144 when they affect NYC-based candidates. Customers should treat the AI surface as a distinct deployer-FRIA scope from the rest of the ATS.
Compare
ClearCo (ClearCompany) against its nearest-scoring peers.
The closest scores in ATS-integrated AI, side by side.
- Side-by-sideClearCo (ClearCompany) vs HiBob46F
- Side-by-sideClearCo (ClearCompany) vs Brainner46F
- Side-by-sideClearCo (ClearCompany) vs Factorial46F
- Side-by-sideClearCo (ClearCompany) vs Talkpush46F
Ranking
Others rated in ATS-integrated AI
Ranked 39 of 77 by weighted total under rubric v1.0. The ordering is arithmetic on the rubric and carries no view on which tool suits a given hiring process.
- #36HiBob46F
- #37Brainner46F
- #38Factorial46F
- #39ClearCo (ClearCompany)This profile46F
- #40Talkpush46F
- #41Darwinbox46F
Conflicts of interest
No vendor pays for placement, scoring, or removal. Casework - the consulting firm that operates this directory - provides paid services to some vendors. Any active or recent (within 24 months) commercial relationship is disclosed on the affected vendor profile and the review is reassigned to an independent reviewer. See the full policy on About.
Casework has no commercial relationship with this vendor.