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.
HireAIScore rates Employment Hero 48 out of 100 (grade F, Substantial gaps) under rubric v1.0, last reviewed September 25, 2026. Employment Hero ranks 61 of 160 vendors rated in Screening AI, against a category average of 46. That score is drawn from 35 evidence items across 7 rubric criteria for Employment Hero — 31 with a cited source, 4 recording that nothing was located.
§ 01 - Company facts
- Legal name
- Employment Hero Pty Ltd
- Founded
- 2014
- Headquarters
- Australia · AU
- Pricing tier
- Mid
- Market side
- Employer-side (AEDT)
- Categories
- ScreeningATS-integratedSourcingVideo interview
- Website
- employmenthero.com
These are company details, not findings. They are editable by a verified representative and carry no weight in the score, which is built only from the cited evidence below.
§ 02 - Score breakdown
§ Score breakdown
Category scoring
Weighted contribution shown to the right of each bar.
- 01
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Weight 20%50
+10.0 · category avg 49
- 02
Bias Audit Transparency
Weight 18%35
+6.3 · category avg 41
- 03
FRIA Support
Weight 15%32
+4.8 · category avg 31
- 04
Data Governance Disclosure
Weight 15%56
+8.4 · category avg 53
- 05
Human Oversight Design
Weight 12%62
+7.4 · category avg 56
- 06
Post-Market Monitoring
Weight 12%50
+6.0 · category avg 40
- 07
Customer Documentation
Weight 8%62
+5.0 · category avg 58
Category avg is the mean raw score on that criterion across the 160 Screening AI vendors in scope of this rubric, this one included.
§ 03 - Strongest · weakest
Strongest category
Customer Documentation
Raw score 62 · contributes 5.0 to total.
62 against a 58 category average
Weakest category
FRIA Support
Raw score 32 · contributes 4.8 to total.
32 against a 31 category average
§ 04 - Cited evidence
Download diligence record→§ Evidence
Cited per category
Every score is backed by at least one cited piece of evidence.
Evidence ledger
- Items
- 35
- Documentation
- 23
- Public statement
- 8
- Absence
- 4
- With a source URL
- 31 of 35
- Source hostnames
- 4
- Fewest items
- 3
- FRIA Support
These figures measure how thoroughly Employment Hero was reviewed, not how Employment Hero performed — an absence row, recording that nothing was located, is counted like any other item.
Article 11 Technical Documentation
5 items50
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The AI Services Statement is what Employment Hero calls its primary AI transparency document; it describes the AI Recruitment Agent as a decision-support tool that reviews candidates' written, audio and video responses and produces automated scores and strengths-and-weaknesses summaries against criteria the recruiter sets.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The EH Jobs product statement (page title 'EH Jobs - SmartMatch Product Statement') says matching uses a candidate's recent experience (job titles, industry, location), job preferences, education and qualifications, and application activity.
https://employmenthero.com/legals/eh-jobs-product-statement/
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Responsible AI page sets out five principles and a plan-build-test-release-support process with risk triage and pre-release evaluations, and claims 'formal AI impact assessments', but it names no external framework and publishes no assessments or test results.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Help Centre documentation says Hero AI ranks candidates against the job description, required skills and experience level, but the order 'may not be strictly top-to-bottom by score due to other relevancy factors' that it does not describe.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Searched the Responsible AI page, AI Services Statement, EH Jobs product statement, Trust Centre resource list and Help Centre Hero AI articles; none contains a model card, technical documentation pack, validation or accuracy metrics, instructions for use or ISO/IEC 42001 certification.
Bias Audit Transparency
4 items35
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Employment Hero says it 'completed documented bias and disparate impact testing' for the Shortlisting Agent and, in the scenarios tested, found no statistically significant bias or disparate impact across the protected-characteristic proxies assessed; it publishes no report, method, dates, sample or auditor.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Responsible AI page says prioritised systems are periodically audited for fairness and bias using representative samples and guardrail metrics, with remediation and re-testing, but names no auditor and publishes no results.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The recruitment product page advertises 'instant, bias-free scoring', an absolute claim that no published audit supports.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
No independent or NYC Local Law 144 bias audit found: the Trust Centre holds only security and privacy documents, Warden AI's public dashboard has no Employment Hero page (404), and Holistic AI's trust portal shows only a sign-in page.
FRIA Support
3 items32
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Under the Data Processing Addendum (effective 15 June 2026), Employment Hero will help customers, at their cost, with GDPR Articles 32 to 36 obligations (which include DPIAs) and with Article 22 automated-decision requests, using reasonable efforts to explain the logic and outputs of its AI features.
https://employmenthero.com/legals/privacy-policy/data-processing/
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Privacy Policy says employers configure the AI screening tools and are responsible for how they are used, and tells candidates to go to the employer for human review or an explanation of AI use.
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Searched the Responsible AI page, AI Services Statement, legal pages, Trust Centre, and the Help Centre's recruitment and Hero AI articles; none offers an EU AI Act fundamental rights impact assessment template, AI Act deployer-obligation guidance or instructions for use.
Data Governance Disclosure
6 items56
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The statement says personal data is not used to train AI models (processing is inference only) and AI partners may not train on customer personal data; it names Anthropic (Claude) and Google (Gemini) as AI technology partners.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Vanta-hosted Trust Centre lists ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 27017, 27018 and 27701 certifications, a gated August 2025 SOC 2 Type 2 report, and 57 subprocessors, including AI vendors Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenAI, ElevenLabs (AI interviewer voices), Mux (candidate videos), Affinda and LangChain (logging Hero AI and SmartMatch inputs and outputs).
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Responsible AI page says the Recruitment Agent excludes protected attributes such as name, age, gender and location from ranking, that third-party models run with zero data retention and no training, and that data is hosted in Australia, Ireland and Canada.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Help Centre documentation calls location 'a primary matching factor' in Hero AI candidate matching, which is hard to reconcile with the Responsible AI page's statement that location is excluded.
https://help.employmenthero.com/hc/en-au/articles/17374461942927-Find-Talent-questions-answered
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The FAQ on the Find Candidates page (titled 'AI Recruitment Software Australia | SmartMatch') says recommendations draw on resumes, cover letters, applications and 'past hiring patterns', plus performance metrics and skills assessments, a wider set of inputs than the EH Jobs product statement lists.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The platform blocks terms such as age, race, religion, pregnant, disability and marital status from employers' screening questions.
Human Oversight Design
7 items62
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Shortlisting Agent moves candidates who meet every must-have forward automatically but leaves those who clearly do not qualify in the 'New' stage for recruiter review rather than rejecting them; recruiters can override it, switch it off and see each candidate's criteria breakdown and an activity log of every agent action.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Before inviting candidates, recruiters can review and edit AI-generated interview questions and see the 'Good' versus 'Bad' criteria the AI scores against; evaluations show per-question AI scores with the AI's 'working out', video playback and transcripts.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Candidates can run a match check on any job listing and see Skills, Experience and Qualifications percentages with a breakdown by criterion.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
An optional blind-hiring setting on selected plans hides name, photo, social profiles, address, email and phone number for candidates in the 'New' stage.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Candidates and recruiters are told in-platform when AI is used in screening, recruiters may review and override all AI outputs, and candidates may request human review of AI assessments.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The candidate guide says applicants will speak with an AI interviewer and that applications without a completed interview will not progress, but it offers no alternative format, accommodation or human-review route.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Recruitment Agent product page says strong matches 'can progress to your shortlist automatically' and that the agent places AI screening calls to candidates who need further vetting.
Post-Market Monitoring
5 items50
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Trust Centre FAQ offers a public channel for AI concerns via privacy@employmenthero.com; it names Hero AI and SmartMatch, covers bias, fairness and adverse outcomes, and promises triage under an internal AI governance framework and no retaliation.
https://trust.employmenthero.com/faq?s=15ogsssecj4lj67gxybhw2
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
status.employmenthero.com is an Atlassian Statuspage covering HR, payroll, login and integrations; its 50 most recent public incidents span June 2025 to September 2026, with no published postmortems and no recruitment, SmartMatch or AI component.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Weekly public release notes record SmartMatch model changes; a Week 50 2025 update, for example, made SmartMatch scores factor in pre-screening answers on work rights, availability and certifications.
https://help.employmenthero.com/hc/en-au/articles/17426659681167-Week-50-2025-Release-Notes
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A security.txt file lists vuln@employmenthero.com for vulnerability reports and links a disclosure policy.
- Public statementCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Responsible AI page claims continuous monitoring of model performance and drift and periodic fairness audits after release, but there is no public monitoring dashboard and no published results.
Customer Documentation
5 items62
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A product page titled 'SmartMatch - Automated Candidate Screening' says the tool uses AI to analyse candidates' skills, experience and certifications and deliver matched candidates to employers.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Help Centre articles document the matching logic, access permissions, candidate consent and sourcing, and the retirement of the SmartMatch dashboard on 31 March 2026 in favour of Find Talent.
https://help.employmenthero.com/hc/en-au/articles/17374461942927-Find-Talent-questions-answered
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
The Privacy Policy (effective 3 June 2026) has a section on automated processing of EH Jobs candidates that covers AI screening, AI voice interviews, automatic progression and how to seek human review.
- DocumentationCaptured Sep 25, 2026
A SmartMatch launch webinar Q&A (current as at 30 August 2023) explains that matching then used job titles, locations and skills, that candidates opt in to profile sharing, and that admins control where matches appear.
https://employmenthero.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/SmartMatch-Webinar-QA.pdf
- AbsenceCaptured Sep 25, 2026
Searched the Responsible AI page, legal pages and Help Centre recruitment articles; none gives jurisdiction-specific deployer guidance such as NYC Local Law 144 notices, EU AI Act deployer duties, Illinois AI Video Interview Act consent or Colorado disclosures.
§ 05 - Editorial notes
Company overview
Employment Hero was founded in 2014 by Ben Thompson and Dave Tong and is headquartered in Sydney. It sells an HR, payroll and hiring platform that it says serves more than 350,000 businesses, mainly in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada. SmartMatch launched in 2023 to match employers with job seekers from the Employment Hero Jobs board, which now holds about 2 million profiles. The SmartMatch dashboard was retired on 31 March 2026, and the same Hero AI matching now drives Find Talent search and applicant scoring in the ATS. Alongside it, a Recruitment Agent and a Shortlisting Agent score applicants against criteria the employer sets. Applicants who meet every must-have move forward automatically, and the agents also run AI-led video interviews and phone screening calls. The company publishes a Responsible AI page, an AI Services Statement and a SmartMatch product statement. It has not published an independent bias audit.
Regulatory exposure
Ranking candidates, shortlisting them automatically and scoring AI interviews are recruitment uses that the EU AI Act treats as high-risk (Annex III point 4). Employment Hero's core markets are outside the EU, but it has appointed an EU GDPR representative, and the Annex III duties now apply from 2 December 2027. Its Recruitment Agent page says AI video interviews are 'summarised with sentiment analysis' but does not say what signals the analysis uses. That matters because inferring emotions in the workplace has been prohibited in the EU since 2 February 2025 (Art. 5(1)(f)). Employment Hero runs no US regional site, so US rules apply only where its customers hire in those places: NYC Local Law 144 (an annual independent bias audit plus candidate notice), Illinois' AI Video Interview Act and HB 3773 notice duties, Colorado's SB 26-189 disclosures from 1 January 2027, and California's FEHA automated-decision rules. It has published no audit of the kind Local Law 144 requires. In its home market, Australia's 2024 Privacy Act amendments add duties to explain automated decisions in privacy policies from 10 December 2026. Its data processing agreement already commits it to help customers answer Article 22 requests under the GDPR and UK GDPR.
Path to a higher score
The biggest gain would come from publishing the 'documented bias and disparate impact testing' Employment Hero says it ran on the Shortlisting Agent. Better still would be a yearly independent audit with impact ratios by sex and race/ethnicity, covering SmartMatch/Find Talent scores and AI interview scores. It should also publish a model card that sets out the inputs, validation results and known limits. The inputs should include location, work rights and the 'other relevancy factors' in ranking that it does not explain. It should say exactly what the interview 'sentiment analysis' measures, and bring marketing claims such as 'bias-free scoring' into line with its own documentation. Several additions would close the remaining gaps: EU AI Act deployer guidance with a fundamental rights impact assessment template, NYC and Illinois notice templates, an alternative or accommodation route in the AI interview flow, and recruitment and AI components with postmortems on its status page.
§ Regulatory frame
What applies to screening ai.
Treated as high-risk under Annex III §4 when the screening output is decisive. EU AI Act Article 13 transparency obligations apply; deployers must give candidates a way to contest.
§ Compare
Build any comparison→Employment Hero against its nearest-scoring peers.
In Screening AI.
§ Others rated in Screening AI
All screening vendors→Ranked 61 of 160 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.
- 58ADP48F
- 59Sova Assessment48F
- 60Workable48F
- 61Employment HeroThis profile48F
- 62The Predictive Index48F
- 63Saville Assessment48F
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.