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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.

HireAIScore rates Stepstone 49 out of 100 (grade F, Substantial gaps) under rubric v1.0, last reviewed September 25, 2026. Stepstone ranks 52 of 160 vendors rated in Screening AI, against a category average of 46. That score is drawn from 33 evidence items across 7 rubric criteria for Stepstone — 29 with a cited source, 4 recording that nothing was located.

§ 01 - Company facts

Legal name
The Stepstone Group Deutschland GmbH
Founded
1996
Headquarters
Germany · DE
Pricing tier
Mid
Market side
Employer-side (AEDT)
Categories
ScreeningSourcing
Website
stepstone.de

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.

  1. 01

    Article 11 Technical Documentation

    Weight 20%

    55

    +11.0 · category avg 49

  2. 02

    Bias Audit Transparency

    Weight 18%

    50

    +9.0 · category avg 41

  3. 03

    FRIA Support

    Weight 15%

    30

    +4.5 · category avg 31

  4. 04

    Data Governance Disclosure

    Weight 15%

    55

    +8.3 · category avg 53

  5. 05

    Human Oversight Design

    Weight 12%

    58

    +7.0 · category avg 56

  6. 06

    Post-Market Monitoring

    Weight 12%

    38

    +4.6 · category avg 40

  7. 07

    Customer Documentation

    Weight 8%

    58

    +4.6 · 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.

Total weighted score: 48.9(rounded to 49 for display)

§ 03 - Strongest · weakest

Strongest category

Customer Documentation

Raw score 58 · contributes 4.6 to total.

58 against a 58 category average

Weakest category

FRIA Support

Raw score 30 · contributes 4.5 to total.

30 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
33
Documentation
21
Audit report
1
Public statement
7
Absence
4
With a source URL
29 of 33
Source hostnames
6
Fewest items
3
FRIA Support

These figures measure how thoroughly Stepstone was reviewed, not how Stepstone performed — an absence row, recording that nothing was located, is counted like any other item.

Article 11 Technical Documentation

6 items55

Bias Audit Transparency

4 items50

FRIA Support

3 items30

Data Governance Disclosure

6 items55

Human Oversight Design

5 items58

Post-Market Monitoring

4 items38

Customer Documentation

5 items58

§ 05 - Editorial notes

Company overview

The Stepstone Group started in 1996 in Norway as Jobshop.no. It is headquartered in Düsseldorf and has been majority-owned by KKR and CPP Investments since 2025. It runs Stepstone.de, Totaljobs and other job boards, plus Appcast (US programmatic job ads, out of scope here). Its employer-side AI sits in Stepstone Recruit. The Screening Agent, called 'Talent Assessor' in the data processing agreement, sorts a job ad's requirements into must-have and nice-to-have. It then checks each CV and screening answer against every requirement as fully, partially or not met, and gives recruiters a score or category with the reasons. Talent Finder recommends profiles from a CV database of more than 4 million. Stepstone bought Mya, a US conversational screener, in May 2021 and folded it into jobseeker-side job matching. mya.com now redirects to the corporate homepage and Mya is not among the group's core brands, so there is no sign it is still sold as an employer screener.

Regulatory exposure

EU exposure is maximal. Rating and prioritising applications (Screening Agent) and recommending candidates (Talent Finder) are high-risk uses under EU AI Act Annex III point 4, with Stepstone as provider and its employer customers as deployers. Stepstone's own white paper classifies its candidate recommender as high-risk. The Digital AI Omnibus moved the high-risk obligations from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2027 without changing them. GDPR Article 22 and Germany's General Equal Treatment Act (AGG) already apply. Stepstone says a human always makes the final decision, although an optional Quality Check automatically filters out non-EU applications. Stepstone says it does not analyse video-interview content, and no emotion-recognition use (banned since February 2025) was found. Both tools are marketed on stepstone.de to employers in Germany. NYC LL 144, Illinois HB 3773, Colorado SB 26-189 and California's FEHA rules on automated-decision systems therefore matter only where the tools are used for US roles or candidates, and no LL 144 bias audit is published.

Path to a higher score

Publish documentation for the Screening Agent: instructions for use, the underlying model and its provider, how requirements are extracted and weighted, and accuracy and known limitations. Extend the QuantPi / TÜV AI.Lab non-discrimination testing to the live Screening Agent and Talent Finder, cover gender, age, ethnicity and their intersections, and repeat it on a published schedule. Publish deployer guidance for AI Act Articles 26 and 27, including a FRIA template, candidate-notice text and human-oversight procedures, and document the recruiter override controls. Publish the AI section of the trust center, which is currently hidden, name the model and cloud sub-processors, and add a public status page and a model changelog. Pursue ISO/IEC 42001; the trust center says ISO 27001 certification is not planned.

§ 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.

Keep reading

All screening vendors→How this score is built→Annex IV section-by-section: what AI hiring vendors must document→What makes a defensible NYC LL 144 bias audit→

§ Compare

Build any comparison→

Stepstone against its nearest-scoring peers.

In Screening AI.

§ Others rated in Screening AI

All screening vendors→

Ranked 52 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.

  1. 49Versant by Pearson49F
  2. 50Jobma49F
  3. 51Infor Talent Science49F
  4. 52StepstoneThis profile49F
  5. 53Lever49F
  6. 54Oracle Recruiting49F

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.