In short
An AI notetaker helps in interviews for a specific reason: it lets the interviewer listen to the candidate instead of writing, and it gives the hiring panel the candidate's actual words rather than one person's memory of them. It also adds obligations.
A candidate is in a weak position to refuse a recording, their interview is personal data, and notes that capture impressions rather than evidence make hiring less fair, not more.
This guide covers how to ask, how to write notes that hold up, and what to keep. It is about process, not law; where law comes in, it links to the guides that cover it.
Ask the candidate, properly
A candidate who wants the job will usually say yes to anything. That makes the way you ask important.
- Ask in writing, before the day. Put it in the interview confirmation: "With your agreement, we record interviews so the panel can refer back to what you said. The recording is kept only until the hiring decision is made. If you would rather we did not record, reply and say so — it makes no difference to how we assess you."
- Ask again at the start. "Are you still happy for me to record this?" Say it before the first question, not after.
- Mean the opt-out. If the candidate declines, take notes by hand and do not mention it again. Keep a note that the interview was not recorded, so nobody wonders later why there is no transcript.
Recording law differs between places, and some require everyone's agreement. How to ask for consent to record has scripts and covers what to do when someone says no. If your candidates are in the EU or UK, recording meetings under GDPR covers the lawful basis, notice and retention; consent from a job applicant raises the same power-imbalance questions it does for employees.
Write evidence against criteria, not impressions
Structured interviews exist to make assessments comparable: the same questions, the same criteria, scored the same way. An AI summary does not do that for you. It condenses the conversation; it does not know your criteria, and it can make a hesitant answer sound confident or miss a strong one.
Use the transcript for what it is good at:
- Straight after the interview, write down for each criterion what the candidate said that counts as evidence, in their words where possible, with the timestamp.
- Score against the criterion, not against the other candidates or the interviewer's sense of fit.
- Mark what is missing. If a criterion was not covered, say so rather than inferring it.
- Leave out anything irrelevant to the job — accent, appearance, family, anything the candidate mentioned in passing that you would not ask about.
Interview notes: a template for fair hiring decisions has a scorecard layout you can copy.
A fictional example
Tom Becker is hiring a support engineer for Harbour. One criterion is "diagnoses a problem before proposing a fix". His note:
- Evidence: Asked which version the customer was on and whether the problem started after an update before suggesting anything (14:20). Proposed rolling back only after hearing the answer (15:05).
- Score: Strong.
- Gaps: Did not cover escalation; ask in the second interview.
Nothing in that note says "seemed sharp" or "great energy". A second interviewer can check it against the transcript and reach their own view.
Keep the panel's notes independent
If the whole panel reads one AI summary before scoring, the panel is scoring a summary. Have each interviewer write their own evidence first, then compare. The transcript settles disagreements about what was said; it does not settle what it means.
Decide what to keep, and for how long
Interview material is personal data about someone who has not joined your organisation and may never do so.
- Audio: keep until the decision is made and any feedback is given, then delete.
- Transcript: the same, unless your process requires it for longer.
- Scorecards and evidence notes: as long as your recruitment records policy says; these are what you would rely on if a decision were challenged.
- Unsuccessful candidates: do not keep recordings "in case" a role comes up. If you want to keep someone on file, ask them.
Be ready for a candidate to ask for their data. If recordings and transcripts exist, they are part of it.
Voice recognition and candidates
Some notetakers can learn voices and recognise people across meetings. For interviews, leave this off. A voiceprint used to identify someone is biometric data under laws such as the GDPR and Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act, and a candidate has no reason to expect one to be made.
How Notey fits into this
Notey records your microphone and what your Mac plays as two separate tracks, so on a video interview your questions are labelled You and the candidate's answers Them without anyone's voice being learned. Nothing joins the call, so the candidate sees no bot — which also means they see no indicator, and asking is your job.
- Recording and transcription stay on your Mac. Apple's on-device speech recognition makes the transcript; the audio is not uploaded. No account is needed for this.
- Every line plays. Click a timestamp to hear the moment you are citing as evidence.
- AI notes are asked for, not automatic. With an account, you can ask for a summary or minutes. Only transcript text is sent, and everything the AI wrote is labelled as AI-generated. Automatic write-ups are a setting you can leave off.
- Voice recognition is off by default, which is where it should stay for interviews.
- Deleting a meeting removes its recording, transcript and notes, which is how you apply your retention period.
Notey has no applicant tracking integration and no shared workspace. To give the panel the evidence, export the note as Markdown, or the transcript as plain text, and put it where your hiring process keeps records.
If you interview on behalf of clients, the workflow in AI meeting notes for consultants covers checking each client's rules before recording.
Frequently asked questions
Can I record a job interview?
Only with the candidate's agreement in many places, and it is good practice everywhere. Ask before the interview, in writing, and again at the start; offer to go ahead without recording if they prefer, and make clear it will not count against them.
Should the AI summary go into the hiring decision?
Not on its own. Use the transcript to check the evidence you wrote against each criterion. A summary is a condensed version of the conversation, not an assessment, and it can leave out or overstate things.
How long should I keep interview recordings?
Decide in advance and keep them no longer than the hiring process needs. Data protection law such as the GDPR requires a retention period you can justify; many teams keep the written evidence and delete the audio once the decision is made.
Can candidates ask for their interview transcript?
Under the GDPR and similar laws, a candidate can ask for a copy of personal data you hold about them, which includes recordings, transcripts and notes. Keep them somewhere you can find and export them.