Quick Start Guide

A concise orientation to SageScreen: from registration to reviewing your first screening results.

Overview

SageScreen is an AI-powered candidate screening platform. You create screening agents called Sages, invite candidates to complete structured interviews, and review explained results with full transcripts. The entire process follows four stages: register your account, build a Sage, create screens, and review results.

This guide provides a high-level walkthrough of each stage. Detailed coverage of every feature is available in the linked articles throughout.

Stage 1: Register and Set Up Your Account

Registration requires a name, email, username, and password. You can also sign up using Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn through social login. After registration, you land on your dashboard immediately.

Your organization in SageScreen is called a council. Every user belongs to at least one council, and all data (sages, screens, results, candidates) is scoped to that council. If you registered through a purchase flow, your council and credits are provisioned automatically.

To add team members, invite them from your council’s user management area. Invited users receive an email with a setup link. You assign their role at invitation time:

• Council Admin: Full control over settings, billing, users, sages, all screens, and reporting.
• Council Power User: Operational access: create sages, manage screens, view reports, and manage users (except admins).
• Council Member: View sages, screens, and results. No creating or editing.

Stage 2: Create and Deploy a Sage

A Sage is your AI screening agent, configured to evaluate candidates for a specific role. Building one involves two phases: design and build.

The Six-Step Wizard

1. Context: Select the sage type and level (Lite, Core, or Advanced). Enter the position title, seniority level, and a detailed job description. The quality of the job description directly determines the quality of the screening.
2. Culture: Define company culture and values, set an opening interview question, choose an evaluation guideline (Flexible through Strict), and select a conversational tone.
3. Finalize: Review all settings. Confirm your credit balance is sufficient before initiating the build.
4. Build: The AI processes your inputs and trains the Sage. This typically takes around ten minutes. You can close the page and will receive an email when the build is complete. Sage creation credits are consumed at this step.
5. Test: Send yourself a test invitation and complete the screening as a candidate would. Test screens are free, excluded from reporting, and are strongly recommended before going live.
6. Deploy: Configure the candidate invitation email template and activate the Sage. Once deployed and active, you can begin creating screens. Deployed Sages are immutable apart from voice and language: every candidate is evaluated against the same criteria.

Tip

You can start from a Sage Mentor: a pre-trained template built on proven screening best practices, and customize from there, or build entirely from scratch.

Stage 3: Create Screens and Invite Candidates

A screen is a single candidate’s invitation to complete a Sage’s interview. To create one, select an active Sage, enter the candidate’s name and email, and send the invitation. Credits are consumed at screen creation.

Candidates receive an email invitation with a unique, single-use link. They click the link, enter the screening, and complete a structured interview conducted by the Sage. The experience is adaptive and typically lasts between 10 and 45 minutes, depending on the Sage’s configuration. An Advanced screen with charts or coding diagrams can take over an hour.

You can create screens individually or in batches. Each screen tracks its own status through the lifecycle:

Status	What It Means
Draft	Screen created but invitation not yet sent.
Invited	Invitation email sent; candidate has not yet clicked the link.
Accepted	Candidate has clicked the link and accepted the terms.
Started	Interview is actively underway.
Completed	Interview ended. Results are generated when the candidate finished the full interview.

Candidate-facing emails (the invitation, follow-up reminders, and cancellation notices) can be customized per Sage, including the sender name, subject line, and body content.

Stage 4: Review Results

When a candidate completes the full interview, the evaluation engine evaluates their transcript and generates a structured report. The report includes:

• Category results: an alignment rating for each evaluation dimension, with explanations and candidate quotes.
• Recommendation: a Strong, Moderate, or Weak alignment signal based on the Sage’s evaluation guideline.
• Summary: a written assessment of the candidate’s overall performance, strengths, and gaps.
• Transcript: the complete conversation log for manual review.
• Verification: a unique code and QR code for external validation of results.

Results are available on the screen’s detail page and can be exported as a PDF. The PDF includes the verification code for third-party authenticity checks.

Caution

Only screens where the candidate finished the full interview produce results. Screens that end early, time out, or are abandoned record a completion reason but no evaluation.

Onboarding Checklist

Use this as a reference for your first session:

• Account: Verify your email, review your council settings, and invite any team members who need access.
• Credits: Confirm your credit balance covers the screens you plan to create. Screen credits and sage credits are separate currencies.
• First Sage: Start with a single role you know well. Write a detailed, honest job description. Choose an evaluation guideline that matches your bar for the role.
• Test before deploying: Send yourself a test invitation. Experience the screening as your candidates will. Adjust your inputs if needed before going live.
• First screen: Create a screen for one candidate. Review the results to calibrate your expectations before scaling to a larger batch.

Getting Help

SageScreen provides two built-in help tools so you never have to leave the application to get assistance.

Sage Assist

Sage Assist is an AI companion that helps you write content when creating or editing a Sage. It appears as an owl icon next to certain text fields during the Sage creation workflow and on the Sage editing page.

• On the Context step: click the owl icon next to the Job Description field to generate a complete job description based on the role and level you entered.
• On the Culture step and the Sage edit page: click the owl icon to generate a suggested opening interview question and reasoning.

Each click produces a new suggestion. The generated text is a starting point; edit it freely to match your voice and requirements. Sage Assist writes in the language configured for your Sage, so non-English Sages receive content in the appropriate language.

Tip

The first time you visit the Sage creation page, a tooltip introduces Sage Assist. Dismiss it by clicking Got it!: you will not see it again unless you reset onboarding from your account settings.

Live Chat

A chat widget is available in the bottom-right corner of every page while you are logged in. Click it to start a conversation with the SageScreen support team. The chat knows your account context (name, email, and council) so you do not need to re-identify yourself. Use live chat for questions about your account, billing, feature guidance, or anything else you need help with in real time.

Where to Go Next

Article	What It Covers
Billing and Credits	Credit types, purchasing, and refund policies.
Creating and Deploying a Sage	The full Sage lifecycle from mentor selection through deployment.
Launching and Managing Screens	Screen creation, status management, cancellation, and bulk operations.
Reports, Scoring, and Signals	Understanding screening results and how recommendations are reached.
Terminology and Definitions	Glossary of platform terms used throughout SageScreen.