AI & data policy

What Sofee actually does.

Effective 18 May 2026. Reviewed at least every six months. Last reviewed 18 May 2026.

Honest about where the AI starts, where it stops, and where a human takes over. This page is the candidate-facing summary of the Consortia Personnel Ltd AI Acceptable Use and Governance Policy for Hiring, which applies to both Consortia and Sofee. For the full governance document, email dpo@consortia.com.

Our position on AI in hiring

We use AI to support fairer, faster, and better-documented hiring, while keeping people accountable for decisions. AI must never make a final hiring, rejection, shortlist, offer, or placement decision without meaningful human review.

We design and operate in line with UK GDPR, the EU AI Act, ISO 42001, and EEOC-style fairness principles. (EEOC is the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; its anti-discrimination framework broadly parallels the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance we work under.)

What Sofee does

• Takes the brief over a short voice call with the hiring contact (typically 5 to 15 minutes, recorded with consent).
• Sources across LinkedIn, specialist boards, industry communities, competitor networks, and Consortia's existing candidate base, in parallel.
• Reaches out to potential candidates under Sofee's own brand (with Consortia named as the operating agency).
• Screens initial responses through a structured conversation and a CV-versus-brief comparison.
• Scores and ranks candidates against the specific brief, with reasoning attached to every match.
• Prepares a shortlist for human review.

What a human does

• A Consortia recruiter reviews every shortlist before it reaches the client. This is a hard requirement, not a feature toggle.
• The recruiter can reject candidates, edit Sofee's notes, or add candidates Sofee missed.
• The recruiter writes the introduction note that goes to the client with the shortlist.
• The recruiter handles all post-shortlist communication: interview coordination, feedback, offer support.

Sofee does not autonomously make offer decisions, send rejection emails to candidates, or place candidates without a human in the loop.

What we use AI for, more broadly

Across Consortia and Sofee, AI supports our recruiters in:

• Job description drafting.
• Candidate sourcing.
• Outreach personalisation.
• Automated outreach to AI-flagged good matches.
• Resume anonymisation.
• Interview scheduling.
• Interview transcription and summarisation.
• Skills matching.
• Analytics and reporting.

Our recruiters treat AI output as a recommendation, not a decision. Every AI output is reviewed for accuracy, relevance, bias, privacy risk, and legal suitability before it is relied on.

What we will not do

• No fully automated rejection decisions.
• No AI-only hiring decisions.
• No sensitive-attribute inference.
• No emotion recognition.
• No social scoring.
• No candidate ranking based on protected characteristics.
• No use of candidate data for third-party model training where provider training is not disabled.
• No selling of candidate or client data to third parties.
• No autonomous outbound to candidates outside an active brief.

What models and providers we use

Sofee runs predominantly on Microsoft Azure Foundry, with enterprise data residency, audit, and access controls applied at the orchestration layer. Through Azure Foundry and our other sub-processors:

• Orchestration and routing: Microsoft Azure Foundry (primary environment).
• Reasoning and shortlist scoring: OpenAI and Anthropic models, accessed via Azure Foundry.
• Voice interaction: Retell, with ElevenLabs voice synthesis.
• Transcription: OpenAI Whisper.
• Hosting, data, and messaging: Vercel, Supabase, Resend.

This list will change as the stack evolves and as we add or replace vendors; the principle does not. Provider training-on-input is disabled where the provider supports it. Client briefs, candidate CVs, and call transcripts are not used to train provider models.

What data Sofee sees

• Client brief: role description, requirements, salary band, hiring contact's name and email, any nice-to-haves or red-line constraints you share.
• Candidate data: CV, public profile content (where lawful to retrieve), application form responses, screening call transcripts where the candidate has consented.
• Communication history: the back-and-forth between Sofee and the candidate during the search.

Sofee does not access client internal systems: no HRIS, no ATS, no email inbox, no calendars. Candidates apply to Sofee, not into a client's stack.

Candidates and AI

We want to understand the real candidate. Their experience, thinking, communication, and judgement. AI can help candidates prepare, but it should not replace their own performance.

Application and preparation

Candidates are encouraged to use AI to:

• Improve CV structure, spelling, grammar, and clarity.
• Prepare for interviews or practise mock questions.
• Research Consortia, Sofee, clients, roles, sectors, and interview formats.
• Improve confidence or organise thoughts before an interview.

Candidates remain responsible for the truth and accuracy of everything submitted.

Live interviews

AI-generated answers during live interviews are not acceptable. Candidates may not use AI to generate, script, or feed answers in real time unless Consortia or Sofee has expressly agreed this in advance.

Note-taking and transcription

Candidate-side AI note-taking or transcription is allowed only if declared in the meeting and handled in line with confidentiality and non-disclosure obligations. Candidates must not record, transcribe, upload, or share confidential client, candidate, or interview information without permission.

Coding exercises and take-home assignments

AI use is allowed only to the extent agreed with the hiring manager or talent team. Where AI use is permitted, candidates should be able to explain what tool was used, how it helped, which decisions were their own, and why the final answer is accurate and appropriate.

Accessibility

AI-enabled accessibility tools may be used where needed. Candidates should contact dpo@sofee.ai or dpo@consortia.com if they need an adjustment or are unsure whether a tool is suitable.

If something goes wrong

Misrepresentation, plagiarism, undisclosed prohibited use, or breach of confidentiality may be reviewed case by case and may affect a candidacy.

Candidate consent

Candidates are told upfront that Sofee is an AI recruiter and that a human recruiter at Consortia reviews every shortlist. Voice calls are recorded only with explicit consent at the start of the call. Candidates can opt out of AI processing at any point by emailing dpo@sofee.ai; we delete the relevant data within thirty days of request.

Audit, oversight, and review

Every shortlist decision is logged: which candidates were considered, how Sofee scored them, which were promoted and which were rejected, and which Consortia recruiter reviewed the shortlist. We retain these logs for as long as the corresponding candidate data is held.

We run a quarterly AI Health Check covering bias testing, adverse impact monitoring, vendor assessment, model and workflow documentation, candidate complaints or incidents, data-retention and deletion checks, sub-processor review, and human-oversight sampling. The full policy is reviewed at least every six months, and ad hoc after any material tool, vendor, legal, or process change.

Standards we align to

Recruitment is classed as a high-risk use of AI under the EU AI Act. Sofee is designed with the high-risk requirements in mind: meaningful human oversight on every output, transparency to candidates about AI involvement, full audit logging, and structured risk assessment via our DPIA. We align to UK GDPR for data protection, the EU AI Act for AI risk classification, ISO 42001 for AI management practice, and EEOC-style fairness principles for non-discrimination.

We are not yet third-party certified or independently audited. We do not claim "EU AI Act compliant" or "ISO 42001 certified" until we are. We are happy to walk clients through what we have done and what remains.

Bias, fairness, and edge cases

The shortlist scoring uses the role brief as the rubric. Where the brief contains criteria that could correlate with protected characteristics (for example, "must be UK-based"), we surface that to the recruiter rather than apply it silently. Recruiters can override Sofee's scoring without explanation. We do not use protected characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, disability) as ranking inputs.

Want the full policy or the DPIA?

The full governance document, including internal obligations on Consortia and Sofee team members, is the Consortia Personnel Ltd AI Acceptable Use and Governance Policy for Hiring. It is available on request from dpo@consortia.com.

Our Data Protection Impact Assessment covers candidate data flows, sub-processors, retention, transfer mechanisms, and the AI-specific risk register. We share it on request for clients in regulated sectors going through procurement or compliance review. Email dpo@sofee.ai.