Mokka Guide to Choosing an AI Recruiting Partner

Part I: The Mokka Advantage

Hiring today is harder than ever. Every open role gets flooded with applications, and it's nearly impossible to tell who's a great fit and who just has a resume that's been perfectly optimized with AI to match your job description. Traditional tools that just match keywords are easily fooled, leaving your team to sort through a mountain of applications, hoping to find a few hidden gems.

Mokka was built to fix this. We believe the secret to better hiring isn't just about screening resumes faster; it's about getting better, more reliable information from the very beginning. Instead of just analyzing a document that's often exaggerated, Mokka generates a new, richer set of evidence directly from your candidates.

Here's how we provide a smarter, fairer, and more trustworthy way to hire.

1. A Complete and Trustworthy Picture of Every Candidate

A resume only tells part of the story, and often, it's the part the candidate wants you to see. Mokka goes beyond the resume to give you a complete, 360-degree view of every applicant, grounded in facts.

• We Enrich, Not Just Review: Mokka starts with the resume but doesn't stop there. We enrich every profile with third-party data and, most importantly, with insights from our automated pre-screening interview. This turns a flat document—which can be easily over-optimized—into a rich, evidence-based profile.
• Built-in Integrity Checks: In an age of AI-generated applications, trust is essential. Mokka's Answer and Profile Integrity analytics act as a trust layer for your hiring process. We automatically check for suspicious patterns, like mismatches between a candidate's resume, their LinkedIn profile, and the answers they provide, flagging potential risks so you can hire with confidence.

2. A Screening Process Candidates Actually Appreciate

Tough screening and a great candidate experience shouldn't be mutually exclusive. We've designed a process that is both rigorous for you and respectful for them, which is why candidates give Mokka a 4.7/5 rating.

• Flexibility and Choice: Candidates can share their experience how they feel most comfortable—using text, voice, or video. With privacy features like the ability to hide their self-view and no stressful time limits, they can put their best foot forward.
• We Help Candidates Shine: Our pre-screening interview is designed to be a supportive conversation, not an interrogation. Mokka provides real-time tips and prompts candidates to provide more complete answers, just like a great recruiter would. This helps you get the reliable data you need for a fair evaluation, avoiding the "garbage in, garbage out" problem of simple chatbots.
• Candidates Feel Seen, Not Processed: We ask about accomplishments both inside and outside of work, because great talent comes from everywhere. This approach makes candidates feel valued as individuals. The proof is in the numbers: 40-90% of candidates complete the process, a stark contrast to the 90%+ dropout rate seen with traditional skills tests.

3. Powerful Screening That's Incredibly Easy to Use

Your team is busy. Mokka is designed to deliver powerful results without adding complexity to your workflow.

• Smarter Intake, Better Screening: A great hire starts with understanding what really matters. Mokka's intake process captures detailed input from your recruiters on the importance of various job requirements—it doesn't just scan a job description for keywords. The recruiter reviews and signs off on these requirements, ensuring the screening is aligned with your team's real priorities from day one.
• Works Off-the-Shelf in 5 Minutes: You can be up and running in minutes. Mokka works out-of-the-box and only requires a quick recruiter review to get started. It's not a heavy, complex assessment tool that requires weeks of setup.
• Fully Customizable When You Need It: For more specific needs, you can easily generate custom, structured interviews with objective scoring rubrics to ensure every evaluation is consistent and fair.

4. Deep ATS Integration to Avoid Tool Bloat

Your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is your system of record, and we keep it that way. Mokka is not another siloed tool that creates more work. It's a powerful screening layer that integrates deeply with your existing ATS.

• A Seamless Workflow: Data flows effortlessly between Mokka and your ATS. Every decision made in Mokka is reflected in the ATS, and vice versa.
• Intelligence Where You Need It: Mokka is optimized for top-of-funnel screening, allowing you to easily stack-rank hundreds of candidates. Rich Mokka candidate profiles are posted directly into your ATS for easy access by recruiters and hiring managers, keeping everything in one place.

5. Predictable Pricing That Scales with You

Most AI screening tools, especially for video interviews, use per-application or per-interview pricing. This creates unpredictable costs and a frustrating workflow where your team has to manually review every single applicant just to decide who to invite into the tool.

Mokka is different. We offer simple, seat-based pricing that includes unlimited job requisitions and unlimited applications. This gives you predictable costs and the freedom to screen 100% of your talent pipeline automatically, without worrying about a surprise bill.

Part II: Mokka vs. The Competition

Here's a straightforward look at how Mokka compares to other tools you may be considering. We've also included some key questions to help guide your thinking as you evaluate your options.

Mokka vs. Your ATS's Built-in Screening (e.g., Ashby, Workable)

A Quick Look at ATS Screeners:

Many modern Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) now include their own AI-powered screening features. They use AI to analyze resumes and match them against the job description, helping recruiters sort through applicants more quickly.

The Mokka Difference:

We love a good ATS—in fact, we partner and integrate with them. While their built-in screening is a good first step, it's fundamentally limited because it only analyzes one thing: the resume. In today's world, where resumes are overly optimized to match job descriptions, this provides a very limited signal. Mokka complements your ATS by adding the depth it lacks.

• Goes Beyond the Resume: We conduct pre-screening interviews to gather evidence of actual accomplishments that you can't find in a resume.
• Verifies Information: Our Profile and Answer Integrity checks spot suspicious patterns that a simple resume-reader can't.
• Captures Recruiter Insight: Our screening is based on a comprehensive recruiter intake, not just a keyword match against the job description. Mokka turns your ATS from a simple filing cabinet into a powerful, evidence-based decision engine.

Key Questions to Consider:

• How does the tool get beyond the resume to validate a candidate's actual experience and accomplishments?
• What mechanisms are in place to check for integrity issues, like major inconsistencies between a resume and a LinkedIn profile, or signs of an AI-generated application?
• How does the screening process allow your hiring team to easily adjust and prioritize what's most important for a role, ensuring the evaluation aligns with their real-world needs?

Mokka vs. HiredScore

A Quick Look at HiredScore:

HiredScore is an AI tool that sits on top of an ATS. Its main job is to read all the resumes and profiles you already have and score them to help recruiters prioritize their worklist.

The Mokka Difference:

HiredScore is excellent at making your recruiters faster at reviewing resumes. Mokka makes them smarter by giving them reliable data that's not on the resume. While HiredScore analyzes the same, often over-optimized resumes, Mokka creates a brand new, richer dataset.

• Creates New Evidence, Not Just Reads Old Resumes: Mokka engages candidates in a pre-screening interview to gather verifiable proof of their accomplishments. We don't just sort the pile faster; we improve the quality of the pile from the start.
• Proactively Verifies Integrity: With AI-generated resumes becoming common, our built-in Profile and Answer Integrity checks actively look for red flags and inconsistencies, ensuring the information you're basing decisions on is authentic.
• Avoids Vendor Lock-In: HiredScore is owned by Workday, and its full potential shines for Workday users. Mokka is ATS-agnostic, giving you the flexibility to change your core HR systems in the future without losing your advanced screening capabilities.

Key Questions to Consider:

• How can you be sure a candidate's score is based on real achievements, not just well-placed keywords on a resume they optimized to match the job description?
• What specific tools are in place to detect if a candidate used AI to write their entire resume, or if there are major inconsistencies between their resume and their LinkedIn profile?
• What happens to your process efficiency if you decide to migrate away from your current ATS in the future?

Mokka vs. Covey

A Quick Look at Covey:

Covey is an AI-powered sourcing tool. It scours platforms like LinkedIn to find potential candidates based on their resume and profile, and then automates email outreach to fill the top of your hiring funnel.

The Mokka Difference:

Covey is a powerful search engine for talent, but it's still searching through resumes and public profiles that can be easily tailored to look good. After Covey finds you 100 potential candidates, how do you decide who to actually interview? Mokka provides the critical next step.

• Provides Deep Qualification, Not Just Broad Sourcing: Mokka provides an in-depth, evidence-based screening that separates the genuinely great candidates from those who just have a polished profile.
• Automates Tedious Pre-Screening: We automate the initial data collection part of the pre-screen, validating the claims made on a resume and gathering actual proof of a candidate's accomplishments. This wins back time for your team to focus on interviewing the best-fit candidates.
• Offers a Rich Candidate Experience: Mokka's interactive, multi-modal screening makes candidates feel seen and respected. We help you build your employer brand with every single applicant, ensuring a positive experience that reflects well on your company.

Key Questions to Consider:

• After a candidate is identified based on their resume or profile, what is the process for verifying the accomplishments they list?
• How does the screening process differentiate between a candidate's self-reported skills and their proven ability to apply those skills to drive measurable results?
• What integrity checks are in place to assess a candidate's honesty or detect if their application answers were generated by an AI assistant?

Mokka vs. Interviewer.ai

A Quick Look at Interviewer.ai:

Interviewer.ai is a tool for one-way, pre-recorded video interviews. It uses AI to analyze a candidate's resume, their answers, and even their facial expressions and tone of voice to generate a score.

The Mokka Difference:

Interviewer.ai can tell you if a candidate is a polished presenter. Mokka tells you if they were a top performer. We believe hiring decisions should be grounded in verifiable facts, not on an AI's interpretation of someone's tone of voice—a "big brother" approach that can feel invasive to candidates and introduce bias.

• Focuses on Verifiable Facts, Not Subjective Impressions: Mokka deliberately focuses on what a candidate has accomplished, not how they present it. Our candidate-friendly process offers the choice of text, voice, or video, allowing everyone to communicate comfortably and equitably.
• Offers a Better, More Compliant Experience: This focus on objective, verifiable evidence is not only fairer and more compliant, but it also leads to a better experience that top candidates appreciate.
• Provides Predictable Pricing: Their per-interview pricing model creates unpredictable costs, while Mokka's seat-based plan gives you full control over your budget and encourages you to screen everyone.

Key Questions to Consider:

• How does an analysis of facial expressions or voice tone avoid penalizing candidates who are neurodivergent, non-native speakers, or simply uncomfortable on camera, but are otherwise top performers?
• What verifiable, fact-based evidence—completely independent of a video recording—is being collected to validate a candidate's past accomplishments?
• Does the pricing model encourage you to screen all your candidates, or does it create unpredictable costs that force your team to manually pre-screen applicants first?

Mokka vs. Jack and Jill AI

A Quick Look at Jack and Jill AI:

Jack and Jill AI is a two-sided AI recruiting marketplace. "Jack" serves as an AI career coach for candidates, scanning 10,000+ jobs per hour and applying on their behalf with no resume or cover letter required. "Jill" works with employers to understand hiring needs and reaches thousands of candidates simultaneously. The business model is contingency-based: companies pay 10% of first-year salary only when a hire is made (half the typical agency fee), with no upfront cost.

The Mokka Difference:

Jack and Jill AI is a contingency recruiting service with an AI front-end. Mokka is a screening technology platform that empowers your internal recruiting team. These are fundamentally different business models.

• Technology Platform vs. Recruiting Agency: Mokka provides software that your team uses to screen applicants. Jack and Jill AI is a recruiting agency that uses AI to source and match candidates, taking a percentage of salary when you hire.
• Your Applicants vs. Their Marketplace: Mokka screens the candidates who apply directly to your company—people who chose you specifically. Jack and Jill AI matches you with candidates from their marketplace who may be talking to multiple companies simultaneously.
• Your Brand, Your Recruiters: With Mokka, your team controls the candidate experience and represents your employer brand. With Jack and Jill AI, "Jack" (their AI agent) represents your company to candidates—you have zero control over how it communicates, what it promises, or how it positions your culture and opportunities.
• Candidate Choice and Accessibility: Mokka gives every candidate the choice to respond via text, voice, or video—meeting diverse needs and preferences. Jack and Jill AI's conversational agents dictate the interaction format.
• Build Internal Capability vs. Outsource to Agency: Mokka strengthens your TA team with screening automation and data ownership. Jack and Jill AI replaces your recruiting function with their AI agents and takes a cut of every hire.
• All Roles vs. Marketplace Availability: Mokka screens any knowledge worker role receiving high application volume. Jack and Jill AI can only match you with candidates actively in their marketplace.
• Predictable SaaS Pricing vs. Contingency Fees: Mokka charges seat-based software fees (predictable, budgetable). Jack and Jill AI charges 10% of first-year salary per hire (unpredictable, scales with headcount and comp levels).

Key Questions to Consider:

• Do you want to build internal recruiting capability, or outsource the function to an agency (even an AI-powered one)?
• What happens to candidates who apply directly to your careers page but aren't in Jack and Jill's marketplace?
• How comfortable are you with an AI recruiter you don't control speaking on behalf of your company to candidates?
• If you hire 50 people per year at $100k average salary, would you rather pay $500k in contingency fees or predictable SaaS pricing?
• Who owns the candidate relationships and data—your team or the agency's AI?

Mokka vs. Micro1

A Quick Look at Micro1:

Micro1 is not a screening tool for your team, but a marketplace of pre-vetted technical talent. Their AI agent, "Zara," finds and interviews engineers, and then presents them to companies for hire, often handling payroll and compliance.

The Mokka Difference:

Micro1 is a strong option when you need to hire a contractor quickly. Mokka is the strategic solution for building your own world-class, long-term team. It empowers your recruiters, strengthens your employer brand with every interaction, and gives you a repeatable process for finding top talent for any role.

• Empowers Your Team vs. Outsourcing Your Hiring: Mokka is a strategic tool designed to make your own recruiting team more effective. Micro1 is a tactical service that replaces that function.
• Builds Your Own Talent Pipeline vs. Offering a Shared Pool: When you use Mokka, you are evaluating 100% of your unique applicant pool. With a marketplace, you are competing with every other client for the same talent.
• Provides a Custom Screen for Your Culture vs. a Generic Vetting Process: Mokka screens candidates against your specific, nuanced requirements for both the role and your unique company culture, ensuring a much higher quality of fit.

Key Questions to Consider:

• How do you ensure that the top candidates in a shared marketplace haven't already been presented to your direct competitors?
• What happens to the rich candidate data and the relationships you build if you decide to stop using a marketplace service? Do you lose access to that talent intelligence?
• How does a generic vetting process account for the unique cultural and team-specific fit requirements that are critical to success and retention at your company?

Mokka vs. Apriora

A Quick Look at Apriora:

Apriora offers an autonomous AI interviewer ("Alex") that conducts real-time, two-way interviews over video or voice, generates structured write-ups after each call, and syncs notes back to the ATS. They position Alex as a domain-expert screener across roles and industries.

The Mokka Difference:

• Evidence over performance: Apriora's core is a live AI interview; Mokka centers on building a multi-source, evidence-based profile (pre-screen interview + integrity checks + profile enrichment), designed to validate accomplishments—not just capture a single interview performance.
• Candidate-friendly optionality: Apriora focuses on live voice/video. Mokka lets candidates choose text, voice, or video with no time pressure—supporting broader accessibility and higher completion.
• Risk & CX posture: The broader category has seen glitches with AI interviewers, underscoring why Mokka emphasizes transparent, reviewable evidence artifacts over "AI-only" conversations.

Key Questions to Consider:

• How are claims from a single live interview verified against other signals (resume, LinkedIn, work samples)?
• What fallbacks exist if an AI call degrades (network, ASR issues)? Are candidates offered alternative modes?
• How are interviewer prompts standardized to reduce variance and support compliance reviews later?

Mokka vs. ConverzAI

A Quick Look at ConverzAI:

ConverzAI provides Voice-AI "Virtual Recruiters" aimed heavily at staffing firms. Their agents run 6–21 minute phone/email/text screenings, summarize results to the ATS, and market "setup in <5 days," with claims of faster placements and large-scale outreach.

The Mokka Difference:

• Staffing vs. in-house depth: ConverzAI is optimized for staffing throughput and omnichannel outreach; Mokka is optimized for evidence quality and integrity analytics for in-house teams and agencies needing trustworthy screening inputs (not just speed).
• Structured recruiter intake: Mokka begins with an explicit recruiter-verified rubric before any candidate engagement, making downstream scoring auditable and role-specific.
• Pricing & lock-in: ConverzAI markets usage-style deployments "with no lock-ins." Mokka's predictable seat pricing encourages screening 100% of applicants without surprise volumes.

Key Questions to Consider:

• For your roles, is the priority omnichannel outreach scale—or verifiable achievements and integrity analysis?
• How are candidate summaries traced back to question-level evidence your managers can review?
• What governance do you get (versioned rubrics, bias checks, audit trails) when regulators ask "how was this decision made?"

Mokka vs. Dex

A Quick Look at Dex:

Dex is an AI-powered recruitment matchmaker focused specifically on software engineers and tech talent. Founded by former Atomico VC executives and backed by a16z, Dex acts as a two-sided marketplace: "Jack" (the AI career agent) works with candidates via conversational voice/chat to understand their goals and apply on their behalf, while the company-facing side matches hiring teams with a small number of highly aligned, motivated candidates.

The Mokka Difference:

Dex is building a curated talent marketplace for tech roles. Mokka empowers your internal recruiting team to screen your entire applicant pipeline—including the unique candidates who only apply to you.

• Your Pipeline vs. Shared Marketplace: Mokka evaluates 100% of your inbound applicants with custom screening criteria. With Dex, you're competing with other companies for the same pre-vetted talent pool, and you lose access to candidates who only applied directly to your company.
• Build Your Team vs. Outsource Recruiting: Mokka strengthens your internal TA function with tools and data ownership. Dex is a marketplace service where the AI agent owns the candidate relationship, not your recruiters.
• Your Brand, Your Voice: With Mokka, candidates interact with a screening process you control and that represents your employer brand. With Dex, an AI agent you don't control represents your company to candidates—you have no say in how it communicates, what promises it makes, or how it positions your culture.
• Candidate Choice and Comfort: Mokka gives candidates the choice to respond via text, voice, or video—meeting them where they're comfortable. Dex's "Jack" AI agent conducts conversational interviews on its terms, not the candidate's preference.
• All Roles vs. Tech-Only: Dex focuses exclusively on software engineering roles. Mokka screens knowledge workers across all functions—marketing, operations, finance, product, customer success, and yes, engineering too.
• Custom Fit vs. Generic Matching: Mokka screens against your specific role requirements and company culture. Dex provides candidates it deems "highly aligned" based on its own matching algorithm.

Key Questions to Consider:

• What happens to candidates who apply directly to your careers page but aren't in Dex's marketplace? How do you screen them?
• If Dex presents a candidate to you and your competitor simultaneously, who wins? How do you differentiate?
• How comfortable are you with an AI agent you don't control representing your employer brand to candidates?
• When you stop using a marketplace service, do you lose access to the candidate data and relationships you've built?

Mokka vs. Findem

A Quick Look at Findem:

Findem is a talent intelligence and sourcing platform that uses "3D data" (people, company, and time dimensions) built from 1.6 trillion data points. It's designed to help talent acquisition teams discover, engage, and nurture candidates through attribute-based search (not just keywords), multichannel outreach, pipeline analytics, and diversity insights. Findem targets mid-market to enterprise customers with primarily enterprise-level contracts (minimum 3-month engagements).

The Mokka Difference:

Findem is a powerful sourcing engine that finds candidates across the internet. Mokka is a screening engine that evaluates the candidates who actually apply to your roles. These are complementary problems, not competing solutions.

• Sourcing vs. Screening: Findem helps you find candidates when you're struggling with low applicant volume or hard-to-source roles. Mokka helps you screen candidates when you're drowning in 100-200+ applications per role. Different pain points.
• Outbound vs. Inbound: Findem excels at proactive outreach and talent community nurturing. Mokka excels at automating the top-of-funnel screening for inbound applicants, freeing up your recruiters to focus on outreach.
• Data Breadth vs. Evidence Depth: Findem's strength is broad talent data aggregation across the market. Mokka's strength is deep, verifiable evidence collection through structured pre-screening interviews with your actual applicants.
• Enterprise Sourcing Platform vs. Screening Automation: Findem is an enterprise platform requiring multi-month commitments and custom configuration. Mokka works off-the-shelf in 5 minutes with seat-based pricing.

Key Questions to Consider:

• After Findem helps you source 100 potential candidates, how do you decide which 10 to actually interview? What's your screening process?
• For roles receiving high inbound application volume, how does a sourcing platform help reduce the manual screening bottleneck?
• Can your team benefit from both tools—Findem for sourcing hard-to-fill roles, and Mokka for screening high-volume inbound applications?

Mokka vs. HeyMilo

A Quick Look at HeyMilo:

HeyMilo offers conversational, AI-led pre-screens and interviews via phone/web audio/video, with ATS integrations (e.g., Lever), auto-engagement via SMS/Email/WhatsApp, transcripts/summaries, and configurable question sets & rubrics.

The Mokka Difference:

• From conversation to evidence: Like HeyMilo, Mokka runs structured, adaptive pre-screens—but we pair this with Profile & Answer Integrity checks and third-party enrichment to produce a trust layer recruiters can rely on.
• Deep intake before automation: HeyMilo emphasizes fast, adaptive interviews; Mokka anchors on recruiter-approved requirements first (critical/must-have/nice-to-have, caps, weighting), which then drive consistent scoring.
• Workflow posture: HeyMilo's materials highlight ATS integrations and usage-based options. Mokka keeps your ATS as the system of record while providing seat-based, unlimited-app volume for predictable budgets.

Key Questions to Consider:

• Can hiring managers open a candidate's Mokka/HeyMilo profile and trace every score to concrete, reviewable evidence?
• How are integrity risks (AI-authored answers, off-screen help, profile mismatches) detected and flagged?
• Does the pricing model encourage you to screen everyone, or only a subset?

Mokka vs. HireVue

A Quick Look at HireVue:

HireVue is an enterprise platform for video interviewing, assessments, and hiring automation; it acquired Modern Hire in 2023, consolidating a large assessment + virtual job tryout portfolio under one roof. Historically, HireVue discontinued facial-expression analysis in 2021 after scrutiny, while maintaining science-based assessments and interview analytics.

The Mokka Difference:

• No face/voice inference: Mokka does not assess facial expressions or paralinguistics; we focus on verifiable achievements collected through structured pre-screens and external signals—designed to be auditable and candidate-friendly.
• Fast setup vs. enterprise programs: HireVue excels at enterprise I/O-backed assessments and large configurations; Mokka aims for 5-minute off-the-shelf activation with strong ATS flow-through, ideal when you need immediate screening coverage without heavy program design.
• Budget predictability: Mokka's seat-based model avoids per-interview volatility common in traditional video-interview tooling.

Key Questions to Consider:

• Do you need full-blown assessments—or faster, fairer pre-screens that generate auditable evidence and plug into your ATS?
• How will your team review/defend decisions (records, scoring logic, explainability) if audited under laws like NYC Local Law 144 or EU AI Act?
• What's the change-management cost to stand up enterprise assessments vs. a lighter, recruiter-led screen?

Mokka vs. Tezi AI

A Quick Look at Tezi:

Tezi positions an agentic, Slack-native AI recruiter ("Max") that autonomously sources, screens, and schedules, and claims a built-in dataset of ~750M profiles. It emphasizes 24/7 availability, proactive follow-ups, and instant processing of large applicant volumes.

The Mokka Difference:

• Agent in Slack vs. evidence in ATS: Tezi's Slack-first agent helps teams delegate tasks conversationally. Mokka focuses on generating role-aligned, integrity-checked evidence and posting rich profiles directly into your ATS for hiring-manager consumption.
• Control & governance: Mokka's recruiter-verified intake, objective rubrics, and answer/profile integrity analytics create a consistent, defensible process—especially important when agentic systems auto-advance steps.
• Cost/ownership posture: Tezi markets replacing multiple tools with its agent and data bundle; Mokka is ATS-agnostic and focused on owning your process & evidence rather than a proprietary sourcing pool.

Key Questions to Consider:

• If an agent sources and screens, how do you audit why candidates were advanced or rejected?
• Where does the candidate data live long-term (ATS vs. vendor system), and what happens if you switch?
• Can hiring managers inspect the underlying evidence—beyond summary scores—before interviews?