Hiring shouldn't be a black box.
Every application, interview and hiring decision creates an experience.
But too often, candidates can't see what they're walking into, employers can't see where their hiring experience is breaking, and recruitment agencies can't prove the quality of the experience they deliver.
Shortlistr exists to make that experience visible.
Everyone experiences hiring differently.
Almost nobody can see the whole picture.
You're asked to take a leap of faith.
Unclear timelines. Inconsistent communication. Little feedback. And sometimes, no response at all.
Candidates are expected to decide where to apply, who to interview with and which offers to accept with surprisingly little information about the experience waiting for them.
You can't improve what you can't see.
Candidate feedback exists, but it's often fragmented across surveys, recruiters, hiring managers, review platforms and anecdotal conversations.
That makes it difficult to see exactly where the experience is breaking, by stage, team, location or channel, and even harder to measure whether it's getting better.
Placements tell only part of the story.
Agencies are usually measured by outcomes: roles filled, time to hire and placements made.
But the experience they create for candidates also shapes their clients' reputation in market, and until now, there has been little consistent evidence to recognise the agencies doing it exceptionally well.
Turn hiring experiences into intelligence.
Real experiences become signals. Signals become insight. Insight drives better hiring.
Shortlistr starts with a structured way for candidates to share what actually happened during their hiring experience. We turn those experiences into consistent signals, insights and benchmarks, giving candidates greater transparency and giving employers and agencies evidence they can actually use.
Candidates share
Structured feedback captures the moments that actually shape candidate experience.
Shortlistr measures
Experiences become comparable signals, including measures such as the Candidate Experience Index and Silent Rejection Rate.
Teams act
Employers and agencies can identify patterns, benchmark performance and demonstrate the experience they deliver.
To make hiring more transparent, accountable, and human.
of Australian candidates are frustrated with the job search experience.
LinkedIn, 2025
of Australian candidates say they've been ghosted during their job search.
LinkedIn Australian research, 2025
of APAC candidates are likely or definitely willing to tell friends, family or colleagues about a negative hiring experience.
Talent Board / ERE Media, 2024
What feels operational to you feels personal to a candidate.
Real-time insights reveal where, or if, the experience needs attention, enabling teams to act before candidates opt out.
Three perspectives.
Ready to see hiring differently?
A new standard for hiring - where experience is visible, recognised and continually improved.
A hiring market where candidates can choose with greater confidence, organisations are accountable for the experience they create, and exceptional hiring teams are recognised for setting the standard.
Turn candidate experience into intelligence everyone can use.
We capture, measure and make hiring experience visible, giving candidates better information, and giving employers and recruitment agencies the insight to understand, improve and prove the experience they deliver.
The experience to see the gap. The capability to build the category.
The Background
Shortlistr was born from conversations between good mates, Alex and Marcus, about what they were seeing from opposite sides of the hiring table: candidates increasingly being ghosted or poorly represented, and hiring teams drowning in applications while genuine quality is becoming harder to identify.
AI is accelerating the problem. Candidates can now mass-apply and artificially enhance their technical aptitude in interviews, while employers are responding with more automated screening and less human review. Hiring is generating more activity, but less trust and less signal.
This became the thesis behind Shortlistr: candidates & hiring teams need better intelligence, transparency and accountability. We're building a hiring intelligence platform that connects candidate behaviour, experience, fit and hiring outcomes - creating a unique proprietary data asset that becomes more valuable as the network grows, and which does not exist in today's hiring market.
Co-Founder
Alex Lasry
View Alex's Bio
Co-Founder
Marcus Waterreus
View Marcus's Bio
Select a founder to read their bio
We're not here to make hiring look better.
We're here to make it better.
By making candidate experience visible, measurable and comparable, we want the organisations that treat people well to stand out, and give everyone else a reason to improve.
Starting a bigger conversation about candidate experience.
Shortlistr is an Australian founded hiring intelligence platform; built to make the candidate experience measurable, transparent, and improvable for every stakeholder in recruitment.
Through structured, stage-by-stage reviews and our proprietary Candidate Experience Index (CEI), Shortlistr gives candidates a voice, agencies accountability, and employers realtime data they need to compete for top talent.
Launched in 2026, Shortlistr is currently available to candidates, recruitment agencies, and in-house hiring teams across ANZ - and is actively expanding its AI-powered career intelligence suite.
Your privacy choices
We use essential technology to make Shortlistr work. With your permission, we'd also like to use analytics to understand how people use our pre-launch site and improve the experience.