Oleeo wins IHR innovation award for AI recruitment technology that keeps humans in control

Recruitment technology provider Oleeo has won Bronze at the IHR London Live 2026 Innovation Showcase for its AI-powered candidate screening technology, designed to help employers manage surging application volumes without taking hiring decisions out of recruiters’ hands.

The award was announced at IHR Live London on 22 September, where recruitment technology providers presented their innovations live to an audience of in-house recruiters, talent acquisition professionals and industry judges.

Oleeo was recognised for Oleeo Select, its Selection Intelligence technology, which addresses a growing challenge for employers: how to assess increasingly large volumes of applications at a time when generative AI can make CVs, cover letters and written applications appear increasingly polished and difficult to differentiate.

Rather than automatically accepting or rejecting candidates, Oleeo’s technology evaluates applications against criteria set for the role, identifies evidence of relevant skills and experience and presents recruiters with a prioritised view of candidates alongside the evidence behind each recommendation.

The recruiter remains responsible for reviewing that evidence and making the final decision.

Charles Hipps, Founder and CEO of Oleeo, said:

“Generative AI has fundamentally changed the application process. Candidates can now produce highly polished CVs and written applications extremely quickly, but polish isn’t necessarily the same thing as capability. For employers receiving hundreds or even thousands of applications, that makes identifying genuine evidence of someone’s suitability increasingly difficult.”

“The answer shouldn’t be to replace one problem with another by allowing an algorithm to make an unexplained decision about who progresses. We believe AI should help recruiters see the evidence more clearly, not make the decision for them.”

“That means recruiters should be able to understand why someone has been recommended, interrogate the evidence themselves and ultimately agree or disagree. Human judgement stays at the centre of the process.”

Oleeo presented evidence of the technology being used in high-volume recruitment environments.

In one deployment with Sopra Steria, more than 1,100 applications were assessed using Oleeo Select. Oleeo reports that the technology reduced screening time by 50%, achieved 90% alignment with human expert judgement, delivered a 20% uplift in accuracy compared with the manual screening baseline and resulted in a 29% improvement in diversity compared with traditional human decision-making.

The technology can analyse different forms of candidate evidence, including CVs, cover letters, application responses, personal statements and transcripts, rather than relying solely on keyword matching within a CV.

Oleeo says this becomes particularly important as employers move towards skills-based hiring and recruiters need to establish not simply whether a candidate has used the right terminology, but whether there is evidence that they possess the skills and experience required.

Charles continued: “The pressure on recruitment teams is not going away. Application volumes are high, candidates have increasingly sophisticated technology available to help them apply and employers still need to make decisions quickly.”

“But speed, quality and fairness shouldn’t have to compete with one another. The opportunity for AI is to remove some of the administrative burden while giving recruiters better information on which to exercise their judgement.”

“Receiving this award from people who work in recruitment and talent acquisition every day is particularly meaningful. They understand both the operational pressure recruiters are under and the responsibility that comes with using AI to make decisions that affect people’s careers.”

The IHR Innovation Showcase evaluates recruitment technology on its potential industry impact, the originality of its approach and how effectively it addresses problems facing talent acquisition teams.

Oleeo received the Bronze Innovation Showcase Award at IHR Live London 2026.