Key concepts
This page explains the main ideas behind Talvin. Read it once and the rest of the product will make more sense.
Organization and team
Section titled “Organization and team”Organization: your company’s workspace in Talvin. Your interviews, candidates, credits and plan all belong to it. Each account belongs to one organization.
Admins and members: everyone in your organization can create interviews and review candidates. Only admins can see Billing and Settings, upgrade the plan, and manage integrations.
Interviews
Section titled “Interviews”Interview: one set of questions for a role, with its own link. Every candidate who takes the same interview answers the same core questions, which makes them easier to compare.
AI interviewer: the voice persona that runs the conversation. You pick one for each interview. Each interviewer has its own voice and is rated for empathy, exploration, rapport and speed.
Objective and job description: what you want to learn about candidates, and the role they’re applying for. Talvin uses both to generate questions.
Questions and depth level: each interview has 1 to 10 questions and lasts 5 to 15 minutes. For each question you set a Depth Level:
- None: no follow-up.
- Low: a brief follow-up.
- High: an in-depth follow-up.
Active and Inactive: only active interviews accept candidates. If someone opens the link of an inactive interview, they see Interview Is Unavailable.
Candidates
Section titled “Candidates”Taking an interview: a candidate opens your link in their browser and:
- Enters their first name, last name and email address.
- Verifies their email with a code we send them.
- Checks their microphone. If the interview requires video, they also check their camera and screen sharing.
- Talks with the AI interviewer.
Before they start, candidates are told that tab switching and keyboard activity are monitored, and that a person will review their interview.
One attempt per email: each email address can take a given interview only once.
Invites: instead of sending the link yourself, you can have Talvin email it to candidates and send reminders. Invited candidates appear on the interview’s Invited tab until they take the interview. See Invite candidates.
Results
Section titled “Results”Response: one candidate’s completed interview. Responses appear on the interview’s Completed tab once Talvin has finished analyzing the call.
Recommendation and overall score: an overall percentage for how well the candidate’s answers fit what you’re looking for, with a recommendation (Strong advance, Advance, Hold or Not advance) and written feedback.
Communication: a score out of 10 for how clearly the candidate communicated, made up of clarity and structure, relevance, and language accuracy.
Custom Scoring: your own criteria for an interview, such as “Problem Solving”. You can add up to 3 criteria per interview, scored Out of 10 or Yes / No.
Candidate report: everything about one response in one place: scores, a summary, strengths and areas to improve, a summary per question, the transcript and the recording. See Read a candidate’s interview report.
Candidate status: your decision on a candidate. Every response starts as No Status, and you can change it to Potential, Selected or Not Selected.
To learn how scores are worked out, see How interview scoring works.
Integrity signals
Section titled “Integrity signals”Talvin watches for signs that a candidate may be getting outside help:
- Tab switching: the candidate left the interview tab.
- Keyboard activity: the candidate used keyboard shortcuts, such as copy and paste, or function keys.
If either happens, the candidate’s report shows Tab Switching Detected or Keyboard Activity Detected, and a warning icon appears next to them in the candidate list. Treat these as a reason to look more closely, not as proof of cheating.
On paid plans you can also turn on Required video for this interview, which records the candidate on camera.
Credits and plans
Section titled “Credits and plans”Credits: what you pay for interviews with. Credits are used when a candidate takes an interview, based on how many minutes the call lasts, rounded up to the next whole minute.
When credits run out: candidates who open your interview links see Interview Is Unavailable until your credits reset or you upgrade. Your existing results stay available.
Credit resets: on monthly plans, credits reset on your renewal date. On annual plans, you get a new allocation each month. The panel at the bottom of the left menu shows how many days are left.
Free experience: before you choose a plan, you can create one interview to see how Talvin works. It stays inactive, and you can’t edit, delete or share it until you upgrade.
Plan limits: your plan may limit how many interviews you can have. If your plan changes and you have more interviews than it allows, your oldest interviews are turned off, and a banner on the Interviews page tells you how many.
Plans and prices are listed on the Upgrade your plan page. Admins can open it by clicking Upgrade Plan at the bottom of the left menu.
How the AI fits into your hiring
Section titled “How the AI fits into your hiring”Talvin uses large language models, the kind of AI that can understand and write natural language, to:
- Generate interview questions and descriptions from your objective and job description.
- Hold the voice conversation, including follow-up questions based on what the candidate says.
- Score each interview, and write the summary and feedback.
The AI does the first pass so your team can spend its time on the strongest candidates. It doesn’t make hiring decisions.
AI can get things wrong. Before you move a candidate forward or turn them down, read the transcript or listen to the recording, especially when a score seems surprising or an integrity signal is flagged.