AI hiring & HR assistant — audit-ready by design, self-hosted, human-in-the-loop. Answers for business leaders, no technical background required.
Last updated: 2026-07-09People is an AI-powered hiring and HR assistant. It automates the administrative burden of recruiting — sourcing, screening, scheduling, candidate communication — while keeping all hiring decisions in human hands.
Here's how it works:
The key difference from other ATS tools: audit-ready by design, self-hosted, human-in-the-loop. Every action is logged, all candidate data stays on your infrastructure, and no AI output becomes a hiring decision without human review.
Hiring is simultaneously critical and operationally painful:
People solves this by providing self-hosted, audit-ready, human-in-the-loop hiring automation. You get the efficiency gains of AI without the compliance risk.
People is designed for growing businesses (50–500 employees) in regulated industries:
If you can't afford a compliance failure during hiring, People is for you.
Greenhouse and Lever are cloud-based ATS tools. People is a self-hosted, audit-ready ATS.
| Aspect | ODW.ai People | Greenhouse / Lever |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | ✅ Self-hosted — full data control | ❌ Cloud-only — vendor-controlled |
| Data sovereignty | ✅ Full customer control | ❌ Vendor-controlled |
| Audit trails | ✅ Comprehensive, immutable, exportable | ⚠️ Often partial or retrofitted |
| AI transparency | ✅ Every AI action logged with rationale | ❌ Often opaque, black-box |
| Human oversight | ✅ Architecturally required | ⚠️ Optional or absent |
| Model control | ✅ Customer-chosen, model-agnostic | ❌ Vendor-selected |
| Compliance posture | ✅ Audit-ready from day one | ⚠️ Compliance as afterthought |
If you need full data control and audit readiness, People is the better choice.
"Audit-ready by design" means compliance is architectural, not an afterthought:
When an auditor asks "Show me the decision trail for candidate X," you can generate a complete report in <5 minutes.
"Human-in-the-loop" means no AI output becomes a hiring decision without human review:
This is an architectural constraint, not a feature. People literally cannot make hiring decisions without human approval.
People is both:
The suite integration is what makes People powerful — it shares context across modules without sharing data externally.
"Sovereign" means full control over candidate data:
This is critical for regulated industries. You can't claim data sovereignty if your ATS is sending candidate PII to a cloud vendor.
For deployment: Yes. People is self-hosted, so you need someone who can manage Docker/Kubernetes, configure networking, and monitor infrastructure.
For day-to-day use: No. The web UI is designed for non-technical users (recruiters, hiring managers). You can manage requisitions, screen candidates, schedule interviews, and communicate with candidates without writing code.
For developers: People provides a REST API and SDKs for custom integrations.
People supports a customizable hiring pipeline:
You can customize stages for each requisition (e.g., add "Technical Test" or "Culture Fit" stages).
People uses AI to assist (not replace) human judgment:
The AI ranking is a recommendation, not a decision. Humans can override, adjust, or ignore the ranking.
Yes. People provides automated interview scheduling:
Target: ≤24 hours from scheduling request to confirmed interview.
Yes. People provides AI-drafted candidate communication:
All emails are AI-drafted but human-approved before sending (configurable per message type). You can also use custom templates.
Yes. People supports job board integrations:
You can create a job once and distribute it to multiple boards simultaneously.
Yes. People provides structured scorecards:
Structured scorecards reduce bias and improve hiring quality — everyone is evaluated against the same criteria.
Yes. People supports multi-requisition management:
Target: ≥5 active requisitions per organization.
Yes. People provides a candidate portal:
The candidate portal improves transparency and reduces "black hole" anxiety (candidates wondering what happened to their application).
| Feature | ODW.ai People | Typical ATS Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | ✅ Self-hosted — full data control | ❌ Cloud-only |
| Audit trails | ✅ Comprehensive, immutable, exportable | ⚠️ Partial or retrofitted |
| AI transparency | ✅ Every AI action logged | ❌ Opaque, black-box |
| Human oversight | ✅ Architecturally required | ⚠️ Optional or absent |
| Model control | ✅ Customer-chosen, model-agnostic | ❌ Vendor-selected |
| Compliance posture | ✅ Audit-ready from day one | ⚠️ Compliance as afterthought |
| Suite integration | ✅ Vault, Recap, Loop, Shield | ❌ Standalone or limited integrations |
People competes on audit readiness + sovereignty + human oversight. If you need compliance and data control, People is the best option.
People reduces time-to-hire by automating administrative tasks:
Target: ≥30% reduction in time-to-hire vs. baseline (self-reported + system-tracked admin time).
People provides bias monitoring and transparency:
People doesn't eliminate bias (no system can), but it makes bias visible and auditable.
Yes. People supports high-volume hiring:
Target: ≥100 candidates processed per organization per month.
Yes. People provides highly customizable workflows:
This is useful for organizations with complex hiring processes (e.g., government contractors with multiple approval stages).
Yes. People supports HRIS integrations:
People manages the pre-hire process. Once a candidate is hired, People hands off to your HRIS for onboarding, payroll, etc.
Not in v1.0. Internal mobility (promotions, transfers) is planned for v1.1 (Q4 2026).
In v1.0, People focuses on external hiring — recruiting candidates from outside the organization.
If you need internal mobility features before v1.1, contact us — we may be able to provide early access.
Not in v1.0. Contingent worker management is planned for v1.2 (Q1 2027).
In v1.0, People focuses on full-time employee hiring.
If you need contingent worker features before v1.2, contact us — we may be able to provide early access or a workaround.
Yes. People is GDPR-compatible:
People helps you meet the technical and organizational measures required by GDPR (Article 32). You still need to address legal and procedural requirements separately.
Yes. People is designed for EU AI Act compliance:
People is one of the few ATS tools designed from the ground up for EU AI Act compliance.
Yes. People is designed for NYC Local Law 144 compliance:
NYC Local Law 144 requires annual bias audits for automated employment decision tools. People's audit trails make these audits straightforward.
Yes. People provides audit report exports:
When an auditor asks for documentation, you can generate a complete report in minutes — not days.
People provides candidate rights management:
All deletion actions are logged — you can prove to regulators that you complied with deletion requests.
Yes. People provides AI disclosure tracking:
Target: ≥90% of candidates informed of AI involvement.
Yes. People provides bias monitoring dashboards:
Bias monitoring is a diagnostic tool, not a solution. It helps you identify potential issues — you still need to investigate and address them.
Yes. People provides data retention policies:
This is useful for GDPR compliance (data minimization) and storage management.
Yes. People is built with security best practices:
People is designed for regulated industries. If you can use People, you can pass a compliance audit.
No. People is self-hosted on your infrastructure. ODW.ai has zero access to your candidate data.
Unlike cloud-based ATS tools (Greenhouse, Lever), People doesn't send candidate data to a third party. Everything stays on your servers.
This is critical for regulated industries. You can't claim data sovereignty if your ATS is sending candidate PII to a cloud vendor.
People is HIPAA-compatible for healthcare hiring:
People helps you meet the technical safeguards required by HIPAA. You still need to address administrative and physical safeguards separately.
Yes. People supports air-gapped deployment (no internet access):
Air-gapped deployment is common for government contractors, military, and high-security environments.
Yes. People provides role-based access control (via Shield integration):
You can also set per-requisition permissions (e.g., only the hiring team can see candidates for a specific role).
Yes. People provides audit logging (via Shield integration):
All audit logs are tamper-evident and can be exported for compliance purposes.
People provides access control and alerting:
For critical incidents, you can generate a full audit report for regulators or legal counsel.
Yes. People's core is open source:
This is critical for sovereignty-focused organizations. You should be able to verify what your hiring tools are doing.
People is model-agnostic — it supports a wide range of models:
You can switch models at any time — no code changes required.
Yes. People supports local models via:
Local models run on your own hardware — no data leaves your infrastructure. Full sovereignty.
Yes. People supports API-based models:
API-based models are useful when you need frontier capabilities (e.g., complex reasoning, long context windows) that local models can't match yet.
Choosing a model depends on your priorities:
| Model | Speed | Quality | Cost | Sovereignty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3 8B (local) | ✅ Fast | ⚠️ Good | ✅ Free | ✅ Full |
| Llama 3 70B (local) | ⚠️ Slow | ✅ Better | ✅ Free | ✅ Full |
| GPT-4o-mini (API) | ✅ Fast | ✅ Good | ❌ Paid | ❌ None |
| GPT-4o (API) | ⚠️ Medium | ✅ Best | ❌ Paid | ❌ None |
| Claude 3.5 Sonnet (API) | ⚠️ Medium | ✅ Best | ❌ Paid | ❌ None |
Recommendation:
Yes. People is model-agnostic — you can switch models at any time:
This future-proofs your investment — when better models are released, you can adopt them immediately without re-architecting your system.
Not in People v1.0. People uses existing models — it doesn't support fine-tuning.
However, you can:
Fine-tuning support is planned for v2.0 (Q2 2027).
No. People is designed so that no AI output becomes a hiring decision without human review.
This is an architectural constraint, not a feature gap. People literally cannot:
All decisions require human approval. AI assists; humans decide.
People offers three deployment options:
docker-compose up) and you're running. Best for development and small deployments.For most customers, Docker Compose is the fastest path. For production, we recommend Kubernetes.
Setup time depends on your deployment:
docker-compose up.After deployment, you need to:
Target: ≤14 days from onboarding to first requisition fully managed.
For deployment: Yes. People is self-hosted, so you need someone who can manage Docker/Kubernetes, configure networking, and monitor infrastructure.
For day-to-day use: No. The web UI is designed for non-technical users (recruiters, hiring managers). You can manage requisitions, screen candidates, schedule interviews, and communicate with candidates without writing code.
For developers: People provides a REST API and SDKs for custom integrations.
People's requirements depend on your deployment:
| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 2 cores | 4+ cores |
| RAM | 8 GB | 16+ GB |
| Storage | 50 GB SSD | 200+ GB SSD |
| GPU (for local models) | None (use API models) | NVIDIA A100 or equivalent |
| OS | Linux (Ubuntu 20.04+, RHEL 8+) | Ubuntu 22.04 LTS |
If you use API-based models (OpenAI, Anthropic), you don't need a GPU. If you use local models, GPU is strongly recommended.
Yes. People can be deployed on any cloud provider:
We provide deployment guides for each cloud provider. For production, we recommend Kubernetes with managed databases.
Yes. People supports ATS migration:
Migration typically takes 1-2 weeks depending on data volume and complexity.
Yes. People includes a sandbox mode:
We recommend spending 1-2 weeks testing in sandbox mode before deploying to production.
For Docker Compose: Pull the new image, restart containers.
For Kubernetes: Update the Helm chart, rolling update.
For bare metal: Follow the upgrade guide in the documentation.
Total update time: <10 minutes (for Docker/Kubernetes).
People pricing is based on features and deployment:
| Tier | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | $199-$499/month | Self-hosted, all features, unlimited users, priority support |
| Suite Bundle | Custom pricing | People + all ODW.ai modules (Desk, Voice, Vault, Shield, etc.) |
Additional costs:
It depends. Greenhouse and Lever cost $10,000-$50,000+/year (depending on company size and features).
People costs $199-$499/month ($2,400-$6,000/year). For most SMBs, People is significantly cheaper.
However, People requires you to manage your own infrastructure (servers, databases, etc.). If you factor in infrastructure costs, the total cost of ownership may be higher.
For most regulated SMBs, People is cheaper and more compliant than cloud-based alternatives.
No hidden costs. The total cost of ownership includes:
That's it. No setup fees, no surprise charges, no per-user fees.
We accept:
Invoicing is available for annual subscriptions. Contact us for details.
Yes. We offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied within the first 30 days, contact us for a full refund — no questions asked.
After 30 days, you can cancel anytime. You'll continue to have access until the end of your billing period, but no refund is provided for partial months.
Yes. People is part of the ODW.ai suite. You can:
The suite bundle includes People at a 20-30% discount compared to purchasing separately. And all modules integrate natively — People uses Vault for role requirements, Recap for interview notes, Loop for workflow automation, Shield for governance.
Neither. People pricing is unlimited — no per-user or per-requisition fees.
You pay a flat monthly fee based on your tier (Enterprise). Manage as many requisitions and users as you want.
The only variable cost is API costs (if you use API-based models). You pay the API provider directly for token usage.
People can handle unlimited requisitions:
For high-volume hiring (100+ requisitions per month), we recommend:
People supports unlimited users:
People scales horizontally — add more nodes to handle more concurrent users. Typical deployments support 50-200 concurrent users per node.
If People goes down, hiring operations are unavailable, but your data is safe:
For high-availability deployments, we recommend:
People includes a monitoring dashboard:
You can also export metrics to external monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog) via standard protocols.
People data is stored in PostgreSQL. Back up using standard PostgreSQL tools:
People provides backup guides and scripts for common deployment modes (Docker, Kubernetes, on-premises).
Yes. People supports multi-tenancy:
This is useful for agencies managing multiple client hiring, or enterprises with multiple business units.
People is designed to be intuitive, but we provide training resources:
Most teams are productive within 1-2 days of training. The web UI is particularly intuitive — no technical skills required for recruiters and hiring managers.
People integrates natively with all ODW.ai products:
If you're using the ODW.ai suite, People integration is automatic — no separate configuration required.
Yes. People provides a REST API for programmatic access:
The API is fully documented (OpenAPI/Swagger) and supports authentication via API keys or OAuth 2.0.
Yes. People supports calendar integrations:
Calendar integration enables automated interview scheduling — People finds times that work for candidate and interviewers, sends invites, and handles rescheduling.
Yes. People supports email integrations:
Email integration enables AI-drafted candidate communication — acknowledgments, status updates, rejections, next steps.
Yes. People supports job board integrations:
You can create a job once and distribute it to multiple boards simultaneously.
Yes. People supports HRIS integrations:
People manages the pre-hire process. Once a candidate is hired, People hands off to your HRIS for onboarding, payroll, etc.
Yes. People can be used with existing AI tools:
People is designed to be a hiring layer — it provides hiring automation, and you can use any AI tool for other tasks.
People is powerful, but it has limitations in v1.0:
Yes. Multi-language support is planned for v1.1 (Q4 2026):
This is a high-priority feature for global teams and multilingual hiring.
Not in the current roadmap. Video interview analysis (facial recognition, voice analysis, automated scoring) carries significant regulatory risk.
We're monitoring the regulatory landscape and research on validity. If/when we add video analysis, it will require extensive validation and human oversight.
If video analysis is a must-have for your use case, contact us — we may reconsider based on customer demand and regulatory clarity.
Key milestones:
Roadmap is subject to change based on customer feedback. Contact us for the latest roadmap or to request features.
People is not the right fit if:
No. No system can guarantee bias-free hiring. People's bias monitoring is a diagnostic tool, not a solution.
People helps you:
But eliminating bias requires ongoing effort: diverse hiring panels, inclusive job descriptions, bias training, and continuous monitoring.
No. People is designed to augment your recruiting team, not replace it.
People automates administrative tasks (scheduling, communication, pipeline management), freeing recruiters to focus on:
People makes your recruiting team more efficient — it doesn't replace the human element that's critical to good hiring.
Three paths:
odw.ai/people to download People or book a demo.