2,011 people applied for one job. I get two days a week to read them.
I run operations. In a company under a hundred people that means you own hiring, whether you wanted it or not.
Right now I am hiring my own replacement. Head of Operations. 2,011 applications.
Here is what actually happens
- 1The first thirty get read properly.
- 2By a hundred you are skimming for job titles.
- 3By three hundred you are sorting on company logos.
- 4The rest get a glance, and you tell yourself that is fine.
Somewhere in the ones I never reached is a person who could do the job.
That is the bit that stays with me. Not the workload. The near-certainty that I have already thrown away someone good, and that I will never find out.
I have had this problem twice over
I also run QuickHire VA, which places virtual assistants. Same problem, other side of the desk. Hundreds apply, most are nowhere near it, and the entire job is finding the few who are genuinely good before anyone burns an hour on a call.
So I built the sift by hand. Twice. Once to score the virtual assistants. Once as a rubric for the role I am hiring now.
Both times, the same thing fixed it
Not the software. The moment I was made to write down what I actually wanted, in plain words, the pile stopped being frightening. The trouble is nobody writes that down. It stays in your head, and the job description never says it.
So that is what Bower does
- 1It asks you what good looks like, out loud, before it reads anything.
- 2It reads every application in full, against your answers.
- 3Where a CV leaves a question, it asks the candidate directly, in a short voice interview.
- 4It hands you everyone, ranked, with the reasoning attached.
What it will not do
It has no reject button. Nobody is auto-rejected. You see everyone, you see why they are ordered that way, and every decision is yours. UK law on automated decisions in hiring changed in February 2026, and I would rather build for that than around it.
Where it is up to
Early. I am talking to people who hire two to ten roles at a time and reading whether this is real. If you are working through 200+ applications around a job you already have, I want fifteen minutes with you. You will get an honest answer about whether it helps.