How Stange Kommune built an AI assistant that helps managers recruit with more confidence and less effort

Managers are expected to know a little about everything. HR processes, budgets, team  dynamics, strategy, operations. The list is long, and the time and resources to handle it all is  limited. Recruitment is no exception. When a vacancy opens up, the pressure to fill it can quickly  feel urgent. And when you're short on time, it's tempting to dust off last year's job ad, tweak a line  or two, and move forward.  

The result is a process that often defaults to familiarity. You hire for the competencies that  worked last time, without stopping to ask whether those competencies are still the right ones.  The role may have changed. The team may have changed. The organisation may have changed.  But the job ad looks the same as it did five years ago. Stange Kommune decided there had to be  a better way.  

Introducing BOB  

BOB is an AI assistant built to support managers throughout the entire recruitment process. It  takes on the time-consuming, document-heavy work that characterises a high-quality recruitment  process, so that managers can focus on the part that requires their expertise. 

That part is understanding the role. What does the organisation actually need right now? What  kind of person will thrive in this team? What problems do they need to be able to solve? Those  are questions a manager has to think through. BOB helps with everything that comes after.  

From a job ad to an interview guide, a practical project, a secondary interview and a candidate  evaluation sheet, BOB produces working drafts within minutes. Every step is grounded in current  research, theory, and best practices for recruitment. The manager reviews, adjusts, and spars  with BOB until each document fits the specific role. Work that used to take hours now takes a  fraction of the time.  

How It Works  

It starts with a job analysis. Before anything is written, the manager works through a job analysis.  Why does this role exist? What responsibilities and results does it carry? What competence is  genuinely needed? How does it fit within its team and the wider organisation?  

BOB makes the process of conducting a job analysis as easy as possible. Some managers  prefer to record a conversation and upload it. Others bring in existing material like an old job  description or an organisation chart. And for those who prefer to think out loud, BOB works  through the questions step by step as a sparring partner. There are multiple ways of  collaboration.

What matters is the output. The job analysis is the foundation for every step that follows. The job  ad, the interview guides, the evaluation criteria: they all draw from the same source. That's what  makes the process feel coherent from start to finish, rather than a collection of disconnected  templates.  

From the job analysis to a job advertisement  

With the job analysis in place, BOB drafts a job ad in the organisations own template. The  language is meant to be clear and specific, not a list of qualities that could belong to any role in  any organisation.  

Generic phrases are easy to write and hard to act on. When a job ad says the ideal candidate is  "structured and collaborative", it communicates very little to the reader. BOB pushes past that. It  helps the manager describe what “structured” actually looks like in this role, and what  “collaboration" involves in day-to-day practices. The result is a job ad that gives candidates a real  picture of what role they're actually applying for.  

The first interview  

Based on the criteria identified in the job analysis, BOB builds an interview guide. The questions  cover different dimensions of the role and come with recommended follow-up questions. These  are designed to help the manager understand not just what a candidate has done, but their  specific contribution. This distinction matters. It's the difference between a candidate who was  present when something went well and one who actually drove it.  

BOB can also prepare a short presentation about the organisation and the role for the manager  to use during the first round interview. A small thing, but it means the candidate gets a real sense  of where they might be working, and the manager doesn't have to piece it together on the spot.  

The practical project and second interview  

Rather than producing a finished task straight away, BOB proposes a handful of possible  approaches for a practical project. The manager chooses one, and BOB helps define and  sharpen the task before it is presented to the candidates.  

The project is designed to resemble a real work situation. That's intentional. When a candidate  works through a task that mirrors the actual challenges of the role, it gives the manager a much  more reliable signal about the way they think and what they can actually do. It's one of the  strongest predictors of future job performance available. 

The second interview is built around the project. What was the candidate's reasoning? What did  they deprioritise, and why? Which trade-offs were hardest to make? From there, BOB suggests  questions that help the manager digg deeper into the candidate's experience within the areas  that matter most for the role.  

Candidate assessment  

When the interviews are finished, BOB prepares a structured assessment document tied to the  criteria explored throughout the process. Each area is rated on a scale from 1 to 5, with a clear  description for every level. The goal is to help the hiring team calibrate together, so that a score  carries mutual understanding to everyone in the room. 

Stange Kommune is also exploring the possibility of BOB recommending a tailored onboarding  plan once the right candidate has been found. A simple structure for the first period: start date,  team introduction, systems and access, relevant meetings, mentorship where appropriate, and a  shared review of expectations. The same understanding of the role that shaped recruitment,  carrying straight into the start of the job.  

One thing that won't change   

Throughout the process, BOB has no access to any information about the candidates. It doesn't  assess them, rank them, or form any view of their suitability. Its job is to support the manager in  designing a thorough, well-structured process, not make the actual decisions.  

That boundary is a feature, not a limitation. The evaluation and judgment of candidates stays  entirely with the humans. BOB is there to make sure the manager arrives at that decision well  prepared.  

The bigger picture  

A good job ad, a solid interview guide, a well-designed practical project. Those things matter. But  they're not where a manager's time is best spent. The task only the manager can do is to figure  out what the role actually needs. Not what it needed last time, but right now, in this team, with  this gap to fill. That's where their knowledge and experience makes a difference. BOB takes care  of building out the rest of the process from there.  

When a manager isn't spending hours drafting and reformatting, they have more capacity for the  conversations and decisions that only can be made by them. Recruitment becomes something  they can do well without it consuming their entire schedule. Stange Kommune will keep exploring  other areas where BOB can carry the process heavy work that sits around the edges of a  manager's role. The ambition isn't to automate management. It's to give managers back the time  and headspace to do the human work their role genuinely requires. 

Press contact Tiger Landén | tiger.landen@intric.ai

About Stange kommune 

Stange is a municipality in Innlandet, Norway, with just over 20,000 residents and more than  1,500 employees. Often referred to as Norway's green lung, the region is renowned for its scenic  cultural landscape and its position as one of the country's leading agricultural hubs. In  partnership with Intric, the municipality is now driving innovation forward by piloting AI, including  within the HR department. stange.kommune.no 

About Intric 

Intric builds sovereign AI infrastructure for public authorities and critical institutions. The platform enables organisations to deploy AI assistants and agents on their own data, under their own governance, without dependency on external cloud infrastructure. Intric is developed in Sweden and is actively used by more than 80 regulated institutions across the Nordics and Germany. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Stockholm. intric.ai