Asking a candidate to create an account before they can start a screening feels harmless. It is one short form. But every required step between intent and action loses a fraction of people, and at the top of a high-volume funnel that fraction is a lot of candidates.
The funnel tax
Sign up, verify an email, set a password, log back in: each of those is a place to give up. The candidates you lose are not random. People applying to several roles at once will simply finish the assessment that let them start in one click and skip the one that made them register.
What a magic link removes
- No password to invent and forget
- No email verification loop before they can begin
- No second visit to log back in and continue
- Nothing to install, on any device
The candidate clicks the link and is in the assessment. The drop-off that used to happen at registration simply does not occur, which means more of the people you invited actually finish.
It is not less secure
A magic link is single-purpose and time-bound. It carries the candidate to their own assessment and nowhere else, and the data behind it is encrypted and access-controlled the same way it would be with an account. You remove the friction without removing the safeguards.
