Otter alternative for recruiters
The Otter alternative for recruiters who run back-to-back candidate calls
You run six screening calls before lunch, and every one of them owes the ATS a scorecard, the hiring manager a real summary, and the candidate a reply. The write-up is always the thing that waits.
Superscribe
Stop rebuilding calls from memory
Use Superscribe to capture the words, context, next steps, and time while the work is still happening.
You finish a screening call at 11:40. The next one starts at 11:45. Somewhere in those five minutes you are supposed to write the scorecard, catch the notice period, remember the number the candidate said quickly and quietly when you asked about salary, and send the hiring manager something better than “strong, worth a chat”.
That squeeze is why recruiters go looking for an Otter alternative for recruiters in the first place. Not because the transcript was wrong. Because the transcript was the easy part.
The transcript was never the bottleneck
A recording tool gives you words. Your day needs decisions. Between the call and the end of the loop there is a scorecard, a note to the hiring manager, a follow-up message to the candidate, a diary entry for the second stage, and a line in the system so the next person to open the record knows what happened.
Every one of those is you, later, reading back something you already lived through. And “later” is generous. Later is 6pm, when the second candidate and the fourth candidate have started to blur.
There is a second mismatch, and it is structural. Most screening still happens on the phone. A candidate on a lunch break, in a car park, between shifts. They are not going to click a link so a notetaker can join. Tools built around the video meeting are good at the meeting and quiet about the phone call, which is where the pipeline actually moves.
Try it on the real workflow
Turn your next screening call into a finished scorecard
Run one real candidate call on your own number. The call comes back as a title, a summary, and tappable next steps instead of a wall of text you still have to read.
An Otter alternative for recruiters that starts on the phone
Superscribe Phone is a free iPhone app. You keep your own number and you answer calls the way you always have. Nothing joins the call on the candidate’s side, and there is no meeting bot to explain.
The call is transcribed, in many languages, detected automatically, which matters if you source across borders. Then it comes back as a title, a summary and suggested actions. Call this person back. Put the agreed second-stage slot in the calendar. Set a reminder to chase the reference. Save the unknown number into contacts. Turn the list you dictated between calls into a Reminders checklist. Each one is a single tap, and nothing fires on its own. The time-sensitive ones show up on the lock screen with buttons, so the chase-up happens in the corridor instead of at midnight.
| On a screening day | Otter | Superscribe Phone |
|---|---|---|
| Where it listens | Built around meetings you join on a link | Ordinary phone calls on your own number, plus a phone on the table for in-room meetings |
| What the candidate sees | Something joining the meeting | Their phone ringing, like always |
| What you get at the end | The words that were said | Title, summary, and suggested actions you can tap |
| Who does the follow-through | You, in another tab | One tap per action, with the urgent ones on the lock screen |
| Where it lands | Wherever you paste it | Filed to the right project automatically, pushed to Pipedrive as an activity, or pulled through the API and MCP |
Why I built the phone side of Superscribe
I started Superscribe because of a pattern I could not unsee. People whose highest-value work happens out loud were spending their evenings rebuilding that work from memory, badly, in a text box. The words existed once. Then they were gone, and the reconstruction became the job.
Recruiting is the sharpest version of that I have looked at. You are not a person with one meeting to write up. You are a person with a queue, and the write-up debt compounds all day until the last candidate gets the sharpest notes and the first one gets a shrug. My aim with the phone side was simple: make the call itself the record, so the scorecard is an edit and not an act of recall.
That is also why the output is actions and not just paragraphs. A transcript hands the work back to you. An action you accept with one tap takes the work away.
Run the loop end to end
Same-day scorecards, without the evening cleanup pass
Take one full day of screening calls through Superscribe and see how much of the write-up is already done before you open the laptop.
The intake meeting counts too
Screening calls are only half of a loop. The other half is the hiring manager: the intake where the brief gets set, and the debrief where a decision gets made and then disputed a week later.
For those, tap Start meeting and put the phone on the table. The room is recorded with a visible recording state, so nobody is surprised. A hiring manager who could not make it in person can be dialled in by phone onto the same transcript. Speakers are separated and named when they introduce themselves, which is exactly what you need when the argument later is about who agreed to the salary band. When the meeting ends, the minutes are ready: summary, decisions, follow-ups.
Calls and meetings are filed to the right project automatically, so the candidate conversation and the intake for that role stay together. From there it goes to Pipedrive as an activity, or you pull it wherever your stack lives through the API and MCP. If you run a team, Business Voice adds seats and pooled minutes. The solo app is free to start.
When Otter is still the better pick
I would rather you choose well than choose us.
Choose Otter if your interviews genuinely happen on video links, if what you want is a faithful searchable record of what was said, and if the write-up is a job you are happy owning afterwards.
Choose Superscribe if your screening happens on a normal phone call, if the deliverable you care about is a scorecard, a hiring manager summary and a follow-up message, and if you want the next steps to leave the phone as tasks rather than as reading.
Three questions recruiters ask
Does the candidate need to install anything?
No. You call them, or they call you, on your own number. There is no bot, no link and no new app on their side.
Can it handle candidates who switch language mid-call?
Transcription covers many languages and detects them automatically, so a call that drifts between two languages still comes back as usable text.
Will it push notes into my systems automatically?
Calls are filed to the right project and can be pushed to Pipedrive as an activity. For anything else, the structured output is available through the API and MCP. Suggested actions on the phone always wait for your tap.
Do it on the next one
Open tomorrow's screening list and test one call
Pick a single candidate call, run it through Superscribe, and write the scorecard from the summary instead of from memory.