Frequently asked questions
What is oomou?
oomou is a social intelligence simulator built around Hard talks: a live spoken conversation in which an AI counterpart — a manager, a colleague, an interviewer — pushes back the way a real one would, followed by coaching on what you said and what you could have said instead. oomou also runs a scored Social IQ Test across six workplace scenarios; for now that is used by recruiters and organisations who assign it, and by our research study, rather than sold to individuals.
How is oomou different from a personality test?
A personality test asks you to rate yourself; oomou scores what you actually said when handed a hard situation. It also pushes back — the interviewer asks follow-up questions aimed at the part you skated over, which a fixed questionnaire cannot do. Self-report rewards knowing the right answer, whereas a scenario rewards being willing to pay for it.
How long does a conversation take?
A Hard talk is a single conversation, and you choose its length — quick, standard or long — before you start. The Social IQ Test, when a recruiter or your organisation assigns one, takes 15 to 25 minutes across six scenarios; each scenario is its own short session, so you can stop after any one and pick up where you left off later, on any device.
Do I have to speak out loud, or can I type?
Hard talks and the Social IQ Test are both spoken — you talk out loud with the AI counterpart, which is the point of it: how you phrase something under pressure is part of what is being looked at, and talking is faster than typing for most people. You need a microphone and a quiet-ish few minutes. Typing your answers instead is not available at the moment.
What do I get at the end?
After a Hard talk, a score and grade, and on Starter the full review: what went well, where the conversation turned, and lines you could have said with the reason each one works. After a Social IQ Test assigned by your organisation, a profile across six dimensions with the quotes from your own conversation that produced each score, a written report, and a personalised growth plan with seven short daily exercises. If you upload a CV you also get matched roles and an upskilling plan.
Is there an oomou app I can download?
oomou installs to your home screen from the browser — there is no App Store or Google Play listing, and none is planned. Open oomou.co on a phone and use your browser's install option (on iPhone, Share then Add to Home Screen); it then opens full screen and launches like any other app. A conversation still needs a connection because it is live and spoken, but your growth plan and past results stay readable offline.
Can I repeat a conversation?
Hard talks can be repeated as often as you like, and the counterpart does not play it the same way twice. The Social IQ Test is only retaken when whoever assigned it — a recruiter or your organisation — asks for another run; even then you will not be given the same scenarios twice, because oomou remembers which situations you have already worked through and generates fresh ones.
What languages does oomou support?
Start in English and switch to any language at any time — the assessor follows whichever language you speak and will never comment on it. Imperfect English is explicitly not penalised: the rubric grades structure and content, not language polish.
Does oomou work in Hong Kong or mainland China?
Yes, and you do not need a VPN. Regions where OpenAI is unavailable are automatically routed to Google Gemini instead.
What are the six dimensions oomou measures?
Authenticity, Emotional Depth, Social Awareness, Narrative Clarity, Openness and Communicative Confidence — inspired by the HEXACO factors Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience and Extraversion respectively. Each is probed by its own dedicated scenario.
How does oomou score my answers?
Each dimension is broken into four observable facets rated against described behaviours, and the dimension score is the average of the four. The top band needs a specific committed action, the concrete words you would say, and a cost you acknowledge and accept. Stating the right intent abstractly lands mid-range on purpose, because it commits to nothing.
Can I game the assessment by giving the ideal answer?
Not easily. An answer where nothing costs anything and everybody ends up happy is explicitly capped by the rubric, because socially desirable responding is the known failure mode of self-report instruments. Admitting difficulty, or that there was no good option, counts in your favour rather than against you.
Is oomou scientifically validated?
No. oomou is an early-stage beta and its scores are AI-generated estimates from a single conversation, not a validated psychometric measurement. No reliability, predictive-validity or bias studies have been run, and the dimensions are inspired by the HEXACO model rather than an implementation of it.
Is oomou a HEXACO test?
No — oomou is HEXACO-inspired, not a HEXACO test, and it is not the HEXACO-PI-R. The rubric is anchored to the public-domain IPIP-HEXACO item pool as behavioural markers for the scorer; nobody is ever administered those items as a questionnaire.
Can oomou be used to make a hiring decision?
Not on its own. oomou’s Terms prohibit using a score as the sole basis for a hiring, promotion or termination decision, and require meaningful human review of any decision affecting someone.
Who can see my assessment results?
Only you. Your profile, transcript and report are private to your account and are never sent to an employer unless you choose to send them. The one exception is an assessment taken through a recruiter’s invite link, where the result is filed for that recruiter by design and you are told so before you begin.
How does oomou stop the AI being biased against me?
Your name, employer, school, location, age and any demographic detail you mention are stripped out and replaced with neutral tags before any scoring model reads your transcript. The scorer is separately instructed to give zero weight to any signal that survives, including accent, non-native grammar, and the prestige of an employer or school. It is a mitigation rather than a proof: no formal bias study has been run yet.
Is my data used to train AI models?
No. oomou uses paid API tiers that contractually exclude submitted content from model training.
Is my voice recording kept?
No. The conversation is transcribed and the audio is not retained.
Where is my data stored, and under what law?
Encrypted in transit and at rest, stored in the EU, and handled under GDPR and UK GDPR.
Can I delete my account and my data?
Yes — yourself, from your profile, at any time, with no email or support request needed. Deletion removes your profile, CV, transcripts, assessments, coaching plans, certificates and email schedules, and signs out every device.
Do I need a password to use oomou?
No. oomou emails you a one-time six-digit code instead of storing a password.
How much does oomou cost?
oomou is free to start — every Hard Talks library drill is free to run at quick or standard length and shows your score and grade, with no card needed. Starter is $29 per month, or $10 per month billed annually ($120 per year): it unlocks the full review on every Hard Talk (past drills included), keeps every drill in your history, adds a report of your trend across the five axes and your confidence before and after each drill, lets you create your own scenarios, and opens the long 10–15 minute drill. The Social IQ Test is not sold to individuals — it runs when a recruiter or your organisation assigns it, at no cost to you.
How much does oomou cost for a team?
Enterprise is $188 a month per company plus $10 per employee per month, from 50 employees, billed monthly. It gives every employee four hours of Hard Talks a month with full reviews, plus training programmes, compliance checks and team analytics. There is a cost calculator on the pricing page; enterprise plans are set up on a call.
Is there a free version of oomou?
Yes — every Hard Talks library drill is free to run at quick or standard length and shows your score and grade, and no card is required. What Starter adds is the full coaching review on each drill (past drills included), your saved history and trend report, your own scenarios, and long drills.
Can I cancel Starter?
Yes, from your profile at any time. You keep Starter until the end of the period you have already paid for. Payment is handled by Stripe, so card details never touch oomou’s servers.
Can I share my oomou result on LinkedIn?
Yes. You can publish one assessment as a public certificate and post the link anywhere, choosing whether it carries your real name or your anonymous handle. You can make it private again at any time.
What does a public oomou certificate show?
The shape of your profile across the six dimensions, your two strongest dimensions, and your observed strengths — and deliberately no numeric score and no development areas.
Can I find a job through oomou?
Yes — oomou has a public job board at oomou.co/jobs listing roles from employers who hire through it, and anyone can browse it without an account. You apply by completing the assessment rather than by sending a CV, and the same assessment applies to every role on the board, so a second application takes a click rather than another evening.
How do I apply for a job on oomou?
Open the role, answer any eligibility questions the employer has set, and complete the fifteen-minute spoken assessment; the employer then receives your scored result. The eligibility questions come first on purpose, so nobody spends fifteen minutes on a role they could not be hired for, and you are shown exactly what will be shared with the employer before anything is sent.
Do I need a CV to apply for a job on oomou?
No — applying to a role on oomou needs no CV and no covering letter, because the assessment is the application. You can attach a CV if you want the employer to see one, and doing so also unlocks the overlap scoring and the tailored covering note in your career workspace, but it is never required to apply.
Can recruiters use oomou to assess candidates?
Yes — recruiters sign in with a company email and get a dedicated workspace. A recruiter creates a shareable invite link, candidates complete the assessment through it, and the scored result is filed against that role — with the candidate's CV summary alongside it and a report written specifically about fit for the job description provided. Recruiters can also browse jobseekers: people who have chosen to make their profile, CV summary and results discoverable to hiring teams.
What is the oomou jobseeker pool?
The jobseeker pool is opt-in visibility for individuals. Joining it — a ticked consent box on your profile, off by default — lets recruiters on oomou see your name, your CV summary and your assessment results, and get suggested interview questions based on them. You can leave the pool at any time from the same place, which removes you from every recruiter's view immediately.
How do the suggested interview questions work?
For each candidate, a recruiter can ask oomou for three first-interview questions grounded in that person's assessed profile — probing the development areas and giving strengths room to show, tied to the job description when there is one. They are a starting point for a fairer, more specific conversation, not a script, and they never reference the assessment or its scores.
Do candidates see their score on a recruiter assessment?
No — a candidate completing an assessment through a recruiter invite is not shown a score for that run, and is told that before starting. The result goes to the recruiter who created the invite. Candidates can always take their own assessment separately and keep that result private to themselves.
What happens after I finish an interview on oomou?
Your responses go straight to the recruiter or employer who invited you, and the decision about next steps is theirs — oomou does not screen, rank or reject anyone on their behalf. Expect to hear from them the way you would after any first-round interview; oomou does not send a result email, because there is no result for you to receive. If you have not heard back after a couple of weeks, write to the recruiter directly: the invite page or the job listing carries their name, and your application is on file with them.
Will I see my score after a recruiter interview?
Yes. A recruiter's invite is one to three Hard talks, and every Hard talk ends with the same scored review and coaching you would get practising on your own — the recruiter sees that result, your CV summary if you attached one, and nothing else on your account. The scores never mix with your private practice history unless the recruiter assigned the drill.
What exactly does the employer see?
The employer sees the scored result of each conversation you had for their role — the five-axis scores, the written notes, what you handled well and what you could have said instead — plus your answers to any eligibility questions and the CV summary if you attached one. They do not see your voice recording, which is not kept, and they do not see any other result on your account. You are shown the list of what will be shared before anything is sent.
Can I redo an interview if it went badly?
Not on the same invite — an interview is filed once, the way a real first round is, and only the recruiter can ask for another run. If the conversation broke off for a technical reason (the connection dropped, the microphone failed), pick up where you left off from the same link: every scenario is its own short session and an unfinished interview can be resumed from the same link. To prepare for the next one, the Job Interviews category on Hard talks has the same questions, with coaching.
Can I withdraw my application or delete what was sent?
Yes — deleting your oomou account removes your profile, CV, transcripts and results, and a result already delivered to a recruiter is stripped of everything that identifies you rather than kept under your name. To withdraw from one role without deleting your account, tell the recruiter directly; they can close your application from their side. Leaving the jobseeker pool, from your profile, removes you from every recruiter's view immediately.
How should I prepare before an oomou interview?
Treat it as a spoken first-round interview: a quiet room, a working microphone, ten to fifteen uninterrupted minutes per conversation, and real examples ready — a situation, what you actually did, what happened. The other person pushes back on anything vague, so a specific answer with a cost you acknowledge scores better than a polished generality. Rehearsing out loud beforehand helps most people: the Job Interviews category on Hard talks runs the common questions with an interviewer who pushes back, and tells you what you could have said instead.
Is there an oomou app I can download?
oomou installs to your home screen from the browser — there is no App Store or Google Play listing, and none is planned. Open oomou.co on a phone and use your browser's install option (on iPhone, Share then Add to Home Screen); it then opens full screen and launches like any other app. The assessment still needs a connection because it is a live spoken conversation, but your growth plan and past results stay readable offline.
Can I find a job through oomou?
Yes — oomou has a public job board at oomou.co/jobs listing roles from employers who hire through it, and anyone can browse it without an account. You apply by completing the assessment rather than by sending a CV, and the same assessment applies to every role on the board, so a second application takes a click rather than another evening.
How do I apply for a job on oomou?
Open the role, answer any eligibility questions the employer has set, and complete the fifteen-minute spoken assessment; the employer then receives your scored result. The eligibility questions come first on purpose, so nobody spends fifteen minutes on a role they could not be hired for, and you are shown exactly what will be shared with the employer before anything is sent.
Do I need a CV to apply for a job on oomou?
No — applying to a role on oomou needs no CV and no covering letter, because the assessment is the application. You can attach a CV if you want the employer to see one, and doing so also unlocks the overlap scoring and the tailored covering note in your career workspace, but it is never required to apply.