AI note taker auto-delete settings compared: can you match your candidate retention policy?

Yes, most AI note takers can delete interview transcripts on a schedule, but as of October 2026 the control often belongs to an admin or the vendor's support team rather than the recruiter. Granola lets users set transcript auto-deletion from 1 day to 1 year, Fireflies offers 1 week to 1 year on Enterprise, Otter and Fathom set custom retention on Enterprise by request, and Zoom and Microsoft Teams give admins day-count settings. tl;dv and Google Meet without a Vault rule keep data until someone deletes it. No setting reaches copies already emailed, exported or pasted into your ATS, and the EEOC's one-year rule for hiring records still sets the floor.

The table below compares the controls tool by tool. Where each tool stores data in the first place is covered in where AI note takers store interview data; the legal minimums by record type are in how long to keep interview notes.

Which AI note takers can auto-delete interview transcripts?

From each vendor's own help center or admin documentation, as of October 2026.

Sources, as of October 2026: Granola transcript auto-deletion and security FAQ; Otter custom data retention and delete a conversation; Fireflies auto-delete and deleting meetings; Fathom retention policies and organization settings; tl;dv how long recordings are kept and deleting recordings; Zoom auto-deletion of meeting summaries, cloud recording settings and meeting transcripts; Microsoft recording expiration policy and intelligent recap data; Google Vault retention for Meet.

Can Granola's auto-deletion match a candidate retention policy?

It can come close, with three limits. First, the periods are fixed steps: if your policy says 18 months, the nearest options are 1 year or off. Second, it removes transcripts only; Granola's help page says notes "will remain available," so the AI summary of the interview survives unless someone deletes the note. Third, on a non-enterprise plan each interviewer sets their own period, so a team policy depends on everyone choosing the same value. Enterprise workspaces can ask Granola for a single policy that users cannot override, but there is no cooldown: transcripts older than the period are deleted as soon as it is switched on.

Granola's security FAQ adds that audio is cached during the meeting for transcription and then deleted, and that notes and transcripts are otherwise kept "indefinitely" unless a deletion period is set. For a recruiting team, the practical setup is an enterprise policy at your transcript retention period plus a routine for deleting notes. More on how it fits interviews is in Granola for recruiting.

What does an auto-delete setting not reach?

Every setting above acts on the vendor's own copy. Interview content usually exists in more places within a day:

• Emailed summaries. Zoom can email meeting summaries to participants, and Google sends Gemini notes to the organizer and the person who started them. A deletion setting does not recall an email.
• The ATS. Notes pasted or synced into a candidate record follow the ATS's own retention rules, not the note taker's.
• Exports and downloads. A Word file on a laptop or a transcript saved to a shared drive is outside the vendor's reach. Otter's Enterprise admins can remove export options altogether, which closes this gap at the source.
• Mailbox copies. Microsoft says a copy of a Teams transcript is stored in the organizer's Exchange Online account, and recap notes sit in participants' mailboxes. Ask IT how your mailbox retention treats them.
• Other attendees' tools. Fireflies says that if the meeting owner has auto-delete off, the meeting is not deleted "regardless of other participants' settings." A hiring manager's own note taker keeps its own copy of your interview.
• Trash and recycle bins. Otter keeps manually deleted conversations in Trash for 30 days; expired Teams recordings go to the OneDrive or SharePoint recycle bin, which Microsoft says empties after 93 days for work accounts unless an admin changed it.

If a candidate asks for their data to be deleted, you need all of these, not just the note taker; see candidate data access requests.

How long should the deletion period be?

Start from the legal floor. Under 29 CFR 1602.14, an employer covered by Title VII or the ADA must keep "application forms submitted by applicants and other records having to do with hiring" for one year from the date the record was made or the personnel action, whichever is later. If a charge of discrimination is filed, relevant records must be kept until the charge or lawsuit is finally resolved. Some states require longer, and other countries' data protection laws push the other way, toward shorter periods.

That leaves two common designs. An example, not a recommendation: keep the scorecard and interviewer notes in the ATS for two years, and set the note taker to delete transcripts after one year. Or keep transcripts for the same period as everything else, so a disputed score can always be checked against what the candidate said. Either way, write the decision into your candidate data retention policy.

Plan for legal holds before you switch deletion on. Otter's Enterprise "Disable Speech Deletion" setting and Fathom's "Disable Recording Deletion" stop users from deleting recordings, and Google says Vault "holds take precedence over retention rules" (Google Vault). A hold only works if someone knows to place it before the timer runs out. This is general information, not legal advice; confirm your periods with counsel.

Can a recruiter set auto-delete, or does it need an admin?

• The recruiter can: Granola users on non-enterprise plans; Fireflies Enterprise users unless an admin has fixed the period; Zoom users in personal settings unless an admin locked them.
• An admin must: Microsoft Teams expiration, Google Vault rules, and team-wide policies in every tool.
• The vendor must: Otter's custom retention (through the account manager), Fathom's retention policy (by email) and Granola's enterprise policy (by request).

If your recruiters use personal or self-serve accounts, a company retention policy cannot be enforced through the tool at all. That alone is a reason to put interview note taking on a managed plan.

How do you set up auto-delete for interviews?

1. Write down your retention period for transcripts, recordings and summaries separately; they do not have to match.
2. List every tool that captures interviews, including hiring managers' own note takers and the meeting platform's built-in AI.
3. For each tool, set the period at the highest level available (workspace or account) and lock it.
4. Turn off audio storage where the tool allows it, so the longest-kept item is text; see AI note takers that don't store audio.
5. Set the ATS's own retention rules to cover pasted notes and synced summaries.
6. Test with one dummy interview: confirm it disappears on schedule, then check email, downloads and the ATS for what is left.
7. Document who can suspend deletion for a legal hold, and how.

For Zoom specifically, the three settings and the 30-day trash window are explained in Zoom recording retention settings for interviews.

What about note takers built for recruiting?

Recruiting tools tend to tie retention to the candidate record. Greenhouse's Notetaker setup lets admins set recording retention per office and department rule, up to a maximum of 60 days (Greenhouse). Metaview's default is two years, which it says it can change to "any time period you would like" (Metaview). Both as of October 2026. We make Interview Signal, which does not retain audio and keeps transcripts on the recruiter's computer, so deleting them follows your own device and records policy rather than a vendor timer; everything about the other tools on this page comes from their own sites, linked and dated.