Tactiq for recruiting: a caption-based Chrome extension, its plans and its gaps

Tactiq is a Chrome extension that transcribes a meeting by reading the video platform's own live captions, with nothing joining the call as a participant. As of September 2026 it works on Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, has a dedicated page describing its use for recruiters, and starts free. The mechanism matters more for an interview than most reviews mention: it needs live captions turned on for the meeting, which on Zoom means the host specifically has to enable them, and it has no applicant tracking system integration.

This page covers what Tactiq's own pages document for an interview specifically: how the caption-based capture works in practice, its plans in recruiting terms, what its recruiter page actually claims, candidate notice, and where it stops. Every claim links to the Tactiq page we checked.

How Tactiq captures an interview

• No bot. Tactiq's Zoom setup guide states plainly that "Tactiq transcribes from your browser, so nothing joins the meeting as a separate participant."
• Reads captions, not audio directly. The same guide says automated captions must be turned on for Tactiq to have anything to transcribe, which is a different mechanism from a desktop app capturing your microphone and speakers.
• Host-dependent on Zoom. If you are hosting, the guide walks through enabling Automated captions from Settings, then selecting Show captions in the meeting toolbar. If someone else is hosting and captions are off, Tactiq's guide says to use Zoom's Request Captions option or ask the host directly.
• Works in Chrome, in the browser tab running the call. Tactiq's Chrome extension page describes it activating automatically when a supported meeting starts in the browser.

For a recruiter, the practical effect is that Tactiq works reliably when you control the meeting settings, and less reliably when a client or hiring manager hosts on a platform where captions default to off. Confirm this before you depend on it for a client-hosted panel.

This is a meaningfully different failure mode from a desktop app that reads your own computer's audio, or a bot that joins the call as a participant. Both of those work the same way no matter who scheduled the meeting or what their account settings are. A caption-based tool inherits whatever the host has configured, which is invisible to you until the meeting starts and you notice the transcript is not filling in. Test the exact platform and host combination you will actually use, not just whichever one was easiest to try first.

Tactiq's plans, in recruiting terms

As published on Tactiq's pricing page, as of September 2026.

The free plan's 10-transcript cap is worth watching for a busy desk: at a handful of screens a day, it runs out inside the first week of a month, not as a long-term option the way some competitors' free tiers are.

What Tactiq's recruiter page actually claims

Tactiq publishes a page aimed specifically at recruiters, transcripts for recruiters, which describes real-time transcription so an interviewer can focus on the candidate rather than typing, speaker identification to track who said what, AI-generated summaries and action items, and the ability to draft a follow-up email from the exact conversation. The page also says summaries can be sent "to your ATS," though it does not name a specific applicant tracking system on that page, and Tactiq's separate integrations page does not list one either, so treat that line as pointing at a manual export or a Zapier-style automation rather than a native connection.

The claims that are backed by Tactiq's own product pages elsewhere on its site are worth taking at face value: real-time captions during the call, a post-call transcript and summary, and the ability to highlight a moment or tag an action item while the conversation is still happening. Those are meeting-transcription features, proven across Tactiq's wider user base, simply pointed at an interview instead of a status meeting. The recruiter page layers hiring language on top of the same underlying product rather than describing separate, hiring-specific engineering.

Notifying candidates: what's automatic and what isn't

Tactiq's help center describes an in-meeting chat notification that a user can send during a call by clicking a privacy icon, and a separate team-level setting a Team Admin can turn on so the notification fires automatically whenever transcription starts, with a live preview of the message shown before saving. Neither is on by default for every account, which means a recruiter who wants every candidate to see a transcription notice has to either send it manually each time or ask an admin to switch on the automatic version first.

Where Tactiq stops for recruiting

• No ATS integration. Tactiq's integrations page names document, CRM and project-management tools, with no applicant tracking system.
• No structured scorecard. Its output is a transcript, summary and action items, not a competency-by-competency rubric.
• Depends on captions being available. A platform, meeting setting or host that has captions off leaves Tactiq with nothing to transcribe.
• Candidate notice is opt-in. Since notification is a setting rather than a default, an interviewer relying on Tactiq to handle disclosure on its own will find it does not, unless someone has switched that setting on.
• No phone capture. Because it reads a video platform's captions inside a browser tab, a call made outside a browser meeting, such as a mobile phone screen, is outside what it can do at all.
• Language coverage varies by feature. Tactiq's own pages describe transcription across 60-plus languages, but check that captioning specifically, not just the AI summary layer on top, is reliable in the language your candidates actually speak.

Settings to check before your first candidate call

• Confirm captions work on every platform you interview on, not just the one you tested first, since Zoom's host-side setting does not necessarily mirror Teams or Meet.
• Turn on the team notification setting if you want disclosure to be consistent rather than left to each interviewer to remember.
• Add a spoken consent line regardless of the chat notice. A message in the meeting chat is easy for a candidate to miss; our consent script covers the line to say out loud.
• Check your free-tier transcript count against your interview volume before relying on Free for a week of back-to-back screens.

Tactiq next to recruiting-specific tools

A quick way to check captions are actually running

Before a real candidate call, run a two-minute test with a colleague on each platform you use. Join the meeting, confirm captions are visible on screen to at least one participant, and check that Tactiq's extension icon shows it is capturing rather than idle. If you are not hosting, ask the actual host to enable captions in their own settings ahead of time rather than during the call, since walking someone through Zoom's Settings menu while a candidate waits is not a good start to an interview. Keep a fallback: if captions fail to appear within the first minute, be ready to take notes by hand rather than assume the transcript will catch up once things settle down.

Who Tactiq suits, and who should look elsewhere

• Suits: hiring managers and recruiters who want a free or low-cost transcript and summary for occasional interviews, and control the meeting settings on the platforms they use.
• Suits: teams that already use Tactiq for other meetings and want to add interviews without a second tool.
• Look elsewhere if: you screen candidates by phone, since Tactiq is browser-based and does not capture a call outside a supported video meeting.
• Look elsewhere if: you need guaranteed capture regardless of who hosts and what their caption settings are.
• Look elsewhere if: ATS write-back or a hiring-specific scorecard matters more to you than price.
• Worth trying briefly: a Free-plan pilot costs nothing and takes ten minutes to set up, so it is a reasonable first thing to try before committing to a paid hiring-specific tool, even if you expect to outgrow it.