Interview transcription software: what you get after each kind of interview

Interview transcription software turns a recorded interview into text where every line has a speaker and a time, and then into what the interview was for: a write-up on a candidate, notes from a study session, quotes for an article. Dalm, a Mac app, records the interview on a call or in a room. It recognises the speech on your Mac and sends no audio anywhere; the transcript is synced to our servers automatically, and a language model works out what kind of interview it was and writes the summary. There is a Free plan.

What any interview needs from the software

Whoever you interview, three things decide whether a transcript is worth keeping. The questions and the answers have to stay apart, so nothing the interviewer said is read as the other person’s view. A sentence you are going to rely on has to be checkable against the place it was said. And you need to know where the recording and the words go, because the person across the table was told something about them. Past that, interviews part ways: a hiring team needs a write-up it can compare across candidates, a study needs passages it can find again, and an article needs the exact words.

After each kind of interview: what you get

Dalm works out from the conversation what kind of meeting it was and shows it at the top of the meeting. These are kinds of interview it can recognise, and what each one leaves you with:

The interview	What you get after it	What it is for
A job interview with a candidate	A one-screen summary of the interview, and a write-up laid out for a job interview	Something to set next to the other candidates’ interviews
A research interview	A one-screen summary of the session, and a write-up laid out for a research interview	A starting point you check against the transcript — more for researchers
A podcast or press interview	A one-screen summary, and the transcript as a document, every line with its speaker and time	The transcript is your source for quotes; the summary is what you skim first — more for journalists and for podcasters
An exit interview	A one-screen summary, and a write-up laid out for an exit interview	A record of what the person brought up on the way out, to check against the transcript

After any of them you also have the transcript, line by line with speakers and times, and a summary in which each point keeps the words it came from. The summary is written automatically; the documents are one click away. You cannot pick or change the kind of meeting, and when the app is not sure, it treats the conversation as a general meeting. If you want the same write-up after every interview, describe it once in your own words as a template and tick the box to build it for each new meeting.

On a call, in a room, or from a file

On a call, your microphone and the call’s sound come in as two streams, so your questions are yours from the first line. In a room, the voices are told apart on your Mac, and the text made from them is synced to our servers. Each voice can be given a name and a role for that meeting — host, candidate, client. An interview recorded elsewhere comes in as a file of up to four hours, and the original stays where it was. Step by step, with what to check before you press record: how to transcribe an interview.

What leaves your Mac after an interview, and what does not

The interview is heard on your Mac: the speech is recognised there, and the audio is never sent anywhere. The audio is deleted once the text exists. The text is what travels. The transcript is synced to our servers automatically, and no setting turns the sync off. A language model run by a third party then reads it: to tell what kind of interview it was, to write the summary and any document you ask for, and to answer your questions about it. Piece by piece, it is all on privacy.

Checking a quote before it goes into a write-up

In the summary, every point keeps the words it came from. Every quote shows you where it was said — open it and the transcript opens at that place. So before a line about a candidate goes to the hiring team, or a sentence goes into an article, you can read what was actually said around it. Where something was not said — a start date, a salary, a name — the summary leaves the place empty rather than guessing. What you cannot do is listen again: the audio is gone once the text exists, so if a quote has to be checked by ear, keep a recording of your own.

When this is the wrong tool for your interviews

• When the interview may not leave your computer even as text. The transcript is synced to our servers and read by a language model, and no setting keeps it on the Mac.
• When you need to replay the interview. The audio is deleted once the text exists; a file you bring in stays where it was, so keep your own recording.
• When the write-up has to land in your hiring system by itself. It leaves the app as text, Word or PDF, and you put it there. Whole studies with coding are a different job — see transcription for qualitative research.
• When interviews are recorded on a phone or on Windows. Dalm is a Mac app; a recording made elsewhere comes in as a file. Very short calls, under 100 words, are not counted as meetings at all.

Programs are compared by name on the page about transcription software.

Free for one interviewer, Team for a hiring team

Recording interviews, the transcripts and the summaries come with the Free plan, and Free is a plan rather than a trial. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later and an account; while it is not public, the way in is the waitlist. What the paid plans add is on the pricing page. A hiring team can work in one Team workspace, with one dictionary for candidates’ names and the terms of the job, and templates everyone shares. A job interview can be set to elevated or protected privacy, which narrows who sees it; who sees what is set out on working as a team. If you recruit for clients, what an agency gets after intake calls, screens and offer calls is on the page for recruiting agencies.