CCOMPETIQ a new live avatar interviewer recruitment platform designed for merchant shipping and the wider maritime industry, has been launched to help employers recruit qualified seafarers faster, while maintaining rigorous standards of safety, verification and competence.

Developed by Glasgow-based maritime technology company The World Yacht, the COMPETIQ platform enables organisations to interview large numbers of candidates simultaneously using AI live avatar interviewers, while automatically verifying identities, checking qualifications and producing consistent candidate assessments within minutes.

COMPETIQ recruitment platform creates a live avatar interviewer that can be tailored by gender, age or ethnicity. After analysing each candidate’s CV and experience, it generates role-specific interview questions, adapts its questioning according to each response and assesses candidates against predefined recruitment criteria. The platform can be configured for roles including masters, deck officers, engineering officers and other seagoing positions.

The system also verifies candidate identity using facial recognition technology and cross-checks professional qualifications and certifications before progressing applicants to the next stage of the recruitment process.

Designed by maritime professionals, including a former ship’s captain, to help employers assess not only whether candidates hold the correct certification, but whether they can demonstrate the practical judgement required for life at sea.

The World Yacht was founded as a superyacht management company 11 years ago by entrepreneur and former ship captain Vinil Gupta, a Master Mariner with decades of maritime and regulatory experience.

Since then, it has evolved into a maritime technology and innovation business, developing recruitment, training, and operational tools for merchant shipping, yacht management, and the wider maritime sector.

Although the company’s origins are in the superyacht sector, the new COMPETIQ platform draws on Gupta’s seagoing experience and the team’s maritime technology expertise to address one of merchant shipping’s biggest operational challenges: recruiting qualified and competent crew quickly without compromising safety, verification or quality.

Ship owners and operators are often required to recruit across multiple countries and time zones, leaving limited opportunity to conduct lengthy interviews or manually verify every applicant’s identity, qualifications and certifications. At the same time, a growing shortage of skilled seafarers means vacancies must be filled faster than ever, without lowering recruitment standards.

The launch comes as the newly published Seafarer Workforce Report 2026 from BIMCO and the International Chamber of Shipping warns of a growing shortage of STCW-certified officers. The report estimates that the world merchant fleet currently requires 1,088,080 officers, against a supply of 1,048,980, creating a shortage of 39,100 officers in 2026.

The report also forecasts that an additional 113,735 officers will be needed by 2030 to operate the world merchant fleet, with 22,747 officers needing to join the workforce each year. It estimates that 2.57 million seafarers currently serve the global fleet, operating 85,148 merchant ships worldwide.

Since the previous report in 2021, demand for STCW-certified seafarers has increased by 35%, with demand for officers up 23.1% and demand for ratings up 46.3%. The report concludes that recruitment, training and retention will be critical if the industry is to meet future demand.

The report also notes that companies are experiencing the greatest difficulty recruiting engineering officers and deck officers, underscoring the need for faster, more reliable ways to assess qualified candidates.

Following the initial interviews, recruiters receive detailed performance reports together with a recommended shortlist of the strongest candidates, enabling final interviews to be conducted either in person or by video call.

Vinil Gupta, entrepreneur and former ship’s captain, said: “As a ship’s captain, I know there is a big difference between someone who is certified on paper and someone who can make the right decision under pressure. That is the gap this platform has been built to address.

“Maritime recruitment is under huge pressure. Employers need to move faster, but they cannot afford to compromise on competence, safety or trust. COMPETIQ uses AI to help identify the strongest candidates more quickly by testing how they think, how they respond and whether their experience matches the role they are applying for.

“It is not about replacing human judgment. It is about giving recruiters better information before they make that judgment. The platform can interview large numbers of candidates simultaneously across different countries and time zones, verify identity and qualifications, and produce a consistent first-stage assessment, so recruiters can focus their time on the people most likely to be right for the role.

“Too often, recruitment starts with paperwork and certificates. Those are important, but they do not always show whether someone can handle a real operational situation. Because COMPETIQ has been designed by people who understand life at sea, it can ask practical, role-specific questions and assess how candidates respond to them.

“The maritime industry is facing a serious crewing challenge. We need more people, but we also need the right people. AI, used properly, can help the industry recruit faster, more fairly and with greater confidence.”

The company says the COMPETIQ platform has been designed to help maritime employers shorten recruitment times while maintaining robust standards of verification and assessment. It allows experienced recruitment professionals to focus on selecting the best candidates, rather than spending valuable time processing large volumes of applications manually.

The World Yacht says the COMPETIQ could be particularly valuable for employers recruiting across global crew markets, where candidates may be based in different time zones and where speed, consistency and confidence in candidate information are increasingly important.