Recruiting Glossary
Key terms and concepts in modern recruiting, from screening interviews to AI-powered hiring.
What is a Screening Interview?
A preliminary interview used to evaluate whether a candidate meets basic qualifications before advancing to a full interview.
What is a Phone Screen?
A brief phone call between a recruiter and candidate to assess basic fit before scheduling a full interview.
Structured vs. Unstructured Interviews
A comparison of interview methods and why structured interviews produce better, more equitable hiring outcomes.
What is an AI Interview?
An interview conducted by artificial intelligence that asks questions, follows up on responses, and evaluates candidates automatically.
Candidate Screening Best Practices
Proven strategies for efficiently evaluating job candidates to identify the best fit for your open positions.
How to Reduce Time-to-Hire
Strategies for shortening your hiring timeline without compromising on candidate quality.
What Are Behavioral Interview Questions?
Interview questions that ask candidates to describe specific past experiences to predict future job performance.
How to Score Interview Responses
Methods and rubrics for objectively evaluating candidate responses during interviews.
How to Reduce Hiring Bias
Strategies for identifying and mitigating unconscious bias in the hiring process to build more diverse and effective teams.
Effective Screening Questions for Any Role
A guide to crafting screening questions that efficiently identify qualified candidates across different job types.
What is Structured Interviewing?
A systematic approach to interviewing where every candidate is asked the same questions and evaluated using a consistent scoring rubric.
What is Candidate Experience?
The overall perception a job applicant has of an organization's hiring process, from application through onboarding or rejection.
What is a Hiring Funnel?
A framework that maps the stages candidates pass through from initial application to hire, used to measure and optimize recruiting efficiency.
What is a Talent Pipeline?
A proactive recruiting strategy that builds and maintains a pool of pre-qualified candidates for current and future hiring needs.
What is a Competency-Based Interview?
An interview method that evaluates candidates against specific, job-relevant competencies using targeted behavioral questions and scoring criteria.
What is a Panel Interview?
An interview format where multiple interviewers evaluate a single candidate simultaneously, providing diverse perspectives on fit and capability.
What is an Interview Scorecard?
A structured evaluation form used to score candidates consistently across predefined criteria during and after interviews.
What is Remote Hiring?
The process of recruiting, evaluating, and onboarding employees who will work remotely, using digital tools for every stage of the hiring process.
What is Time-to-Placement?
The total elapsed time from when a staffing agency identifies a candidate to when that candidate is successfully placed with a client.
What is High-Volume Recruiting?
A recruiting approach designed to handle large numbers of applications and fill many positions simultaneously, common in staffing agencies and large employers.
What is a Contingent Workforce?
Workers who are engaged on a temporary, contract, or freelance basis rather than as permanent employees, often sourced and managed through staffing agencies.
What is Placement Rate?
The percentage of screened or submitted candidates who are successfully placed in a role, a key performance metric for staffing agencies and recruiters.
What is Asynchronous Screening?
A screening method where candidates complete evaluations on their own schedule rather than in a live, real-time interaction with a recruiter.
What is a Screening Funnel?
A staged filtering process that progressively narrows a pool of applicants through increasingly selective evaluation steps, from initial application to final advancement.
What is Candidate Qualification?
The process of evaluating whether a candidate meets the minimum requirements and core competencies needed for a specific role or placement.
What is Pre-Screening?
The initial evaluation step that takes place before a formal screening interview, used to filter out clearly unqualified candidates early in the process.
What is Screening Automation?
The use of AI and technology to automate parts or all of the candidate screening process, from initial evaluation through scoring and advancement decisions.
What is Quality of Hire?
A metric that measures how well new hires or placements perform in their roles, reflecting the effectiveness of the sourcing, screening, and selection process.
What is Cost-Per-Placement?
The total cost a staffing agency incurs to successfully recruit, screen, and place a candidate with a client, encompassing all associated expenses.
What is Hiring Velocity?
The speed at which an organization or staffing agency fills open positions, measured from requisition creation or job order receipt to candidate placement.
What is Recruiter Productivity?
A measure of recruiter output over a given period, typically expressed as placements, submissions, or screens per recruiter per time period.
What is Screening Accuracy?
The degree to which screening evaluations correctly predict a candidate's actual job performance, reflecting how well the screening process identifies the right people.
What is Candidate Drop-Off?
When candidates voluntarily abandon the application or screening process before completion, representing lost potential placements and wasted sourcing investment.