Reference
Hiring glossary
24 terms from hiring, assessment and AI compliance, defined in plain language. Several exist to correct a confusion we run into constantly.
Definitions here are vendor-neutral: each one is written to be true whether or not you ever use CalHire. Where we do something specific about a term, that sits in a separate link rather than inside the definition.
A
- Adverse impactalso disparate impact
- A substantially different rate of selection for a protected group that results from a neutral-seeming employment practice, regardless of whether anyone intended it.
- Anonymous screening
- Evaluating candidates on a record that contains no identifying attributes at all, because those attributes are withheld at the source rather than hidden from the reviewer.
- Applicant tracking systemalso ATS
- Software that stores and manages job applications through the stages of a hiring process, from application to offer.
- Automated employment decision toolalso AEDT
- A computational process that substantially assists or replaces discretionary decision-making in hiring or promotion, typically by scoring, ranking or filtering candidates.
B
- Bias audit
- An assessment of whether a hiring tool produces different selection rates across protected groups, performed by a party independent of the tool’s vendor.
- Blind hiringalso name-blind recruitment, anonymised applications
- Removing identifying information such as name, photograph, age and school from an application so that it is evaluated without those signals.
C
- Candidate ghosting
- Ending contact with a candidate without telling them the outcome of their application.
- Composite score
- A single score combining several weighted assessment components, used to rank candidates on a common scale.
D
- Data subject access requestalso DSAR, subject access request
- A request from an individual to see the personal data an organisation holds about them, together with information about how and why it is processed.
E
- Emiratisationalso Emiratization
- The UAE policy requiring private-sector establishments to employ a set proportion of UAE nationals in skilled roles, with financial contributions payable for unmet positions.
F
- Four-fifths rulealso 80% rule, adverse impact ratio
- A screening test for adverse impact: if a group’s selection rate is less than four-fifths of the highest group’s selection rate, that is evidence of adverse impact requiring investigation.
H
- Human in the loopalso meaningful human oversight
- A requirement that a person makes or can meaningfully change an automated decision, rather than reviewing it after the fact or approving it as a formality.
I
- Identity broker
- A third party that holds a candidate’s identifying information and releases it to an employer only on the candidate’s explicit instruction.
P
- Predictive validity
- The extent to which performance on a selection method actually predicts performance on the job, expressed as a correlation.
Q
- Quality of hire
- A measure of how well hired candidates perform and stay, used to judge whether a hiring process is selecting the right people.
R
- Remote proctoring
- Monitoring a candidate during a remote assessment, typically through webcam, screen recording, room scans or gaze tracking, to detect cheating.
- Resume screeningalso CV screening
- Reviewing submitted resumes to decide which candidates continue in a process, usually against criteria such as keywords, years of experience, education or employer history.
- Right to workalso work authorisation
- A person’s legal entitlement to be employed in a particular country, which an employer is generally required to verify before employment begins.
S
- Selection rate
- The proportion of candidates from a given group who pass a particular stage of a hiring process.
- Skills-based hiringalso skills-first hiring
- Selecting candidates on demonstrated ability to do the work, rather than on proxies for it such as degrees, job titles or previous employers.
- Staged reveal
- Releasing a candidate’s identity to an employer at a defined point in the process, with the candidate’s consent, scoped to that employer alone.
- Structured interview
- An interview in which every candidate is asked the same predetermined questions and their answers are scored against a rubric defined in advance.
T
- Talent rediscoveryalso silver medallists
- Matching candidates already in an employer’s records against a newly opened role, rather than sourcing entirely new applicants.
W
- Work-sample testalso work sample, take-home task
- A selection method in which a candidate completes a bounded, realistic task drawn from the job, and the output is scored against predefined criteria.
See how this works on a real role
Post a role free and review anonymous, skill-ranked candidates. The definitions above describe what actually happens.