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.
Last reviewed
In practice
The distinction from redaction is practical rather than pedantic. A redacted resume still exists somewhere unredacted, which means it can leak through an export, a filename, a calendar invite or an administrator with a wider view. A record that never contained a name cannot.
Anonymous screening has to end somewhere, because interviews, right-to-work checks and offers all require knowing who someone is. The design question is when identity is released and on whose authority, which is what a staged reveal answers.
Related
Blind hiring
Removing identifying information such as name, photograph, age and school from an application so that it is evaluated without those signals.
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.
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.
Read further
Longer pieces on this and the arguments around it.
Name-blind recruitment: the weakest form of blind hiring
Name-blind screening is the most adopted and least effective form of blind hiring. What a name signals, what survives redaction, and what to do instead.
ReadBlind hiring: what the evidence supports, and what it does not
Blind hiring has one of the cleanest natural experiments in labour economics behind it, and real limits. What it fixes, what it cannot, and how to implement it.
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