Hiring glossary
Plain-language definitions of the hiring terms SMBs actually run into. What they mean, when they matter, and how TalentGleam handles them.
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Active candidate
An active candidate is someone currently looking for a job — sending applications, updating their LinkedIn, reading job boards. The opposite of a passive candidate.
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Active listening
Active listening is the practice of proving you understood a candidate's answer before deciding what it means: paraphrasing it back, asking a specific follow-up, and not filling the pause with your next question while they're still talking.
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AGG (Germany)
AGG (Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz) is Germany's anti-discrimination law. It governs what you can and cannot ask, mention, or weigh in a hiring decision in Germany.
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AI bias in hiring
AI bias in hiring is the tendency of machine-learning models to reproduce — and sometimes amplify — patterns of discrimination from the data they were trained on. The reason 'AI fairness in hiring' is a research field, not a checkbox.
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AI candidate matching
AI candidate matching scores how well a candidate fits a specific role by comparing CV signals (skills, experience, seniority) to the role's requirements. The mechanism behind 'AI screening' and 'AI sourcing.'
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AI in recruiting
AI in recruiting is the use of machine-learning models in hiring — for screening, sourcing, scheduling, candidate matching, and rejection. Most ATS platforms now ship some form of it; the question is which parts are useful.
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AI screening
AI screening uses machine-learning models to score applications against role criteria — surfacing strong matches and demoting weak ones for human review. Faster than manual CV review, but only as good as the criteria it scores against.
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AI sourcing
AI sourcing uses machine-learning models to find candidates outside your application pipeline — searching LinkedIn, GitHub, public profiles, and your existing talent pool to surface people who match a role. Outbound, not inbound.
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Applicant tracking system
An applicant tracking system is software that collects job applications, keeps them in one place, and helps a hiring team move candidates through stages.
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Applicants per hire
Applicants per hire is the ratio of total applications received to hires made for a role. Reveals how selective your process is and how well your top-of-funnel is performing.
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Application completion rate
Application completion rate is the percentage of candidates who start the application form and finish it. The clearest top-of-funnel leak metric; sub-50% rates usually point at form length or unnecessary fields.
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Application form
An application form is the structured form a candidate fills out to apply for a role — fields like name, contact, CV upload, and any role-specific questions. The single biggest leak point in most SMB hiring funnels.
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Apprenticeship
An apprenticeship is a multi-year hybrid of formal training and paid work — common in Germany (Ausbildung) and increasingly elsewhere in Europe. Builds a candidate from school-leaver to qualified worker, paid throughout.
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Asynchronous work
Asynchronous work is a style where teammates don't need to be available at the same time — decisions happen in writing, with response windows of hours or days instead of minutes. Required for genuinely distributed teams; useful for any team.
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Automated rejection
Automated rejection is a rejection email sent without manual review — typically triggered by a knockout question, a stage move, or an AI-screening score below threshold. Faster than silence, riskier than written-by-human.
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Background check
A background check is verification of facts a candidate stated about themselves — identity, work history, education, sometimes criminal record. Done with the candidate's consent.
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Bar raiser
A bar raiser is a trained interviewer outside the hiring team with veto power on a hire. Popularized by Amazon. The role exists to keep the hiring bar from drifting as a team scales.
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Behavioral interview
A behavioral interview asks the candidate to describe specific past situations — what they did, with whom, what happened. The idea: past behavior predicts future behavior better than hypotheticals do.
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Benefits vs. incentives
Benefits are non-cash, structural pay (health insurance, pension, paid time off) that every eligible employee gets regardless of performance. Incentives are contingent: bonuses, commission, and equity that pay out only when targets are met.
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Blind hiring
Blind hiring removes identifying information — name, photo, school, age — from applications during early review. The goal is to reduce unconscious bias in screening before interviews.
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Blue-collar worker
A blue-collar worker does manual or skilled-trade work — production, logistics, construction, care, hospitality. A huge share of hiring, and the part most ATS workflows are built badly for.
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Boolean search
Boolean search uses operators (AND, OR, NOT, quotes, parentheses) to narrow LinkedIn or Google searches for candidates. The core sourcing skill — and the only one that consistently produces matches no one else found.
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Boomerang employee
A boomerang employee is a former employee you rehire after they left. Known quantity, faster ramp, lower risk — if you understand why they left and what changed.
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Burnout
Burnout is WHO's term for chronic, unmanaged workplace stress: exhaustion, growing cynicism toward the job, and reduced effectiveness. WHO classifies it as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical diagnosis. This entry treats overworking as the same concept.
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C-level
C-level is the executive tier — the 'Chief …' roles (CEO, CFO, CTO, CPO) that own a whole function and answer to the board. Hiring them is executive search: equity-heavy comp, long timelines, board involvement.
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Candidate experience
Candidate experience is how a candidate feels about your company from the moment they read your job posting to the moment they hear yes or no.
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Candidate persona
A candidate persona is a structured description of the type of candidate you're trying to attract for a role — background, motivations, channels, objections. Borrows the concept from marketing personas; applies it to sourcing and posting.
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Career development
Career development is the employer's practice of planning and supporting employee growth — promotion paths, planned skill-building, mentoring — as a deliberate retention strategy, not a single mechanism.
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Career page
A career page is the public web page on a company's site that lists open roles and lets candidates apply. The first impression most candidates have of an employer.
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Chief people officer
The chief people officer (CPO) is the executive owner of HR, talent, and culture across the company. The C-suite seat for people — typically appearing in companies past 200-300 employees.
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Co-working spaces
Co-working spaces are shared, membership-based offices that remote employees use instead of a home desk. In hiring, they show up as a benefit line, a coworking stipend, rather than a location policy.
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Coffee chat
A coffee chat is an informal, low-stakes 30-minute conversation early in the recruiting process — used to introduce a candidate to the team, surface mutual fit, and decide whether to start the formal process.
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Collaborative hiring
Collaborative hiring brings the whole team into the hiring process — peer interviews, shared decisions, distributed assessment — rather than running it as a recruiter-and-manager-only function.
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Company culture
Company culture is the norms, behaviours, and unwritten rules that actually run a company day to day: what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated, and what a new hire learns to avoid saying out loud in week one.
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Conversational AI in recruiting
Conversational AI in recruiting is chatbots and assistants that handle candidate-facing conversations — answering FAQs, collecting application data, scheduling interviews, sending status updates. Always live, in the candidate's language.
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Cost of vacancy
Cost of vacancy is what an unfilled role costs the business every day it stays open — lost output, overtime, and missed revenue. It's the number that makes slow hiring expensive.
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Cost per hire
Cost per hire is total recruiting spend over a period divided by the number of hires made. The number that turns hiring into a budget conversation.
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Counter offer
A counter offer is a new offer made by a candidate's current employer when the candidate announces they're leaving — typically a salary increase, sometimes a promotion or expanded scope. Common; usually a bad deal for the candidate.
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Cover letter
A cover letter is a short written piece a candidate submits alongside their CV — usually one page, explaining why they want this specific role at this specific company.
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Credentialism
Credentialism is filtering candidates on a formal credential (a degree, a certification, a prior job title) as a stand-in for the ability itself, so people with the skill but not the paperwork get screened out unseen.
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Cultural add
Cultural add evaluates whether a candidate will expand the team's range — perspective, skills, background — rather than match the existing average. The deliberate replacement for 'cultural fit'.
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Cultural fit
Cultural fit is the classic criterion of whether a candidate matches a company's existing culture. Useful when it means shared values; a bias engine when it quietly means sameness — which is why many teams replaced it.
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CV
A CV (curriculum vitae) is the standard document a candidate uses to summarize their work history in Europe. The European equivalent of the American resume — different format, similar purpose.
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CV parsing
CV parsing is software extracting structured data — name, contact, skills, work history — from a CV or résumé and mapping it into an ATS's fields automatically, so recruiters don't retype it.
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Digital nomad
A digital nomad is someone who works remotely while moving between locations or countries. Great for access to talent — if your payroll, tax, and time-zone setup can actually support it.
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Diversity hiring
Diversity hiring is the practice of widening the candidate pipeline to include groups underrepresented in your current team — without lowering the hiring bar. The pipeline widens; the bar holds.
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Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)
DEI is the umbrella framework covering diversity (representation), equity (fair pay and promotion systems), and inclusion (a culture where people can contribute). Diversity hiring is one hiring-side tactic under its first pillar, not a synonym for it.
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Downshifting
Downshifting is an employee's voluntary move to a lower-pressure, lower-paid, or narrower-scope role at the same company, trading advancement for balance — usually after burnout or a shift in life priorities.
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E-recruiting
E-recruiting is an older umbrella term for hiring through electronic tools rather than paper and phone calls. The distinction it once marked has largely dissolved into specific practices with their own names: ATS, recruitment marketing, mobile recruiting, AI in recruiting.
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Employee experience
Employee experience is everything that shapes how it feels to work at a company, from the day someone accepts an offer through management, tools, and career decisions, to the day they leave.
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Employee lifecycle
The employee lifecycle is the sequence of stages a person moves through at an employer, from first contact as a candidate to their last working day and the years after. Onboarding and offboarding are two stages inside it, not synonyms for it.
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Employee referral
An employee referral is a candidate introduced by a current employee. Consistently the highest-quality and lowest-cost source of hire in most companies, and most under-invested-in at SMB scale.
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Employee resource group
An employee resource group (ERG) is a voluntary, employee-led group built around a shared identity or experience — women in tech, parents, LGBTQ+ — to support members and shape company policy.
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Employee retention
Employee retention is the share of a workforce that stays for an entire measurement period, calculated as employees who remained the whole time divided by headcount at the start. The umbrella metric behind first-year retention and retention bonuses.
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Employee turnover
Employee turnover is the share of a workforce that leaves over a given period, calculated as separations divided by average headcount. It's the same metric as employee attrition.
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Employee value proposition
An employee value proposition (EVP) is the deal you offer people for working at your company — pay, growth, culture, flexibility — stated as a promise you can actually keep.
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Employer branding
Employer branding is the reputation your company has as a place to work — built from what employees say and what candidates experience in your hiring process.
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Employment contract
An employment contract is the legal agreement between employer and employee — role, compensation, working time, notice, governing law. Required in writing across most of Europe.
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Entry-level
Entry-level roles target people with 0–2 years of experience — graduates, junior hires, career-changers. The defining challenge: screening for potential when there's no track record to read.
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Equal opportunity
Equal opportunity in hiring is the principle that every candidate is evaluated on their ability to do the role, not on protected characteristics. A legal requirement across the EU; a stated commitment in most companies.
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Equity grant
An equity grant is an offer of ownership in the company — usually stock options or VSOPs — as part of a compensation package. Vests over time, typically 4 years with a 1-year cliff. Common in EU startups; rare in non-tech SMBs.
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ESG in hiring
ESG is the corporate reporting framework covering environmental, social, and governance performance. It reaches hiring through EU-mandated workforce-diversity disclosures, not through a hiring method of its own.
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EU AI Act in HR
The EU AI Act classifies AI used in employment decisions (screening, ranking, monitoring) as high-risk. Risk-management, transparency, human oversight, and bias-audit requirements apply to vendors and to the employers using them.
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First-year retention
First-year retention is the percentage of hires still at the company 12 months after their start date. The cleanest lagging signal of whether your hiring and onboarding are working.
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Flexible working
Flexible working is the umbrella category for any employer policy that changes when, where, or how much employees work. Flexitime, hybrid work, remote work, and the four-day week are separate levers under it, not synonyms for it.
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Flexitime
Flexitime is an arrangement where employees choose when within a day or week they do their working hours — within agreed core hours and total weekly hours. Standard in Germany, common across the EU.
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Four-day week
A four-day week is a working pattern where full-time employees work four days instead of five, usually for the same pay. Trialed across hundreds of European companies since 2022; results mixed but the candidate-attraction effect is consistent.
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Freelancer
A freelancer is a self-employed person who provides services to clients under a contract rather than an employment relationship — paid per project or per hour, with no benefits and no payroll.
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Funnel conversion rate
Funnel conversion rate is the end-to-end percentage of applications that become hires for a role — typically 1-3% for European SMBs. The single number that summarizes overall funnel efficiency.
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GDPR in recruiting
GDPR governs how companies collect, store, and use personal data — including everything candidates submit during a hiring process. Compliance is mandatory in the EU; the pillars are a lawful basis for each purpose, data minimisation, and retention limits.
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Generative AI in recruiting
Generative AI in recruiting is the use of large language models (ChatGPT-style) to produce text — job postings, outreach messages, rejection emails, interview summaries. Useful for drafting; risky as the final word.
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Graduate scheme
A graduate scheme rotates recent graduates through several teams over one to three years before a permanent placement, distinct from a single-role entry-level hire or a short, exploratory internship.
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Hard skills
Hard skills are teachable, measurable abilities — coding, accounting, welding, a second language. The part of a candidate you can actually test, as opposed to claim and believe.
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Head of talent
The head of talent leads the recruiting function across the company — strategy, team, tools, hiring-bar discipline. The first dedicated TA leadership hire above the recruiter level.
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Headhunting
Headhunting is the practice of identifying and approaching one specific person for a role, instead of posting a job and reviewing who applies. Almost always retained, and aimed at senior, passive candidates who weren't looking.
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Hiring committee
A hiring committee is a small group with shared authority to decide whether a candidate moves forward or gets the offer. The opposite of one manager deciding alone.
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Hiring debrief
A hiring debrief is the structured discussion the interview team has after a final-round candidate, where written scorecards are compared and a decision is made. Usually 30 minutes.
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Hiring funnel
The hiring funnel is the path a candidate moves through from first contact to offer — application, screening, interviews, offer, accept.
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Hiring loop
A hiring loop is the full sequence of interviews a final-round candidate goes through in a single day or short window — often 3-5 sessions back-to-back. Compresses scheduling, intensifies the experience for both sides.
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Hiring manager
The hiring manager is the person the new hire will report to. They own the role, the criteria, and the final decision. The recruiter runs the process; the hiring manager owns the outcome.
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Hiring manager satisfaction
Hiring manager satisfaction is the hiring manager's own rating of the recruiting process on a specific search: shortlist speed, candidate quality, and communication. It is not a rating of the person who got hired.
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Hiring plan
A hiring plan is a one-page document agreed before a role opens — the criteria, the panel, the stages, the start-date target. The reference everyone uses when the process drifts.
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HR generalist
An HR generalist owns the whole HR function in a small company — recruiting, onboarding, policy, employee relations, payroll handoff. The Swiss-army-knife role most SMBs hire first.
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HR software
HR software is the broad category covering the whole employment relationship: HRIS, payroll, performance management, and benefits administration. An applicant tracking system is a separate, narrower category built only for recruiting.
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HRIS
HRIS (Human Resource Information System) is the software that stores the records of current employees — contracts, time off, payroll integrations, org chart. Different from an ATS, which handles candidates.
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Human resource management (HRM)
Human resource management (HRM) is the umbrella discipline for managing an organisation's employees end to end: recruiting, compensation, performance, employee relations, compliance, and offboarding. This glossary covers only its hiring slice.
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Hybrid work
Hybrid work is an arrangement where employees split time between the office and another location — usually with a minimum number of office days per week or per month. The dominant European model post-2022.
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In-house recruiter
An in-house recruiter works directly for the company doing the hiring — employee, not contractor. The opposite of an external agency recruiter, who works for many companies.
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Internal mobility
Internal mobility is the practice of filling open roles with existing employees — promotions, lateral moves, role changes — before going to the external market.
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Internship program
An internship program is a structured set of paid internships offered each year — typically 3-6 months for students or recent graduates. Most reliable source of mid-funnel junior hires when run well; corrosive when run as cheap labor.
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Interview calibration
Interview calibration is the practice of getting all interviewers on the same page about what 'good' looks like for a role — before any candidates are seen. The opposite of taste-based hiring.
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Interview scheduling
Interview scheduling is the work of putting a candidate, a hiring manager, and interviewers in the same calendar slot. The biggest hidden cost in SMB hiring.
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Interview scorecard
An interview scorecard is the written form an interviewer fills out after each conversation — scores on agreed dimensions, written rationale, recommendation. The artifact that turns interviews into evidence.
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Job board
A job board is a website that aggregates and publishes job postings — Indeed, LinkedIn, StepStone, HelloWork, Infojobs. The default top-of-funnel for active candidates.
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Job description
A job description is the internal document defining a role's responsibilities, scope, and level — the source of truth for compensation calibration and performance review. Different from a job posting.
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Job posting
A job posting is the public advert for an open role. What a candidate reads before deciding to apply — often the only view of your company before the click.
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Job seeker
A job seeker is someone looking for a new role, whatever their current employment status. It's the label a person chooses for themselves, distinct from how a recruiter classifies them as an active or passive candidate.
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Job shadowing
Job shadowing is observing someone do their job to learn how it actually works. A low-cost tool for onboarding, cross-training, and helping people decide if a role is right for them.
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Mid-level
Mid-level describes the individual contributor who can own a problem end to end without supervision — roughly 3–6 years in. It's the most-hired band and the hardest to interview well.
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Mobile recruiting
Mobile recruiting optimises hiring for the phone: job ads that render on a small screen, application forms a candidate can finish one-handed, status updates sent by text. It's about the device someone is holding, not the platform that sent them there.
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Multiposting
Multiposting is publishing one job posting to several job boards at once from a single source — instead of pasting the listing into each board by hand.
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Offboarding
Offboarding is the structured exit process when someone leaves a company — handover, access removal, exit interview, final pay. The mirror image of onboarding.
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Offer acceptance rate
Offer acceptance rate is the percentage of candidates who accept an offer when one is extended. The clearest single signal of how competitive your offers and process are.
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Offer letter
An offer letter is the written document an employer sends to formalize an offer to a candidate — title, compensation, start date, key conditions. The bridge between verbal yes and signed contract.
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Onboarding
Onboarding is the structured first weeks of a new hire's time at a company — paperwork, tools, introductions, and the first work they actually do. It begins when the offer is signed.
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OTE (on-target earnings)
OTE — on-target earnings — is the total cash compensation a salesperson earns when they hit 100% of their quota. Base salary plus variable at target. The standard compensation framing for sales roles.
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Overemployment
Overemployment is holding two or more full-time jobs at once, usually remote, without telling either employer. Distinct from a disclosed side gig: the concealment is the point, and it's what turns a scheduling problem into a contract one.
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Panel interview
A panel interview has 2-4 interviewers in the room (or call) at the same time, taking turns. The single conversation lets the team see how the candidate handles multiple stakeholders.
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Parental leave
Parental leave is the statutory and contractual right of employees to take time off when a child is born or adopted, with job protection. Varies enormously by country in the EU; a strong candidate-attraction signal when offered above the legal minimum.
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Passive candidate
A passive candidate is someone not currently job-hunting, but who would consider an interesting move if approached. Industry estimates suggest 60-70% of the EU workforce sits in this category at any time.
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Pay equity
Pay equity is the principle that employees doing equal work — or work of equal value — should be paid equally, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or other protected characteristics. Legal floor in the EU; a measurable internal discipline for SMBs.
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Pay transparency
Pay transparency is the practice of making compensation information visible — to candidates (salary in job postings), to employees (band visibility), or to regulators (pay-gap reporting). EU directives are making this mandatory in stages.
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People analytics
People analytics applies data analysis to workforce questions — who's leaving, what hires perform best, where the funnel breaks. The discipline behind serious HR decisions; AI is one tool, not the whole thing.
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People operations
People operations is the modern reframing of HR — focused on systems, data, and employee experience rather than compliance and paperwork alone. Common in tech-adjacent SMBs.
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Performance bonus
A performance bonus is variable compensation paid when an employee or the company hits agreed targets — typically annual, sometimes quarterly. Common for individual contributors in some industries, expected for managers and executives in most.
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Phone screen
A phone screen is a short structured call — 20-30 minutes — between recruiter and candidate, early in the funnel. Confirms basics, checks motivation, and decides whether to advance to the hiring manager.
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Portfolio
A portfolio is a body of a candidate's own prior or independent work — design files, code, writing, campaigns — brought into hiring to show what they can do. Unlike a work sample, the employer didn't design it and didn't set the brief.
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Pre-employment assessment
A pre-employment assessment is a structured test administered before hire — cognitive ability, skills, personality, or work-style measures. Used to add a standardized signal to the interview-based evaluation. Common in higher-volume hiring.
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Preboarding
Preboarding is the period between offer acceptance and day one — when the new hire is committed but not yet working. The window where ghosting risk is highest.
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Probation period
A probation period is the initial months of an employment contract during which either side can end the relationship with shortened notice. Typically 3-6 months in Europe.
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Proximity bias
Proximity bias is the tendency to favour people who are physically present — more visibility, more credit, more promotions — over equally good remote colleagues. The quiet tax that breaks hybrid teams.
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Recruiter
A recruiter is the person responsible for running the hiring process end-to-end — sourcing candidates, screening, coordinating interviews, managing the offer. Sometimes a dedicated role, often a shared one in an SMB.
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Recruitment agency
A recruitment agency is an external company that finds and presents candidates for a fee — usually 18-25% of first-year salary. The third-party alternative to building in-house recruiting capacity.
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Recruitment analytics
Recruitment analytics is the practice of measuring hiring-funnel data (sourcing, screening, conversion, offer) to improve hiring decisions. It's the pre-hire slice of people analytics, distinct from a system like a recruitment CRM.
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Recruitment coordinator
A recruitment coordinator handles the scheduling, candidate communications, and process logistics so the recruiter and hiring manager can focus on assessment. The role behind a fast process.
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Recruitment CRM
A recruitment CRM (candidate relationship management) is the system for staying in touch with people who aren't applicants yet — sourced contacts, past finalists, alumni. The pipeline before the pipeline.
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Recruitment marketing
Recruitment marketing is the practice of attracting candidates before they're actively job-hunting — through employer brand content, talent community email, career-page SEO, conference presence. Builds top-of-funnel beyond the open-role posting.
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Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)
Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) hands all or part of a company's hiring function to an external provider on an ongoing basis, often with recruiters embedded in the client's own team.
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Reference check
A reference check is a short conversation with a candidate's former manager or colleague to verify what the candidate told you and surface what they didn't. Done at the end of the process.
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Referral bonus
A referral bonus is the payment to a current employee whose referral results in a hire — typically €500-2,000 for SMB roles, sometimes more for senior or hard-to-fill positions. The cheapest cost-per-hire of any sourcing channel.
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Rejection rate
Rejection rate is the share of candidates explicitly declined at a stage or across a search. Most dashboards fake it by subtracting the advance rate from 100%, which folds in withdrawals and hides candidates never given a decision at all.
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Remote work
Remote work is employment where the employee works full-time from a location separate from the company's office — typically home or a chosen workplace. In hiring, it's a primary filter and a primary draw.
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Resignation letter
A resignation letter is the formal written notice an employee gives to quit a job. It states they're leaving, when, and starts the notice clock — and it's where your retention or handover begins.
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Reskilling
Reskilling is training someone for a different role than the one they hold — usually because their current role is shrinking. The redeployment alternative to layoffs, when the math actually works.
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Resume
A resume is the American term for a one-to-two-page summary of a candidate's work history. The US equivalent of the European CV — same purpose, different name and conventions.
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Retention bonus
A retention bonus is a payment offered to an existing employee in exchange for staying through a defined period — typically 6-24 months. Used when the company expects the employee might leave and wants to bridge a specific transition.
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Return to office
Return to office (RTO) is the policy of requiring employees who had worked remote or hybrid to come back to in-person work, usually 3-5 days per week. A contentious topic since 2023; the candidate-attraction cost is well-documented.
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Reverse interview
A reverse interview is the stage where the candidate evaluates the company — asking the questions, with the hiring team answering. Often a dedicated 30-45 min slot late in the process.
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Right to work
Right to work is the legal authorization a candidate has to take up employment in a country — citizenship, residency, work visa, or work permit. A mandatory check before any contract.
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Sabbatical
A sabbatical is an extended period of leave — typically 1-12 months — taken by an existing employee with the company's agreement. Paid, partially paid, or unpaid depending on policy. Increasingly used as a retention and recovery tool.
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Salary band
A salary band is the agreed minimum-to-maximum compensation range for a role — used in postings, in offer negotiations, and in internal performance review. The single most useful piece of hiring infrastructure most SMBs don't have.
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Salary negotiation
Salary negotiation is the conversation between candidate and employer about compensation before signing. Usually narrow in range; the value at stake over a candidate's tenure is large; the conversation often goes badly because both sides are underprepared.
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Screening
Screening is the first filter in hiring — where you decide which applications are worth a real conversation. CV review, short call, or knockout questions.
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Secondment
A secondment temporarily moves an employee into a different role, team, or organization for a fixed period, then returns them. A development and retention tool, not a promotion.
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Senior-level
Senior-level describes deep domain expertise plus the autonomy to own ambiguity and lift others — typically 7+ years. The hires are scarce, the interviews differ, and the comp leverage sits with the candidate.
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Shortlisting
Shortlisting is narrowing a pool of applicants down to a focused list of candidates worth interviewing — usually the strongest 5 to 10 against the role's must-haves.
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Signing bonus
A signing bonus is a one-off payment to a new hire on or shortly after their start date — used to close offer gaps the base salary can't, or to compensate for forfeited bonuses or equity at the previous employer.
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Skills-based hiring
Skills-based hiring evaluates candidates on demonstrated skills rather than credentials (degree, prior job titles, employer prestige). The trade-off: harder to assess, but produces hires that traditional filters miss.
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SME recruitment
SME recruitment is hiring as practised by companies under the EU's small-and-medium-enterprise threshold — fewer than 250 staff — where budget, headcount, and process all differ from an enterprise talent function.
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Social recruiting
Social recruiting is using social platforms — LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok — to find, attract, and engage candidates, especially passive ones who aren't reading job boards.
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Soft skills
Soft skills are behavioral abilities — communication, collaboration, judgment, adaptability. The competencies that decide whether a technically capable hire actually works out, and the ones interviewers assess worst.
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Source of hire
Source of hire is the channel a hire came from — job board, referral, sourcing, agency, career page direct. The metric that tells you which channels to keep investing in.
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Sourcer
A sourcer is a recruiter who specializes in outbound — finding and reaching out to candidates who haven't applied. The role exists in larger teams; in SMBs, the recruiter usually does it too.
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Sourcing
Sourcing is finding candidates who haven't applied yet — LinkedIn searches, referrals, networks, direct outreach. The opposite of waiting on inbound.
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Startup recruitment
Startup recruitment is hiring shaped by funding stage and growth uncertainty rather than headcount: equity is part of the pitch, process is built as it scales, and risk tolerance matters as much as skill.
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Structured hiring
Structured hiring is the discipline of designing the whole hiring process — criteria, questions, scoring — before any candidate is seen. The opposite of taste-based, in-the-moment hiring.
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Structured interview
A structured interview uses the same questions, in the same order, against the same scoring rubric for every candidate for a role. The opposite of a chat that drifts wherever it drifts.
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Take-home assignment
A take-home assignment is a task a candidate completes async, on their own time, between interview rounds. Usually 2-4 hours of work. Designed to mimic real work better than a live test.
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Talent acquisition
Talent acquisition is the function or team responsible for finding, attracting, and hiring people. Often used interchangeably with 'recruiting' but typically implies a more strategic, longer-horizon framing.
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Talent CRM
Talent CRM is another name for recruitment CRM — the system that holds candidates you've talked to but who aren't applying right now. Used interchangeably in the industry; same thing.
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Talent pool
A talent pool is a stored set of candidates you've talked to but not hired — strong applicants, 'not now' contacts, former finalists worth re-engaging.
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Technical interview
A technical interview tests the candidate's actual ability to do the technical work — coding, system design, data analysis, whatever the role uses. Skill-evidence, not skill-claims.
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Temporary work
Temporary work is employment for a fixed, limited period — seasonal, project-based, or agency-supplied. It covers a known gap; it's a poor substitute for a role you actually need filled permanently.
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Time in stage
Time in stage is the number of days a candidate spends in each step of the hiring funnel — applied, screen, interview, final, offer. Identifies where the process is actually slow, not where the team thinks it's slow.
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Time to fill
Time to fill is the number of days between opening a job and a candidate accepting the offer. Often confused with time-to-hire but measured from a different start point.
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Time to hire
Time to hire is the number of days between a candidate entering your pipeline and accepting an offer. The most-tracked recruiting metric, for a reason.
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Total compensation
Total compensation is the full value of an employment package — base salary plus variable pay, equity, benefits, and any other monetary components. The number to use in offer conversations; base alone usually undersells the offer.
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University recruiting
University recruiting is the practice of building a candidate pipeline through universities — career fairs, on-campus events, hackathons, sponsorships. Long lead time; produces strong junior-to-mid hires when the relationship compounds.
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Upskilling
Upskilling is teaching people new skills for the role they already have, as the job evolves. The build side of the build-vs-buy talent decision, and one of the cheapest retention levers available.
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White-collar worker
A white-collar worker does office or knowledge work — engineering, finance, marketing, management. The roles with the longest hiring funnels, the most comparison shopping, and the fiercest competition for talent.
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Work sample
A work sample is a piece of work that mimics what the role actually does, used to evaluate candidates. The strongest single predictor of job performance in the academic research.
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Work-life balance
Work-life balance describes how well work responsibilities and personal life coexist, without either one consistently crowding out the other. In hiring, it is one of the most-searched candidate priorities, and one of the easiest claims to overstate in a job posting.
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Works council
A works council (Betriebsrat in Germany, comité d'entreprise / CSE in France) is an elected body of employees with co-determination rights on certain HR decisions, including some aspects of hiring.
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