HR & Recruitment Glossary

An assessment centre is a selection method that evaluates a candidate's skills and potential through role plays, psychometric tests, group exercises, and structured interviews. Primarily used for management roles and high-potential candidates.

An ATS is a recruitment management software that centralises and automates the hiring process. It allows you to post jobs to multiple job boards in one click, collect all applications in one place, track each application's progress, evaluate profiles, and collaborate with hiring managers from a single interface.

A background check is the verification of information provided by a candidate: degrees, work history, identity, and sometimes criminal records depending on the role. Permitted checks must be proportionate to the position and carried out with the candidate's consent.

Behavioural interview questions ask candidates to describe a real situation from their past to demonstrate a skill. They use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and are based on the principle that past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour. Distinct from situational questions, which focus on hypothetical scenarios.

Blind recruitment involves hiding information that could generate bias (name, photo, age, address) when analysing applications. The goal is to focus solely on skills and experience to ensure fairer, more objective hiring decisions.

Candidate experience refers to all the interactions and feelings a candidate has throughout the recruitment process — from discovering the job to receiving a final answer. A positive candidate experience strengthens employer brand, even for candidates who are not selected.

A candidate pool is a database of qualified and available profiles, including received applications, unsolicited applications, sourced profiles, and network contacts. In an ATS, the pool can be accessed at any time, allowing recruiters to reactivate profiles with a few clicks when a new need arises.

Cost per hire is the total cost incurred to fill a position, including job board spend, agency fees if applicable, HR time spent, and onboarding costs. It is a key KPI for measuring recruitment efficiency.

A CV database is a repository containing all the CVs and candidate profiles received by an organisation. In an ATS, it allows recruiters to search, filter, and reactivate past profiles for new opportunities — without starting from scratch each time.

A diversity and inclusion policy aims to ensure equal opportunity in recruitment regardless of gender, origin, age, disability, or any other characteristic. It includes concrete practices: blind recruitment, bias training for recruiters, and tracking metrics.

Employer brand refers to a company's image and reputation as an employer. It encompasses company culture, values, working conditions, career opportunities, and how all of this is communicated to potential candidates.

Hard skills are measurable technical and professional competencies acquired through training or experience. They are distinct from soft skills (behavioural competencies). Examples include software proficiency, language skills, and professional certifications.

Headhunting is a proactive recruitment approach that involves identifying and directly approaching passive candidates — profiles who are not actively looking for a job. It is used primarily for executive roles, rare experts, and highly specialised profiles.

Hybrid work is a work arrangement that combines office presence and remote work according to a defined schedule (e.g. 3 days office / 2 days remote). Since 2020, it has become a major HR criterion: its implementation affects management policies, collaborative tools, and job descriptions.

Inbound recruiting is a strategy that attracts candidates organically by producing valuable content (blog, social media, employee testimonials) rather than actively seeking them out. It is the HR equivalent of inbound marketing.

An interview scorecard is a structured evaluation form used by interviewers to assess and rate candidates consistently across the same criteria. It reduces bias, ensures comparability, and improves the quality of hiring decisions.

A job board is an online platform dedicated to posting and searching for job opportunities. There are generalist boards (Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn) and specialist ones by sector or profile. Multi-posting via an ATS allows simultaneous publishing to all selected job boards.

A job requisition is the formal document that officially opens a new hiring need. It contains all the information needed to launch recruitment: job title, responsibilities, required skills, budget, contract type, and target fill date. Once approved, it triggers the job posting.

Recruitment KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are the metrics used to measure the effectiveness of the hiring process. Key ones include: time-to-hire, cost per hire, application-to-interview conversion rate, offer acceptance rate, and 6-month retention rate.

Multi-posting is the ability to publish a job simultaneously to multiple job boards and platforms from a single interface. It is one of the core features of an ATS. It eliminates duplicates, centralises applications, and saves HR teams considerable time.

Offboarding is the process of supporting an employee who is leaving the organisation (resignation, end of contract, retirement). Well-managed offboarding preserves employer brand, ensures equipment and access are returned, and can even turn former employees into brand ambassadors.

Onboarding is the process of integrating a new employee into the organisation. It starts from the moment the contract is signed and covers the first weeks or months on the job. Successful onboarding significantly reduces early turnover and accelerates time-to-productivity.

One-click apply allows a candidate to apply instantly by importing their LinkedIn profile or uploading a CV, without filling out a lengthy form. This frictionless experience dramatically reduces application drop-off — an overly long form can deter up to 60% of candidates.

A passive candidate is someone who is not actively seeking employment but may be open to an interesting opportunity. Representing approximately 70% of the workforce, passive candidates are often the most qualified and hardest to reach.

Pre-screening is an intermediate step between receiving applications and conducting interviews. It takes the form of a short phone call or online questionnaire to quickly verify availability, salary expectations, and essential criteria for the role.

Predictive recruitment uses algorithms and historical data to forecast which candidates are most likely to succeed and remain in a role long-term. It relies on statistical models that cross-reference candidate data with the characteristics of top performers.

Artificial intelligence applied to recruitment automates tasks such as application scoring, job description writing, bias detection, and performance prediction. It uses algorithms trained on historical data to rank profiles and reduce low-value manual tasks.

Recruitment biases are unconscious prejudices that influence candidate selection in a non-objective way. The most common include: similarity bias (favouring someone who resembles you), halo effect (one quality masks flaws), and anchoring bias (over-relying on first impressions).

A recruitment pipeline is a visual representation of candidate progress through the hiring stages (CV received → shortlisting → phone screen → HR interview → manager interview → offer). It allows teams to visualise flow and identify bottlenecks.

A recruitment plan is a strategic document that lists an organisation's hiring needs over a defined period (quarter, year). It specifies roles to fill, budgets, timelines, and channels to use. It aligns with workforce planning to anticipate future needs.

An employee referral programme is a recruitment method where employees recommend candidates from their network for an open position, often in exchange for a bonus. It is one of the most effective channels in terms of profile quality and speed of hire.

Talent retention refers to all practices aimed at keeping employees and reducing turnover. It starts at recruitment (selecting the right profile) and continues throughout the employee's career (onboarding, management, development, compensation).

RPO involves outsourcing all or part of the recruitment process to a specialist external provider. The RPO provider acts as an extension of the internal HR team, taking charge of sourcing, screening, interviews, and sometimes onboarding. Unlike a traditional recruitment agency, RPO is a more structured, long-term partnership.

Candidate scoring is a feature that automatically assigns a score to each application based on defined criteria (skills, experience, education). It allows recruiters to prioritise applications and focus first on the most relevant profiles.

Situational questions ask candidates to describe how they would act in a hypothetical job-related scenario. Distinct from behavioural questions (STAR method), which focus on real past situations.

Soft skills are a candidate's behavioural and interpersonal competencies: communication, adaptability, stress management, leadership, creativity, and teamwork. They are increasingly valued by recruiters as they predict long-term performance better than technical skills alone.

Sourcing is the set of actions taken to identify and attract potential candidates before they have applied. It includes searching LinkedIn, CV databases, employee referrals, professional events, and social media. It is a proactive approach, as opposed to the traditional reactive wait-for-applications method.

The STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) is a structured interview framework that asks candidates to illustrate their skills with concrete examples from past experience. It produces factual, comparable answers that are less open to improvisation.

A structured interview is an interview format where all questions are prepared in advance and asked identically to every candidate. It enables more objective, comparable evaluation, reduces unconscious bias, and improves hiring decision quality.

A talent pool is a database of qualified profiles that the company has identified or met, but for whom there was no open position at the time. It dramatically reduces time-to-hire when a new need arises.

Time-to-fill is the elapsed time between opening a role (internal approval) and filling it (candidate selected). It differs from time-to-hire, which measures the time from application to offer acceptance. It is an important HR KPI for measuring overall process efficiency.

Time-to-hire measures the elapsed time between a candidate entering the pipeline and their acceptance of an offer. It is a key recruitment KPI. Reducing time-to-hire improves candidate experience and competitive advantage in fast-moving talent markets.

Turnover (or staff turnover rate) measures the number of employees who leave and join an organisation over a given period. High turnover often signals management, culture, or recruitment alignment issues.

Upskilling refers to developing an employee's existing skills to help them adapt to the evolution of their role or industry. Complementary to external recruitment, it is a strategic lever in the context of digital transformation and talent shortages.

An asynchronous video interview is a format where candidates answer pre-recorded questions via video, without a live interviewer. The recruiter watches the responses at their convenience. It is an effective pre-screening tool that saves time on both sides.

A recruitment workflow is the standardised sequence of steps that defines how an application moves from receipt to final decision. In an ATS, the workflow is configurable and can include automations: confirmation emails, reminders, manager notifications.

Workforce planning is a strategic HR approach that anticipates an organisation's talent needs over the medium term, based on its strategic direction. It identifies gaps between available and required skills, and plans training, recruitment, or internal mobility accordingly.