Sourcing criteria, screening questions and evaluation criteria

The three ways a candidate is measured, one for each moment of the process, and why they aren't the same.

In Spanish: Criterios de sourcing, Preguntas de screening and Criterios de evaluación.

What it is

A job post measures its candidates three times, each with its own rule. They look alike, but they measure different things with different evidence, and mixing them up is the costliest mistake.

	Sourcing criteria	Screening questions	Evaluation criteria
What it asks	Is it worth reaching out?	Do they meet the minimums only they can confirm?	Are they who the client needs?
With what evidence	Their profile	What the candidate answers	The interviews
When	While searching, before the pipeline	When they apply, or in a screening interview	After each interview
How it's measured	Good fit, Fit, Bad fit or No data	Pass or Fail	A score from 1 to 5
Do they weigh?	Yes: order is weight	No	Yes: High, Medium or Low
Do they disqualify?	If they're must-haves	If they're must-haves	Never
What they produce	The longlist and the Match score	Who moves on to interview	The scorecard

What it's for

	What for
Sourcing criteria	Ranking who's worth writing to, among hundreds of profiles that haven't talked to you yet
Screening questions	Settling cheaply what no profile says: work permit, expected salary, when they can start
Evaluation criteria	Putting in writing, after the interview, how good they are for the role. It's what the client reads in the report

Where you see it

	Set up in	The result shows in
Sourcing criteria	Sourcing, Criteria block, or the job post settings	The longlist, and the candidate's Compatibility tab
Screening questions	Step 3 of the wizard, or the job post settings	Your careers page form, and the Compatibility tab
Evaluation criteria	Step 5 of the wizard, or the job post settings	The candidate's Evaluation tab, and the report

What it gets mixed up with

Mixed up with	The difference
The job post's requirements	Requirements, required and nice to have, are what applicants read on the role. Criteria are what we measure them with. Reclee proposes criteria by reading the requirements, but they aren't the same
The ideal profile	It says where to look, but doesn't score. Putting something in the ideal profile doesn't make it count: only criteria count
Must-have and weight	Two separate things. Weight comes from order, and the must-have mark goes on any position

There are three because the evidence is different. The profile is read and inferred from, the candidate declares, and the interview observes. Screening is the only moment the candidate speaks, which is why it's where whatever the profile left as No data gets settled, without spending an hour of interview.

In sourcing, order is weight, not a separate number. That way no weight contradicts the priority, and reordering is the only way to change it. The split is fixed: adding a criterion doesn't change the meaning of the ones already there.

Must-have is separate because some low-weight requirements are still mandatory: a work permit can sit in fifth place and disqualify whoever lacks it. Moving it up so it disqualifies would distort the order of the rest.

Evaluation criteria never disqualify: they're a judgment after the interview, and they only weigh. Whatever doesn't meet a minimum is settled earlier, in sourcing or in screening.

How it's calculated

A sourcing criterion's weight comes from its position: the first is worth three times the last, and together they add up to 100%.

With 5 criteria	With 10 criteria
30% · 25% · 20% · 15% · 10%	15% · 13.9% · 12.8% · 11.7% · 10.6% · 9.4% · 8.3% · 7.2% · 6.1% · 5%

None goes below 5%, and you can have up to 10. How they combine into a score is in Match score. The evaluation weights, High, Medium and Low, are in Scorecard. Screening questions have no calculation: each one passes or fails.