--- name: applicant_screening description: "Screen job applicants against a role rubric fixed in advance: review order for resumes and applications, knockout criteria used fairly, weighted shortlist scoring with evidence notes, and a four-fifths check on the round. Use when screening a received applicant pool, building a screening rubric, deciding a shortlist, writing decline or hold reasons, or auditing how a pool was screened." --- # Applicant Screening ## Purpose Screen a pool of applications the same way for every candidate: rubric fixed before the first application is opened, knockouts that are stated and job related, one score per criterion backed by evidence from the application itself, and notes a panel can compare side by side. The screening result is a shortlist and a record, not a hiring decision. Interviews and work samples come after, and they carry their own checks. This skill covers paper and application screening only. Writing the posting is a different job, and scoring live interviews is a different job with its own scorecard. ## Workflow ### 1. Fix the rubric before opening applications - Write the role outcomes for the first 6 to 12 months in plain sentences. Derive 3 to 5 screening criteria from those outcomes. Each criterion names observable evidence in an application: work described, a work sample supplied with the application, a credential, a written answer. - Weight the criteria so the weights sum to 100. Put the most job critical evidence first. Written work or a supplied work sample usually deserves real weight, because selection research reviews rank work samples and job knowledge among the stronger predictors, ahead of years of experience or education alone. - Anchor scores 5, 3, and 1 in writing for each criterion. 5 is direct, specific evidence of the outcome. 3 is partial or transferable evidence. 1 is no usable evidence after reading the whole application. Anchors describe evidence, never traits. - Set two thresholds in advance: an advance line and a lower panel review line. Candidates between the lines go to the panel with their gaps named. Candidates below the review line are declined. - Date the rubric and keep that version for the whole requisition. If the role changes mid round, close the round, write a new version, and rescreen under it. Never change weights to fit a candidate already seen. ### 2. Set knockouts, and keep them few - A knockout is pass or fail, checked once, never scored or averaged. Use one only when the posting stated it and the job truly requires it: a licence the law requires for the work, legal authorisation to work where the role sits, a fixed schedule or location condition the role cannot change. - Phrase the knockout as the job condition, not the personal reason behind an answer. Ask whether the person can work the posted rotating weekends, not why they can or cannot. - Keep the list short. Every knockout that is really a preference, a proxy for a protected characteristic, or a habit from old postings is a fairness risk and a smaller pool for no job reason. If you cannot point to the duty that fails without it, it is a scored criterion at most, not a knockout. - Three states, not two: pass, fail, and unknown. A blank field, an unclear credential date, or a document that needs checking is unknown. Unknown means hold and verify with one named step, the same step for anyone in that state. Unknown is never scored as fail, and never waved through as pass. ### 3. Screen blind where you can, in a fixed order - Remove direct identifiers before first scoring where the process allows it: name, photo, address, and graduation dates. Use a candidate code. Reveal identity after the shortlist is set. - Review every application in the same order of operations: 1. Knockouts first, so time is not spent scoring someone a stated requirement already settles, and so scoring never softens a knockout call. 2. Criteria in rubric order, heaviest first. 3. Evidence note per criterion as you score it, pointing to the exact part of the application. 4. Disposition last, from the tool output, not from a running impression. - Score what is in the application. Silence on a criterion is missing evidence, scored low with that note. Do not infer skill from a school name, a past employer brand, an address, or length of service alone. Do not penalise a gap, a career change, or an unusual path unless a criterion in the rubric covers the actual evidence gap. - If two screeners are available, have both score a sample of the same applications independently and compare. A spread of 2 or more points on one criterion means the anchor needs work or a calibration talk before the rest of the pool is scored. ### 4. Score and shortlist with the tool Run the pool through the validator and scorer. It refuses weights that do not sum to 100, flags scores with no evidence note as incomplete, and applies knockouts before thresholds. ```bash python3 ~/workspace/skills/applicant-screening/bin/screen.py pool.json python3 ~/workspace/skills/applicant-screening/bin/screen.py pool.json --impact groups.json python3 ~/workspace/skills/applicant-screening/bin/screen.py --demo ``` - Dispositions come out as: advance, panel_review, hold_verify_knockout, incomplete, decline, screen_out_knockout. - A candidate who fails a knockout is screened out at any score. Record the knockout and the posting line that stated it. If the panel believes the knockout itself is wrong, the fix is to correct the posting and rescreen the whole pool, never to make a one person exception. - A hold is not a decline. Send the verification step promptly, set a reply window that is the same for everyone in that state, and update the disposition when it resolves. Do not leave holds to expire silently. - Build the shortlist in tool order. If the pool is larger than the panel can interview well, take the advancing group in score order and keep the panel review group as a named reserve, with the reason recorded. Do not reach past the reserve into declined candidates without rescreening. ### 5. Write notes the panel can use - One note per candidate per criterion, tied to evidence: what the application showed, where, and what is missing. Short and factual. - Decline and screen out reasons name the criterion or knockout. Write them as if the candidate and an outside reviewer will read them, because either may. - Hand the panel three things: the shortlist with scores and evidence notes, the next round questions drawn from the weakest scored evidence of each advancing candidate, and the list of holds with their verification steps and dates. - Never include in screening notes: impressions of personality from a photo or name, health or family matters, age signals, or any protected characteristic. If an application volunteers such information, ignore it for scoring and do not copy it into notes. ### 6. Run the fairness check on the round - Count, per group your organisation lawfully tracks for this purpose: applicants screened and applicants advanced. Run the four-fifths check with the tool's impact mode. - The rule, from the US Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (29 CFR 1607.4(D)): a selection rate for a race, sex, or ethnic group below four-fifths, 80 percent, of the highest group's rate is generally regarded as evidence of adverse impact. It is a screening flag, not a finding. Small numbers swing it, and smaller gaps can still matter. - On a flag: record the counts, look first at the lowest scoring criterion and at each knockout for job relatedness, and hand the result to whoever is qualified to review it, HR or counsel. Do not clear the flag yourself and do not hide it. - Keep records for the whole round: rubric version, sheets, tool output, counts. The Uniform Guidelines expect selection records to exist. A round nobody can reconstruct is a round nobody can defend. ### 7. Legal guardrails for screening questions and checks - Treat every applicant the same at each step. The EEOC position is plain: background checks or extra questions based on race, national origin, color, sex, religion, disability, genetic information, or age 40 or older are discriminatory. Same pool, same rubric, same order, same verification steps. - Ask no medical or disability related questions before a conditional offer. Under the ADA that bar applies whether the question goes to all applicants or only some. After a conditional offer, any such step must apply to all entering employees in the same job category. - Never seek genetic information, which includes family medical history. - Do not use an arrest record alone as a knockout. Criminal history rules, including when the question may be asked at all, vary by state and city under fair chance laws, and federal guidance in this area has been changing. Keep any criminal history criterion job related, check current local law, and route hard cases to counsel instead of improvising. - This skill gives a screening method, not legal advice. Where local law or company policy is stricter, the stricter rule wins and the output should say so. ## Output Contract Deliver, in order: 1. **Rubric sheet**: role, outcomes, criteria with weights summing to 100 and anchors for 5, 3, and 1, knockout list with the posting line for each, advance and review thresholds, rubric version date. 2. **Screening results**: per candidate code, knockout states, criterion scores with evidence notes, weighted total and disposition from `bin/screen.py`. 3. **Shortlist note for the panel**: who advances and why, reserve group, holds with verification steps and dates, next round questions tied to weak evidence. 4. **Decline record**: per declined or screened out candidate, the criterion or knockout that decided it, in one factual sentence each. 5. **Fairness check**: group counts, selection rates and ratios from the impact mode, any flag, and who it was handed to. State plainly when counts were not available, do not skip the section. Use the blank form in `assets/screening-sheet.md`. A full fictional round, rubric through shortlist and flag, is worked in `references/worked-shortlist.md` with matching files in `examples/`. ## Operating Rules 1. Rubric, weights, knockouts, and thresholds are fixed before the first application is opened and do not change for that round. 2. No evidence note, no valid score. A score an auditor cannot trace to the application is an opinion. 3. A documented knockout fail is never averaged away, rescued by a high score, or waived for one candidate. Correct the requirement for the whole pool, or it stands. 4. Unknown is a state with a next step, not a quiet fail and not a quiet pass. 5. Never score a protected characteristic, a proxy for one, or anything the rubric does not cover, including polish, prestige, and similarity to people already on the team. 6. Candidate material is confidential. Use codes in working files, keep personal data only in the employer's own system, and retain or delete records per that employer's policy. 7. Never invent a legal rule, a validity number, or a company policy. Name the source used, or label the point as team judgment. 8. Screening produces a shortlist. It does not hire, and it does not replace structured interviews, work samples, or reference steps that follow it.