Recruiter calibration
Recruiter calibration is the process of turning recruiter or hiring-manager feedback on real candidates into explicit, reviewable changes to the search plan, ranking, source priority, exclusions, or evidence expectations.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-06
Why it matters in recruiting and sourcing
Feedback is only useful when it changes something concrete. “I don’t like this person” is hard to operationalize; “too managerial, need current hands-on RHEL administration” can alter title weighting, evidence thresholds, and donor environments.
Example
After reviewing six candidates, the hiring manager accepts adjacent Linux titles but rejects candidates whose recent work is mostly management. The search plan records that delta and gives more weight to current hands-on systems evidence without rewriting the original requirement history.
Common failure modes
- Training on clicks with no reason
- Overfitting to one approved candidate
- Turning every comment into a hard requirement
- Applying one role’s feedback globally
- Hiding learned changes from the recruiter