What does a Recruiter FTE own, and what does it permanently not?
It owns screening every application against the scorecard you write, with the passage in the application behind every score and hard requirements marked evidenced, not evidenced, or awaiting verification; ranked shortlists with candidates the scorecard captures poorly flagged rather than ranked; candidate communication drafted for approval; and interview scheduling into connected calendars. It permanently does not decide or communicate a rejection or offer, set terms, or rank a flagged candidate, because those are on the platform's never-automated list.
Credential verification with an issuing body is a human step it flags but never performs.
What should a head of talent ask about fairness?
Ask what the honest claim is, and distrust any vendor who says unbiased: no screening process is, and the honest guarantee is consistency, transparency, and human decisions. Ask whether every score shows its evidence, so a ranking can be challenged at the criterion level. Ask whether the scorecard is yours and versioned, so an audit can read which criteria applied when. Ask how a fairness audit is done: sample shortlists, compare outcomes across groups, open the scorecards, change the criteria, record it.
On ftes.ai the answers are: consistency and evidence; yes, per score; yours, versioned; and an audit that is a review of your criteria rather than an investigation of a black box.
- Claim: consistency and evidence, not unbiased?
- Evidence: per score, challengeable per criterion?
- Scorecard: mine, versioned?
- Audit: sample, compare, open, change, record?
What should a head of talent ask about data?
Ask how the applicant tracking system is connected: a dedicated account scoped to the pipeline with permission to read and draft, never to change a candidate's status, encrypted at rest, revocable from one place. Ask what the FTE retains: its memory is about the business, never personal data about individuals, and drafts follow the underlying activity's retention. Ask how subject rights requests reach the FTE's processing: through the ATS it works from, plus a check on what it retains. Ask for the data processing agreement and the sub-processor list, including the model provider.
Involve your data protection lead before connecting the ATS; the GDPR guide in the library lists the questions for the records of processing.
What should a head of talent measure?
Measure time from application close to shortlist, the share of interviewed candidates who met the hard requirements, candidate communication drafted within the target window, and the approval rate per criterion with send-back reasons, which shows which criteria the hiring managers disagree with. Measure the fairness audit's findings and the scorecard changes they produced, quarterly. Never measure candidate outcomes as a target of the FTE; they are not its decisions.
Refuse to measure applications screened. Screening is activity; a shortlist a hiring manager can act on is the outcome.
What should a head of talent refuse?
Refuse a vendor without a never-automated list you can read. Refuse to let shortlists be edited instead of criteria rewritten; edits leave no record and fix nothing. Refuse to skip the fairness audit because the numbers look fine; the audit is what makes them defensible. Refuse to connect the ATS before the data protection decision is made. And refuse any promotion on the autonomy ladder except interview scheduling, which changes no outcome.
Each refusal is a line you can explain to a candidate, a regulator, or a colleague in one sentence.
What do the first 30 days look like from the head of talent's seat?
Week one: choose one inbound-heavy role, write the scorecard with its hiring manager, make the data protection decision, and record the baseline from the last two rounds. Week two: connect the ATS with scoped permissions and review the first shortlists by criterion with the hiring manager. Week three: rewrite criteria that are corrected repeatedly, versioned, and run the first fairness check. Week four: read the FTE's own report and decide whether scheduling has earned autonomy. Rejections and offers were never on the table.
By day 30 you have a versioned scorecard, a recorded audit, shortlists within the window, and a screening process you can describe in one sentence.
What does the platform not do for a head of talent?
It does not decide about candidates, ever. It does not claim to be unbiased; it claims to apply your criteria the same way to everyone with the evidence shown. It does not verify credentials; it flags where verification is needed. It does not source passive candidates or persuade senior hires; that remains a recruiter's or an agency's craft. And it does not hold personal data in its memory.
A head of talent who wants a system to make hiring decisions should look elsewhere and should probably not find it. One who wants consistent, evidenced screening with people deciding, and an audit that reviews criteria rather than a black box, has the mechanisms here.