What does time to shortlist measure?
The time between a role's applications closing and the hiring manager approving an evidenced shortlist, on ftes.ai computed per role from the applicant tracking system's close date and the Approvals record's shortlist approval. It is the interval a Recruiter Digital FTE can honestly own, because the FTE's work, screening every application against the scorecard with evidence per score and proposing the shortlist, sits entirely inside it, and everything after it, interviews, offers, rejections, is a person's decision the FTE does not make.
The Recruiter FTE's targets are set on this interval and its companions, never on who was hired.
How is it computed, with the inputs left blank?
Role: [role]. Applications closed: [date and time]. Applications received: [N]. Screened against scorecard version [version] with evidence per score: [N], of which flagged rather than ranked: [F]. Shortlist proposed: [date and time]. Shortlist approved by [hiring manager]: [date and time], after [S] send-backs with reasons. Time to shortlist: approval time minus close time, [hours or days]. Baseline: the same interval for the last two rounds of comparable roles from the ATS, [days] and [days], computed from close date to the date the hiring manager recorded a shortlist. For rolling roles, replace close with each application's arrival and measure the interval to its scorecard delivery, reported as a median.
The send-backs are part of the interval; a shortlist sent back twice for criteria the manager disagrees with is an honest delay that points at the scorecard.
- Start: application close, or arrival for rolling roles
- End: hiring manager approves the shortlist
- Baseline: last two rounds from the ATS
What are the companion measures?
Hard-requirement match rate: the share of interviewed candidates whose hard requirements were marked evidenced on the scorecard, against the baseline of interviews that turned out to fail a hard requirement. Communication within window: the share of applicants who received an approved acknowledgement or update within the window the team sets. Criteria approval rate: the approval rate of the shortlist's scores per criterion, with the hiring managers' send-back reasons, which shows which criteria the managers disagree with. Fairness audit findings: quarterly, the sampled outcomes across groups and the scorecard changes they produced. Together they keep time to shortlist from being gamed by shortlisting badly.
The Recruiter FTE's Performance tab shows all four; the audit is the head of talent's.
What must it never include?
Any candidate outcome as a target of the FTE: time to hire, offer acceptance, quality of hire, or retention. Each is decided by people, in interviews and offers the FTE does not make, and each depends on factors the FTE cannot see. Setting them as FTE targets would push the FTE toward shortlisting for the wrong reasons and would misdescribe who made the decision, which matters to a regulator and a candidate. The platform's never-automated list puts decisions about people outside the FTE at every level, and the metrics follow.
The myth piece on AI screening removing bias sets out why the honest claim is consistency and evidence, not outcomes.
How does it mislead?
A faster shortlist with a falling hard-requirement match rate means the scorecard is wrong or the evidence is being read loosely; the speed is not a win. A faster shortlist with rising criteria send-backs means the hiring managers disagree with the criteria, and the fix is the scorecard version, recorded. A baseline from a round with a different application volume or a different role is not comparable; choose comparable rounds or label the comparison. And a shortlist approved without the manager reading the evidence is a rubber stamp the first interview will expose; sample approved scores occasionally.
Speed is the FTE's; correctness is the scorecard's; fairness is the audit's. Read all three.
How is it applied?
Record the baseline from the last two comparable rounds before the pilot. Write the scorecard with the hiring manager and version it. Read time to shortlist per role with the companions at the monthly review, write them in the note against the baseline, and use the criteria send-back reasons to revise the scorecard, versioned. Run the fairness audit quarterly and record its findings beside the metrics. Promote nothing but interview scheduling, and only under the Promotion Standard.
The recruiting playbook in the library runs the first thirty days with these measures.