Blind scoring and confidential shortlisting

What each setting hides, who it hides it from, and how a candidate's identity is revealed.

Confidential shortlisting and blind scoring protect different people. Confidential shortlisting hides who the candidate is. Blind scoring hides who the reviewer is and what other reviewers said. Switching one on does nothing to the other, and both can be on for the same job.

Who can change these settings

The organisation defaults live under Settings, Hiring Process, Shortlisting (the page is titled Shortlisting Defaults). System Admin and HR can open it. Only a System Admin can save changes.

On a job, the Settings tab is shown to System Admin, HR, and anyone with the Recruiter or Hiring Manager role on that job. Once a job is approved or live (published, scheduled or paused), the Blind Scoring and Confidential Shortlisting switches can be changed by System Admin and HR only. Before it goes live, the job's hiring lead can change them too. Everyone else sees the message "Only Admin, HR, or the job's hiring lead can change these settings at this stage."

Organisation defaults

1. Go to Settings, Hiring Process, Shortlisting.
2. Turn on Enable blind shortlisting by default, Enable confidential shortlisting by default, or both. Both start off.
3. If you turned on the confidential default, choose a stage under Reveal candidate details at. The list holds the stages of your default pipeline plus No automatic reveal.
4. When you switch a default on, a box asks Apply this to the jobs you already have? Choose New jobs only or Apply to existing jobs too.

The defaults are copied onto each job when it is created. The blind default switches on the job-level Blind Scoring only. It does not switch on Blind Scoring for individual stages. The reveal stage is matched by name against the new job's pipeline. If no stage has that name, or more than one does, the job gets no reveal stage.

Apply to existing jobs too switches the setting on for every job in the organisation that has it off, and a message reports how many jobs changed. It does not set a reveal stage on those jobs, and it does not hide applications already received. Set the reveal stage on each job's Settings tab. Switching a default off never changes existing jobs. A job made with the copy option keeps the source job's settings and reveal stage.

Confidential shortlisting on a job

1. Open the job and go to the Settings tab.
2. Turn on Confidential Shortlisting.
3. Under Auto-Reveal Stage, pick the pipeline stage at which identities should be revealed.

Turning it on hides every application already on the job, and every new application arrives hidden. There is no "None" choice for the reveal stage, and clearing it is refused with the message "A job using confidential shortlisting needs a stage at which candidate identity is revealed." If no stage is set, the tab shows a warning and nothing is revealed automatically. Admin or HR can still reveal candidates one at a time.

What is hidden

• The candidate's name. It shows as Candidate followed by the application reference, for example Candidate APP-1A2B.
• Contact details (the panel reads Details redacted): email, phone, location, address, postcode, LinkedIn link, current job title and employer, source, and tags.
• The cover letter and employment gap explanations.
• Application form answers for first name, last name, email, phone, address line 1, city, postcode and country, and any question marked as personal data. Other answers stay visible.
• The original CV and cover letter file. Viewers get the copy labelled CV (anonymised) instead. While it is being produced they see "CV is processing. Please check back later." The application form PDF is only offered in its redacted version. References, referee details and the onboarding pack are not offered.
• The candidate's name and email on the Interviews page, on event booking and invitation lists, in reports, and in email notifications sent to staff. These show the same Candidate label, with the email as [Redacted].

Reference, dates and stage stay visible. If a candidate has applied to several jobs, the Candidates list shows their real details when any one application you can access allows it, while CVs and other documents follow the most restrictive job.

Who is affected

The second row is deliberate. Someone who sits on the hiring team of a confidential job is treated as hiring team, whatever their system role. If that person needs to reveal candidates, another Admin or HR user who is not on the job's hiring team has to do it.

While confidential shortlisting is off, Admin, HR and Recruiters see every candidate. Hiring Managers, Interviewers and Members see every candidate too, except applications that were deliberately left redacted (see below).

How identity is revealed

Automatically. An application is revealed when it moves into the reveal stage. If stages are reordered so that an application already sits at or after the reveal stage, it is revealed then. Revealing is one way: moving a candidate back does not hide them again. It applies to that application only, and everyone who could not see the identity can now see it.

Manually. Admin or HR (see the table) can reveal one application at a time:

1. Open the job and go to the Pipeline tab.
2. Open the candidate. The Contact section shows an Identity Hidden badge.
3. Select Reveal Identity. A message confirms "Candidate identity revealed".

The same button then reads Hide Identity and puts the identity back behind the reference. The controls only appear on jobs where confidential shortlisting is on. The badge follows the stored state of the application, so an Admin who can already read the details still sees it until the identity is revealed for everyone. A user who is not allowed to reveal gets "You are not permitted to reveal this candidate's identity".

Switching it off

Turning off Confidential Shortlisting opens Turn off confidential shortlisting? and clears the reveal stage. Applications received from then on are visible. For applications that are already hidden you choose:

• Unredact existing applications reveals all of them.
• Keep existing applications redacted leaves them hidden from Hiring Managers, Interviewers and Members. Nothing reveals them automatically, and the reveal button is not shown while the setting is off. If you later turn Confidential Shortlisting back on, every application on the job becomes hidden again.

Blind scoring on interview feedback

The job-level Blind Scoring switch on the Settings tab controls interview feedback. System Admin and HR always see everything. Everyone else, including Recruiters, Hiring Managers and Interviewers, sees this:

• In Team Feedback, each response appears as Reviewer 1, Reviewer 2 and so on. The recommendation and the rating, choice and tick-box answers are shown. The reviewer's name, the time submitted, notes and written text answers are hidden.
• The Feedback Summary shows only Total Reviewers. Average scores, the spread of recommendations and threshold results are hidden.
• On a candidate's profile, feedback lists show the recommendation without the reviewer or notes.

The feedback you submitted yourself stays available to you in your own form.

Blind scoring and reviewer scoping at a stage

Shortlisting checklists attach to screening stages. On the job Settings tab, each attached checklist has Enabled, Reviewer Scoping and, for criteria-based scoring checklists only, Blind Scoring. Interview stages only take a feedback form, so they follow the job-level switch above.

• System Admin and HR always see every evaluation with reviewer names.
• A Recruiter sees every evaluation unless Blind Scoring is on, in which case they see only their own. Reviewer Scoping does not restrict Recruiters.
• Hiring Managers, Interviewers and anyone with no role on the job see only their own evaluation when either switch is on. With both off, they see all.

Averages and summaries are worked out from the evaluations you can see, so a peer's score cannot be deduced from them. The other difference is in the export: with Blind Scoring on, the reviewer breakdown uses labels such as Reviewer 1 instead of names. If a stage has several checklists, the switches on the first enabled checklist apply to the whole stage.

Turning either switch off takes effect straight away. Nothing is deleted, and names, comments and scores show again according to each person's role.

Exports

• The shortlisting results export (CSV or Excel) shows Candidate plus the reference and [Redacted] email for anyone who cannot see the identity, and follows the evaluation rules above.
• The Interviews page CSV export uses the same masked candidate names.
• Reports apply the same rule to each row, so an Admin or HR user on the hiring team of a confidential job sees the Candidate label.