10 obscure recruitment terms explained

RedSprout
RedSprout
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read

No matter what area or sector you work in, there is always going to be some form of industry lingo just waiting to trip you up in casual conversation, and recruitment is no different. That’s why we’ve collected together ten of the most commonly questioned terms, phrases and abbreviations in recruitment, so that we can fill you in on exactly what they mean.

Talent Acquisition

This might seem like an obvious one to start with, but most people still fall into the trap of thinking that this is just a fancy way of saying ‘recruiting’ in general. The truth is that ‘talent acquisition’ actually refers to the process of finding a specialist candidate who can fill a vacancy that requires a high level of skill.

Job Hopper

This one is not so much a specialist phrase, but it still prevails as the most common way of referring to a candidate who moves from job to job within a short amount of time. The relevance of this being that most employers want to see commitment and loyalty from their employees, not a tendency to quit at the first bump in the road.

Talent Pool

Anyone who uses this phrase a lot is probably somewhat guilty of making recruitment sound a little more glamorous than it actually is, because ‘talent pool’ simply refers to a recruitment database of previous applicants that can be matched against job openings in the future.

Niche Recruiter

The confusion around this one tends to come from its ambiguity, as it often needs the context in which it is being used to make sense. The reason being that this refers to a recruiter that specialises solely within a certain field or sector.

Company Culture

This common phrase can often cause head scratching simply because it is a catch-all phrase that’s pretty subjective in nature. However, it basically means all of what makes up a business, most commonly referring to its values, work environment, routines and management.

Pipeline

This term still has a lot of traction today if only as a much simpler way of referring to a database, which in recruitment, typically contains a big list of candidates that recruiters can refer to when a new job opening appears that they think they can fill.

DOE

There is always bound to be some confusion around hyphenated words, especially when you see it everywhere and have only ever guessed the meaning through its context. To put your mind at rest, ‘DOE’ does indeed stand for ‘depending on experience’, which means a salary that is decided/negotiated on against the unique experience of the candidate who is applying.

FTC

Another hyphenated word you’ve probably seen once or twice before is ‘FTC’, standing for ‘fixed term contract’. This is used when a position opens that is only available for a fixed period of time, typically used for maternity, project or interim work.

C-Level Jobs

This one might be a little more obscure, but in short it refers to high-level positions in senior management, such as ‘CEO’, ‘CTO’ or ‘CFO’.

JD

This last one is probably the most used recruitment term on the list, making perfect sense to recruiters, but probably less so to anyone else. ‘JD’ unsurprisingly stands for ‘job description’, which contains all the details and specifications of a certain role. This document tends to inform the approach, advertising and resourcing of each given job, so it tends to be quite a big deal in the daily running of a recruitment agency.

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