Grant, here is the blog post:

Title: The Screening Rule Nobody Tested

A recruiter's "Traits to Avoid" list is circulating on LinkedIn. It was never meant to be public. That is the only reason we get to see it.

Read it slowly. Open to work. Between roles. A short gap in the CV. Short tenures. Eight or more years of experience.

Each one sounds like risk management. Each one feels like experience talking. Almost none of them has been tested against the people who were rejected for it.

We have worked in search for 21 years. Here is what we see behind each rule.

Open to work

A candidate who says so publicly is telling you they are available and motivated. You do not need to wonder if they will take your call. Rejecting them means rejecting the one signal that saves you the most time.

Between roles

Someone between roles is available now. Strong people leave jobs for many reasons, including restructures, relocations, and leaders who stopped developing them. The label tells you their calendar. It tells you nothing about their ability.

A short gap

A gap of a few months is often the length of a normal hiring process. Interview rounds, assessments, references, and notice periods add up quickly. Penalising a candidate for a gap that your own process created is hard to defend.

Short tenures

A short tenure can point to the candidate. It can also point to a company that stopped growing its people. If you want people to stay, give them a reason. If the candidate left a stagnant employer after eighteen months, that may be the best judgement call on their CV.

Eight or more years of experience

Ask where the number came from. In most cases, the job description asked for it. A filter that rejects people for meeting the requirement has stopped serving the role and started serving habit.

The real cost

A filter like this does not protect the business. It shrinks the talent pool and calls it standards. The damage is invisible, because you never meet the people you screened out. You cannot measure the best candidate you never saw.

Where these rules come from

Most screening rules start as a reaction to one bad hire. Someone left too soon, or underperformed, or did not fit. The lesson becomes a rule, the rule becomes a policy, and nobody checks it again. Years later, the policy filters candidates the original hire would have lost to.

How we work

We sit with senior leadership and their HR teams to align hiring strategy before the first job ad goes live. We ask three questions about every screening rule:

• Where did this rule come from?
• What evidence shows it predicts performance?
• Who have we rejected because of it?

If nobody can answer, the rule goes. If the rule survives, it earns its place with evidence.

A challenge for you

Pull out your current screening criteria today. Pick one rule and trace it back to its origin. Find out whether anyone ever tested it.

Which rule on your screening list has never been tested?

If you would like to examine your hiring filters with us, contact The Appointment Firm.