Glossary

The market category name of software (typically using the SaaS delivery model) used to manage the end to end process of recruiting a new employee. This name has a negative connotation, as the market historically has offered very poor systems. JazzHR is considered to be a pioneer in bringing easy to use ATS features to market. Recently, the term “recruiting software” has replaced this term. However, there are still many people who will confirm that you are an “applicant tracking system” because they are familiar with the term.

Describes the process of successfully working together as a team to make a new hire. A successful recruiting process relies on collaboration between hiring managers, employees, recruiters, and HR managers. JazzHR uses this term to describe our mid-tier offering, JazzHR Plus (https://www.jazzhr.com/plus/).

In the HR lexicon, this term means any activities meant to ensure that a company follows state and federal employment and reporting guidelines. JazzHR uses this term to emphasize the fact that we help employers maintain compliance (https://www.jazzhr.com/features/reporting-and-compliance/) with state and federal employment regulations.

The acronym for “Equal Employment Opportunity Commission”, which is the federal agency that ensures that companies adhere to fair hiring practices and is typically used to discuss issues related to the capturing and reporting of “protected class” information. Some people will ask if Jazz solutions are “EEOC compliant software”, and it is. EEOC compliant means the manner in which our software captures, store, secures and reports data that identifies employees and candidates as a member of a protected class follows state and federal regulations. See Protected Class for more.

Phrase used to describe HR and manager–driven activities designed to increase employee interaction with the company, coworkers, leaders and even the community. Examples of employee engagement would be fun things such as company barbecues, and more serious matters such as helping an employee find a mentor. Employee engagement activities are thought to increase employee retention. See Retention for more.

A fancy way of saying “company with employees.”

A recruiter who does NOT work for the company but is actively sourcing new candidates as potential hires for a company’s open positions. External recruiters often do not work at the company, but this phrase is meant more to simply note that the recruiter is not a full-time employee. External recruiters are compensated either through a retainer (fixed monthly fee) or anywhere between 15 to 30% of the salary of anyone hired that was sourced through their efforts. See Recruiter and Internal Recruiter for more.

The broadest classification of all activities, tools, and people responsible for the recruiting, development, retention and off boarding of employees in a company. It is an approach to employee staffing that perceives people as assets (human capital) whose current value can be measured and whose future value can be enhanced through investment. Recruitment software, human resources information systems, learning management systems, talent management systems, and all other HR software falls within this industry. More recently, progressive companies have moved away from the concept of “human capital” in favor of terms like “people operations” and so forth. The idea is “capital” is a very crude term to describe people, and the acronym is becoming outdated.

A word almost interchangeable with the word “recruiting”, this is the end-to-end process of sourcing a person looking for work (either passively or proactively) through the advertising of a job, screening incoming job applicants for necessary qualifications, interviewing prospective candidates to ensure they are qualified to do the job, preparing a competitive job offer, and onboarding the employee once they have accepted the offer. Although used to market recruiting software to less savvy employers, the word more recently is used to describe passive recruiting efforts for lower wage, blue-collar jobs. A bakery will put a “help wanted” sign in their window, which means they are hiring, and proactive candidates will come in and apply. The word “recruiting” is used more by companies that recognize recruiting passive candidates requires proactive recruiting, much like a university recruiting a top high school college football player. See Recruiting for more.

In recruiting parlance, this is the name of an employee in a company, often employed at a managerial level, who is ultimately responsible for making the decision of who to hire for a job. If used, recruiters work with hiring managers to identify job specifications, and then source candidates for the hiring manager to review. The hiring manager will also enlist the help of his or her direct reports and other trusted employees to help vet a candidate, using the feedback to inform any key decisions during the recruiting process. Note that there is no employee with a full-time position of “hiring manager”, but rather someone such as a sales manager operates as a hiring manager within the recruiting process when they are trying to recruit new sales people.

Also known as an HRMS (human resources management system), is software used to manage sensitive and timely employee data, such as social Security numbers, salary information, emergency contact numbers, vacation days, and any other information critical to managing the compensation and performance of employees. Recruitment software often ends where the HRIS begins, making it easy to import new hire data into the HRIS so they can be onboarded into the payroll and other systems. It is basically an intersection of human resources and information technology through HR software. This allows HR activities and processes to occur electronically. Namely and BambooHR are both an HRIS. Some HRIS systems will have lightweight, full recruiting solutions (Workday).

A term coined by JazzHR that refers to the process of using an email inbox to manage job applicants. This approach to managing resumes is considered to be very inefficient and risky. JazzHR Post is meant to help employers take their recruiting out of their inbox and bring it online.

A recruiter who is full- or part-time employee at a company who is responsible for actively sourcing new candidates as potential hires for a company’s open positions. Internal recruiters do not earn the same large commissions as external recruiters, so they are usually hired to save money while also improving the productivity of recruiting efforts. Internal recruiters better understand the company culture and internal dynamics, which makes them more effective in persuading passive candidates to consider open positions. This inside knowledge also helps them with the coordination of hiring managers and other people involved in the recruiting process. See Recruiter and External Recruiter for more.

A software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of electronic educational technology (also called e-learning) education courses or training programs. Learning management systems are often deployed by larger companies who struggle with ensuring new hires get onboarded with the proper training to excel at their job. They are also used to make sure employees have access to training that continually expands their capabilities and improves their quality of work.

The process of preparing and delivering a job offer to a candidate, usually in the form of an offer letter for signing. The process usually involves researching and understanding what a competitive salary would be, preparing a personalized offer letter with the job title, salary and other benefits, and ultimately sending the offer to a candidate for signing. Recruiting software often digitizes this process, making it easy to research salary data, auto-populate fields in an offer template, track revisions to an offer, and ultimately import the accepted offer into an HRIS.

The process of completing all the paperwork, training and engagement activities necessary to ensure an employee starts his or her job on the right track. Traditionally, the onboarding process is considered to be the importing of a new employee into the HRIS so they can be paid, their benefits can be managed, training is completed and time-off can be tracked. More recently, onboarding is considered to be a critical part of employee engagement, so activities that involve socializing the employee within their team and the company becomes part of the process. The concept of “successful onboarding” means an employee is not only onboarded from a data perspective, but their personal satisfaction with the job and the company remains high when measured months after their first day. Successful onboarding is considered critical to employee retention.

A candidate that is not actively looking for a job, but if approached would be open to new career opportunities. Passive candidates differ from proactive candidates in that employers generally consider a higher percentage of them are qualified for new jobs, and they are not actively reaching out to employers and applying for jobs. This means it is hard to engage the passive candidate pool, which could be as much as 50% to 70% of all potential candidates. This challenge is why LinkedIn is considered an important source of talent, as they can infer that a user is possibly open to new jobs through digital signals such as updates to their profile, visits to the jobs page, and more. See Proactive Candidate.

Often referred to as “talent pipeline”, “recruiting pipeline “, or “candidate pipeline”, in recruiting parlance this refers to the full list of all active candidates (candidates that have not been hired or disqualified). Recruiting team members often want to see a snapshot summary of where all candidates currently stand in the recruiting process so they can spot inefficiencies. Much like sales, it is important for a company to build a pipeline of candidates in order to maximize the chances of achieving their recruiting objectives.

A candidate that is actively looking for a new job. These candidates are seeking open jobs and applying for them, and do not need much convincing to consider new job. The biggest difference between proactive candidates and passive candidates is that proactive candidates are “proactively” seeking a new job, while passive candidates are open to new jobs, but generally are not actively looking. Approximately 30% to 50% of all potential candidates are proactive candidates. It is generally believed that there is a higher percentage of underqualified people in the proactive candidate pool, as higher performing employees generally are already employed and focused more on their work than job seeking. See Passive Candidate.

The demographic groups of people that the federal government has declared to be adversely affected and disenfranchised by unfair hiring practices in the past. As a remedy, companies over a certain size can be asked to prove (through data) that they have not discriminated based on race, disability or veteran status. Recruiting software helps employees collect “protected class information” in a safe way so that the company stays EEOC compliant.

A full-time, part-time or contracted worker responsible for actively sourcing candidates and guiding them through the recruiting process with the help of hiring managers, interviewers and other people. Recruiters are marketers and sales people for jobs at a company. While their primary role is to identify qualified candidates, their initial contact with candidates, especially passive candidates, puts them in a position to be critical to securing a new hire. Recruiters care deeply about ensuring they get credit for sourcing candidates, as their performance is measured by the quality of the people they present to hiring managers.

Shares the same definition as hiring, but this term is used by companies that better understand that the best candidates are in higher demand and often need to be persuaded to choose your company over multiple job offers. Much like how the term if used in college sports, recruiting acknowledges the fact that highly-qualified candidates must to be “sold” on a job. The word hiring is a subtle acknowledgment that the employer holds somewhat of an upper hand, as the job seeker is more likely proactively looking for work (the “We’re Hiring” sign). The word a person uses hints at someone’s level of understanding the differences between proactive and passive hiring.

The more modern term used to describe software that assist companies in managing the end-to-end process of recruiting. It was coined to emphasize the purpose of the software is to recruit new employees, not “track applicants” as the name applicant tracking system suggests. It is also used to differentiate modern recruiting tools from legacy recruiting tools, which generally have negative reviews. Recruitment software is fast becoming the more common phrase used to describe online recruiting tools, but applicant tracking system is still a search term used by many potential customers. JazzHR offers low- through high-tier (JazzHR Pro) offerings of recruiting software.

A relatively new term, this is the application of sourcing strategies and techniques traditionally used in a company’s marketing and marketing business functions to attract high quality candidates. In essence, the entire recruiting funnel is treated like a sales funnel. Recruiters source and market jobs to try to create large talent pools, and they treat passive candidates like “leads” and attempt to contact the candidate, “nurturing” the candidate until they express interest in the job. These leads are then passed to the hiring manager much like qualified leads are passed from marketing to sales. Recruiting software is starting to incorporate features such as email campaign management and social media communication tools to mimic sales tools that are available, but tweaked to support the recruiting process.

A form of business process outsourcing where an employer transfers all or part of its recruitment processes to an external provider. Recruitment Process Outsourcing providers can manage the entire recruiting/hiring process, or can manage one or two aspects of the process, essentially serving as an extension of the company’s human resources department. RPO firms often help companies choose recruiting solutions.

Broadly speaking, this is the classification of a candidate that was sourced from someone who is not a recruiter. The more narrow definition is a candidate that was sourced from an employee. Data shows that referred candidates are higher quality than general candidates, so companies work hard to boost the number of job referrals that employees make to their friends and colleagues. To increase referrals, companies will offer a reward for any candidate who gets interviewed and/or hired.

A somewhat antiquated and very corporate term that means “job that needs to be filled”. The term is used most often when a company has a process for approving the creation of new jobs, and it is more popular with recruiters (“I need to fill this req.”). Without a job approval process, hiring can get out of control in a very large organization. The word requisition is similar to the word “request”, and during the job approval process a hiring manager requests that a new position be approved for active recruiting.

A measurement of the turnover of employees in the company. It is important to retain high-performing employees or else the company will have a knowledge and talent drain, so companies look at their retention rates year-over-year. This word also refers to the broader category of tools and techniques designed to reduce employee turnover. HR managers will use retention rates to gauge the effectiveness of employee engagement efforts.

The branded, product marketing name for JazzHR’s performance profiling feature set.

Pronounced “sass”, this refers to the software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted by the software creator. It is sometimes referred to as "on-demand software". SaaS is typically accessed by users using a web browser. JazzHR and all of our competitors are considered to be SaaS. 10 years ago, most software was purchased and then installed on a server at the company. Today, much like your email, the software you use is hosted by the software creator while users use a Web browser to interface with it. The benefits of this approach are updates to the software are immediately available to every single user, and the number of users can be scaled dramatically so the application never slows down due to old on premise hardware. Oracle is an example of a company that has sold on-premise software, and Salesforce is an example of a company delivering similar software using the SaaS model.

In recruiting, this word refers to any activities (offline or online) related to finding qualified candidates for an open job. It is also used to refer to products that are primarily used for sourcing, but sometimes are confused as being full recruiting solutions (LinkedIn, Smashfly). One of the hardest tasks in recruiting is finding good candidates, so there is a robust industry around providing companies with tools for exposing their jobs to proactive candidates and enticing passive candidates to apply for jobs.

A term typically only relevant in large organizations, it refers to a company’s planning of who will fill jobs in the event that someone leaves the company. It is also loosely used to identify employees who have a high potential for upward mobility within the company. There are features, typically only available in enterprise talent management platforms, that help with this type of planning.

The process of finding and acquiring skilled employees for organizational needs. When used in the context of the recruiting and HR profession, talent acquisition usually refers to the talent acquisition department or team within the Human Resources department. It is also sometimes used to broadly define the entire category of tools used for recruiting.