What Core Criteria are

Core Criteria are a short list of structured requirements you attach to a job. They are the only thing the AI looks at when producing the Resume Match score, the AI Skill Match, the 3-column vetting view, and the hiring recommendation. No criteria, no scoring.

You set them during step 2 of the job creation wizard and you can change them at any time afterward from the job page.

Core Criteria live on the job, not the workspace. Two roles with the same title can have completely different criteria. A senior backend engineer in Riyadh and a senior backend engineer in Paris are not the same hire, and the AI should not pretend they are.

What makes a criterion useful

The AI is only as specific as you are. A vague criteria set produces vague scores, vague briefs, and a reader who ends up scrolling through the full pool anyway. Three rules that hold up across roles:

• Be specific about the level, not just the skill. "Python" is a weak criterion because almost any candidate can claim it. "Production Python in a service-oriented backend, three plus years" is a strong criterion because it can be evidenced or not.

  
  

• Separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves. Each criterion has a weight (High, Medium, Low). Use High sparingly. If everything is High, nothing is. Most jobs have two or three High criteria; the rest are Medium or Low. The AI weights its outputs accordingly.

  
  

• Write criteria the way an interviewer would test them. If you cannot imagine the question that would confirm the criterion in an interview, the criterion is too soft for the AI to score reliably. "Strong communicator" is hard to test; "experience presenting to executive stakeholders" can be probed in five minutes.

How to change criteria mid-search

This is the single most underused feature in Talinty. The criteria you set on day one are almost never the criteria you actually want by day fourteen. The product is built for that.

There are two ways to change criteria after the role is live.

• Edit the Core Criteria set on the job page. Open the job, go to the Criteria section, edit, save. The entire pool re-ranks against the new criteria within seconds. Resume Match and Skill Match update for every candidate. The 3-column briefs regenerate.

• Type a new requirement in plain language inside any tab. This is the Dynamic AI Criteria Filter. In the filter bar at the top of a candidate list, type something like "must have led a team of five or more" or "exclude candidates who have changed jobs more than twice in three years". The AI interprets the requirement, applies it to the candidates in that tab, and re-ranks the list immediately. Your underlying Core Criteria are unchanged; the tab gets the additional filter on top.

The plain-language filter is the fast version. Editing Core Criteria is the durable version. Use the filter when you are exploring; commit to the Criteria edit when you have decided the requirement actually matters.

What happens to candidates you already advanced

Changing criteria does not move candidates between stages. A candidate you already advanced to Interview will stay in Interview even if the new criteria would have rejected them on Application. The scoring updates so you see the new alignment, but the pipeline state is yours to manage.

This is intentional. The AI rescoring should not override decisions a human already made. If you want to reconsider an advanced candidate after a criteria change, the new score will be visible on their card; you decide whether to move them.

When to leave criteria alone

A useful counter-rule: do not change Core Criteria more than three times in the first week of a role being open. Each change re-ranks the pool, which changes the order recruiters see candidates in, which can make it hard to compare what you saw on Monday to what you see on Thursday. Make changes deliberately, not reactively.

If you find yourself wanting to change criteria every day, the problem is usually upstream. The job description and the criteria need a deeper rewrite, not a constant patch.