Glossary
A plain-language definition from the Curriculo hiring glossary.
Impact scoring is a way of rating candidates by the measurable results they've delivered in past roles, rather than by keyword matches.
Why it matters
Two resumes can list the same skills and describe very different careers. One person maintained a system. Another rebuilt it and cut costs in half. A keyword score treats them the same. An impact score rewards the evidence of results, which is closer to what predicts performance in the role.
What an impact score looks at
- Outcomes with numbers, such as revenue closed, costs cut, or users gained.
- Scope, such as the size of the team, budget, or system the person owned.
- Relevance of those results to the job you're hiring for.
- Direction of the career, such as growing responsibility over time.
A short example
Resume A says the candidate was responsible for email marketing. Resume B says the candidate rebuilt the onboarding email series and raised trial to paid conversion from 4 percent to 6 percent. A keyword tool may score them about the same. An impact score ranks B higher, because B shows a result tied to the job.
In practice, tools present this as a single number per candidate. Curriculo ATS scores every candidate from 0 to 100 against your job, with a written AI summary of the fit.
Common mistakes
- Treating the score as the final decision instead of a starting point for review.
- Penalizing people whose past roles didn't allow public numbers, such as some government or legal work.
- Writing a job description with no clear outcomes, so there's nothing to score against.
- Comparing scores across very different roles.
See how impact scoring works, compare impact scoring with keyword matching, and read about outcome-based hiring.