Glossary
A plain-language definition from the Curriculo hiring glossary.
Signal-based hiring judges candidates on concrete evidence of past performance, such as results shipped or teams built, rather than keyword counts or credentials.
Why it matters
A resume is full of noise: buzzwords, long skill lists, and job duties copied from a job post. Signals are the parts that show what the person did and how well. Hiring on signals helps you find strong people who write plain resumes, and spot weak ones who write polished resumes.
Examples of strong and weak signals
- Strong: led a migration that cut page load time from 4 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
- Strong: hired and managed a team that grew from 3 to 12 people.
- Weak: responsible for backend services.
- Weak: a list of 25 tools with no context.
How to apply it
- Decide which signals predict success in the role, such as revenue owned for a sales lead.
- Read each resume for those signals first and skip the filler.
- Ask about the same signals in interviews to confirm them.
- Record the evidence along with your yes or no, so others can check your reasoning.
A short example
Two candidates apply for a support lead role. One lists customer service, Zendesk, and teamwork. The other writes that she cut average first response time from 9 hours to 2 by rebuilding the queue. The second resume carries a clear signal tied to the job.
Some screening tools apply this idea at scale. Curriculo ATS scores every candidate from 0 to 100 against your job, with a written AI summary of the fit.
Common mistakes
- Treating any number as a strong signal without asking about context.
- Ignoring candidates early in their careers who have fewer results to show.
- Changing which signals matter from one candidate to the next.
Read the full guide to signal-based hiring, see how impact scoring works, and learn about outcome-based hiring.