Glossary

Plain language,
no jargon games.

The recruitment industry uses a lot of terms casually. Below is what we mean when we use them - written for clients new to specialist hiring and for candidates who want to understand what is actually happening in a process.

A B C D E G H I J L M N O P R S T V W Y

Active candidate Both: A candidate who is actively looking - has an updated CV, is interviewing elsewhere, will respond to a job ad. Most of the strongest people in our markets are not active candidates.
ATS - Applicant Tracking System Clients: The software a hiring firm uses to manage applications, candidates and pipeline. Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, BambooHR, JobAdder. Useful internally, irrelevant to how a search is run by us - AEY does not source through ATS pools.

Backfill Clients: Filling a role vacated by an existing person. Usually a faster, more defined search than greenfield because the role shape is established.
Behavioural interview Both: A structured interview format that asks for specific past examples ("tell me about a time when…") rather than hypotheticals. More predictive of performance than free-form conversation; standard in our assessment for senior roles.
Brief Clients: The written or verbal description of the role we are running. Includes role, team context, comp band, urgency, constraints. See our brief guide for what we ask for.
Brief drift Clients: When the brief shifts materially mid-search - usually because the firm did not internally align before commissioning. The single biggest cause of stalled searches. Worth doing the upfront work to avoid.

Calibration call Clients: A conversation early in a search - typically after the first 1-2 shortlists - to compare what the market is producing against the brief. If the candidates we are presenting do not match what the firm had in mind, the brief needs adjusting, not the search.
Candidate experience Both: The end-to-end experience a candidate has during a search - from first approach to offer or rejection. Strong firms invest in this materially; weak ones treat it as friction. The candidate experience is part of what the recruiter is selling on behalf of the hiring firm.
CISO Both: Chief Information Security Officer. The most senior cybersecurity role in a firm. Sits on or reports directly to the executive team.
Cleared / clearance Both: Holding an active Australian government security clearance - typically NV1, NV2 or Positive Vetting (PV). Required for many roles in defence, intelligence and cleared-environment engineering. Clearances take 6-18 months to obtain from scratch.
Confidential client / search Both: A search where the hiring firm is not disclosed publicly. Common at senior level - replacing an incumbent, hiring against a competitor, or expanding into an unannounced area. Full details are shared under NDA on a confidential call.
Contingent search Clients: A search where AEY is paid only on successful placement. No retainer. Replaces the search if the placement does not stick. Our default model for permanent senior-IC and lead-level hires. See Specialist Recruitment.
Contract / contractor Both: Time-bounded engagement on a day-rate or weekly-rate basis. Compliance and payroll handled end-to-end by AEY. Distinct from permanent. See Contract & Project Staffing.
Contract-to-perm Both: An engagement that begins as contract and converts to permanent if both sides want to continue. Conversion terms are agreed up-front in the original engagement letter - typically a stepped conversion fee that reduces with months served.
Counter-offer Candidates: An offer from a candidate’s current employer to retain them after they have resigned. We have written about why most counter-offers do not work.

Day rate Both: Compensation expressed as a per-business-day figure for contract engagements. Excludes super, leave, and any allowances unless specified.
Diligence call / reference call Both: A structured conversation with a former colleague or manager of a final candidate, conducted by AEY before offer. Standard in retained searches; available on request in specialist recruitment. Aimed at confirming the picture from interview, not catching out the candidate.

Embedded recruitment Clients: A model where an AEY recruiter operates as an extension of the client’s internal team for a defined period - typically used during scaling chapters. Distinct from our standard search engagement.
Engagement letter Clients: The written agreement between the client and AEY that governs a search - scope, fee, replacement guarantee, off-limits arrangement, payment terms. Signed before sourcing begins. We do not run searches without one.
Equity Both: Ownership in the hiring firm given to employees as part of compensation - typically stock options or restricted stock. Material to total compensation in startups and scaleups. Bands quoted on the site are base unless explicitly stated as total comp.
Exit interview Both: A structured conversation when an employee leaves, used by firms to understand why. Rarely well done. When it is, the data shapes hiring strategy materially.
Executive Search Clients: Retained, research-led search at C-suite, VP and director level. See Executive Search.

Garden leave Both: A period during which an employee who has resigned is paid but kept away from active work, typically to protect commercial information. Common in regulated and trading environments. Can extend notice periods materially.
Greenfield role Clients: A role that has not previously existed in the firm. Usually higher-ambiguity than a backfill; the brief is more critical to get right.

Headhunting Both: Proactively approaching specific named candidates who are not actively looking - as opposed to advertising and waiting for inbound. Most of our work is headhunting. The strongest people in our markets are not on job boards.
Hiring manager Both: The person the new hire will report to directly. The single most important voice in the brief; the search succeeds or fails on whether the hiring manager has done the upfront thinking.

IC - Individual Contributor Both: A role with technical depth but no direct reports. Senior-IC and Staff-IC sit at parity with EM-track in modern engineering organisations. The distinction matters for compensation and trajectory.
In seat Clients: When a placed candidate has started in the role. Searches are measured to "offer accepted" by recruiters and "in seat" by clients - the second metric is more honest.

JD - Job Description Both: The written description of a role. We do not require a polished JD to start a search; we often write the JD with the client during intake.

Longlist Both: The list of all candidates who match the brief on paper before assessment. AEY does not present longlists - we present curated shortlists with assessment notes.

Mandate Both: A single search engagement. "Running a mandate" = running a search. The word implies the recruiter has been formally engaged on the role; differs from a casual ask.
Market map Clients: A written view of the full candidate universe for a brief - including people not currently looking. Standard deliverable in our retained Executive Search engagements; available as a standalone via Workforce Advisory.

NDA - Non-Disclosure Agreement Both: A confidentiality agreement. Used in confidential searches when the client identity needs to be disclosed to candidates before public commitment. Standard at retained level.
Notice period Both: The time between resignation and last day. Typically 4 weeks for ICs, 8-12 for senior roles, 3-6 months for C-suite. Material to start-date planning; clients sometimes underestimate this.
NV1 / NV2 / PV Both: Levels of Australian government security clearance. NV1 is Negative Vetting Level 1 (Secret). NV2 is Negative Vetting Level 2 (Top Secret). PV is Positive Vetting (highest). Holding an active clearance is a material constraint on the candidate pool.

Off-limits Clients: An agreement that AEY will not approach the client’s current employees for a search elsewhere, for a defined period. Standard in retained Executive Search engagements.
Onboarding Both: The first 30-90 days after a candidate joins. We check in with both sides at 30, 60 and 90 days as standard on every placement, not as a value-add. See our method.

Passive candidate Both: A candidate who is not actively looking - happy in their current role, will not respond to job ads. Most of our placements are passive candidates we have approached directly.
Pipeline Clients: The set of candidates in some stage of process or future consideration for a role or function. "Building a pipeline" usually means engaging with people you may not hire today but might hire in 12 months. Done well, compounds.
Placement Both: A candidate who has accepted an offer and started in the role.
Probation period Both: A defined period at the start of permanent employment during which either side can terminate with reduced notice. Typically 3-6 months in Australia. Distinct from AEY’s replacement guarantee window, though the two often overlap.

Replacement guarantee Clients: AEY’s commitment to re-run a search at no additional fee if a placement leaves or is terminated within a defined period (typically 12 weeks). Stated in writing in every engagement letter.
Retained search Clients: A search where AEY is paid milestone-based fees regardless of outcome, in exchange for full proactive sourcing, market mapping and confidentiality. The model we use for Executive Search. See Executive Search.

Search firm Both: A firm whose work is recruitment-by-research rather than recruitment-by-advertising. AEY is a search firm. The distinction matters because the methods and the candidate experience differ materially.
Shortlist Both: The set of candidates AEY presents to a client for interview - typically 3-7 candidates, each with assessment notes, motivation analysis and compensation expectations. Not a CV pile.
Sole mandate Clients: A search engaged with one firm only, not multiple recruiters in parallel. AEY works best on sole-mandate terms even in contingent engagements; running three or four agencies for the same brief produces longlist noise and a worse candidate experience.
Sourcing Both: The proactive identification and approach of candidates for a role. Distinct from screening (assessing those who applied) and selection (deciding between assessed candidates). At specialist level, sourcing is most of the work.
Specialist Recruitment Clients: Our default model for permanent hiring at senior-IC, lead and manager level. Success-based fee, full-cycle delivery. See Specialist Recruitment.
Sponsor / visa sponsor Both: A firm willing to support a candidate’s work-visa application. Many roles in defence, financial services and specialist engineering are restricted to Australian citizens or permanent residents; sponsor-ready roles are a subset of the market. Always asked early in screen.

Talent acquisition (TA) Clients: The internal-recruitment function at a hiring firm. Distinct from an external search firm. AEY works alongside in-house TA teams; we do not replace them. The strongest hiring outcomes combine an effective internal team with an external partner for specialist roles.
Time-to-fill Both: The total elapsed days from a role opening to the placement starting. Useful metric, but easily gamed; "time to first curated shortlist" is more honest as a measure of search quality.
Total compensation Both: Base salary plus all other monetary components - bonus, equity, superannuation, allowances. Often quoted as "total comp" or "TC" especially in fintech and quant markets.

Vetting Both: Pre-shortlist verification of a candidate’s claims - references, qualifications, employment history. Done by AEY as part of every search; results inform the shortlist note.

Workforce Advisory Clients: AEY’s consulting practice - hiring strategy work upstream of any specific search. Talent maps, hiring roadmaps, organisation design. See Workforce Advisory.

YOE - Years of Experience Both: Recruitment shorthand for total years in a profession. Overused as a brief constraint; experience is not a proxy for capability. We push back when a brief leads with YOE as the binding filter.

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