How many criteria a statement can honestly carry
Nine overlapping criteria do not buy more fairness. They buy repetition, exhausted candidates, and a panel that stops distinguishing marks.
Position descriptions accrete. Each departing manager leaves a criterion. Each incident in the workplace adds another. By the time a vacancy is advertised, candidates may face nine or ten prompts that all circle communication, judgement, and “working with others.”
From the reading desk, that list is not rigorous. It is a fog. The same example is pasted under three headings. Markers then argue whether to count it thrice. Dual-reads diverge not because one reader is careless but because the ruler overlaps itself.
Three to six criteria, each asking for a different kind of evidence, will usually outperform a long list. “Supervise staff under an award” is different from “prepare a briefing for an external regulator.” Both can be scored. “Excellent communication” sitting beside “stakeholder engagement” sitting beside “written skills” cannot, except by awarding prose style.
When we draft wording, we cut duplicates and we name the evidence we expect: a roster, a complaint file, a published deadline. Candidates who have done the work can answer briefly. Candidates who have not cannot hide inside a thesaurus.
Panels sometimes fear that fewer criteria will miss a risk. Risks that matter should be essential requirements stated as such — a clearance, a qualification, a licence — not buried as the eighth soft prompt. Honest workforce application analytics needs a short ruler, frozen before the files arrive, and a panel willing to live with what that ruler shows.