A single strong opinion can shape a whole hiring decision. Once someone sees that a colleague rated a candidate two out of five, it’s hard to read that CV with fresh eyes. Fair evaluations solves this by hiding your team’s evaluations and scores in the pipeline stages you choose, so each person sees the team’s feedback only after adding their own. It’s part of the Unbiased hiring module, alongside Anonymous candidates.
Note: Fair evaluations is a paid feature and isn’t included in every plan. To turn it on for your company, you need the Manage company permission, usually an Administrator.
How Fair evaluations work
Fair evaluations is switched on in two steps, and it only starts hiding anything once you’ve done both. First, turn it on for your company. This makes the feature available and adds a Fair evaluations checkbox to your pipeline stages, but nothing is hidden yet. Then enable it on individual pipeline stages. Evaluations are hidden only in the stages you select, and only in the jobs where you select them.
From then on, this is what happens in a stage with Fair evaluations enabled:
You can see who has evaluated the candidate, but not what they said or scored.
As soon as you add your own evaluation in that stage, your teammates’ evaluations and the candidate’s score appear.
If the candidate later moves into another stage that also has Fair evaluations enabled, everything is hidden again until you evaluate them in that new stage.
Tip: Hidden evaluations still trigger the usual activities and notifications, so you’ll know when a colleague has evaluated someone. Only their feedback and the score stay hidden.
Turn on Fair evaluations for your company
Go to Settings > Workflow > Candidate evaluation, find Fair evaluations and click Edit. Select Display the feature and click Save. This adds the Fair evaluations checkbox to your pipeline stages.
The row then shows how widely the feature is used, such as Enabled in 3 out of 12 jobs.
Important: Choosing Turn off the feature switches Fair evaluations off on every pipeline stage that was using it, and every evaluation that was hidden becomes visible to anyone with access to the candidate. The same happens if your plan stops including the feature.
Enable Fair evaluations on a pipeline stage
You can set this up once in a pipeline template so every job built from it inherits the setup, or stage by stage in a single job.
In a pipeline template
Go to Settings > Templates > Pipelines, open the template you want to change, and click the pencil icon on the stage you want to protect. Under Unbiased hiring, tick Fair evaluations – team members won’t see evaluations until they also evaluate. and click Save.
Note: Saving the template applies Fair evaluations to that stage in every job already using the template, not just to new jobs.
In a single job
Open the job and click Edit, then go to Workflow. Under Pipeline, click the pencil icon on the stage you want to protect. Under Unbiased hiring, tick Fair evaluations – team members won’t see evaluations until they also evaluate., click Save, then click Publish changes to apply it to the job.
Stages with Fair evaluations enabled show a crossed-out eye icon. Click it to see which unbiased hiring features are active on that stage.
Note: If you can’t find the Fair evaluations checkbox on a stage, the feature hasn’t been turned on for your company yet, or your plan doesn’t include it.
What your team sees in a protected stage
On the candidate profile
On the candidate’s Evaluation tab, your teammates’ feedback and the score are hidden:
Under Summary, the Average evaluation score shows *** and the message Results are hidden to avoid bias. Evaluate this candidate to see them.
Under Detailed results, a box shows how many evaluations are hidden, for example 1 hidden evaluation by the Fair evaluations feature, with the message Other team members’ answers are hidden to avoid bias. Evaluate this candidate to see them.
Click Evaluate to add your own evaluation and see the other evaluations and the score.
Elsewhere in Tellent Recruitee
Fair evaluations hides the score everywhere it would normally appear, not just on the profile:
In the pipeline, the candidate’s score is replaced with ***.
In evaluation insights, the AI summary is hidden too, because it would otherwise give away what the team said.
In candidate search, you can find candidates with hidden scores using the Evaluation filter: click Add filter > Evaluation and select Hidden evaluations.
In the mobile app, protected stages show the same crossed-out eye icon, and hidden evaluations appear as they do on the web.
Note: Scorecards from hidden evaluations aren’t included in a candidate’s scorecard summary until those evaluations become visible to you.
Reveal hidden evaluations without evaluating
Sometimes you need to read the team’s feedback without adding your own, for example, when you’re deciding whether to move a candidate forward.
Team members with the Reveal hidden evaluations permission see a Reveal for me button under Average evaluation score in the Summary. Click it to open the Hidden evaluations window with your teammates’ feedback.
The first time you do this, Tellent Recruitee asks you to confirm with Reveal evaluations? and the reminder Please note that once you read other evaluations, you may be less objective. Click Reveal for me to continue.
Revealing evaluations this way only affects your own view. It doesn’t unhide them for anyone else, and it doesn’t count as your evaluation.
Tip: The confirmation step appears only once per browser. After that, Reveal for me opens the evaluations straight away.
When hidden evaluations become visible again
Evaluations stop being hidden when:
You evaluate the candidate in that stage. This reveals the team’s evaluations and the score for you.
The candidate moves to a stage without Fair evaluations. Evaluations become visible to everyone with access.
The candidate is disqualified. Hidden evaluations for that job become visible. If you requalify them into a protected stage, the evaluations are hidden again.
Fair evaluations is turned off for your company, or your plan stops including it. Everything that was hidden becomes visible.
Keep evaluations hidden when sharing a candidate
Two places in Tellent Recruitee can expose evaluations that Fair evaluations is hiding. Both are limited to people you choose, but it’s worth knowing about them.
The candidate sharing link. When you share a candidate profile with a link and select All evaluations, anyone who opens that link sees every evaluation, including the ones Fair evaluations is hiding from your own team.
Printing or downloading a profile. Team members with the Reveal hidden evaluations permission can turn on Include all hidden evaluations under Visibility preferences when they print a candidate profile or download it as a PDF. It’s off by default.
Tip: If your process depends on unbiased evaluations, avoid selecting All evaluations when you share a candidate, and review which roles have the Share candidates and Reveal hidden evaluations permissions.
When to use Fair evaluations
Turn it on in any stage where one person’s opinion could sway the rest of the team:
Applied: Your team reviews CVs without seeing who already rated a candidate highly or poorly.
Interview: After an interview, each interviewer writes up what they actually observed, instead of agreeing with the first review that comes in.
Business case: Reviewers judge the candidate’s work on its own merits before comparing notes.
Leave it off in stages where alignment matters more than independence, for example an offer stage, where the team needs to see the full picture together.
Frequently asked questions
Does Fair evaluations hide evaluations from the person who wrote them?
No. You can always see your own evaluations.
Will I still be notified when a colleague evaluates a candidate?
Yes. Activities and notifications work as usual. Only the feedback and score are hidden.
Does revealing evaluations tell my colleagues that I looked?
No. Revealing changes only your own view and doesn’t unhide the evaluations for anyone else.
Can I enable Fair evaluations for some jobs but not others?
Yes. Use a pipeline template for jobs that should share a setup, and enable it stage by stage in the job’s workflow for anything one-off.
What happens to already-hidden evaluations if I turn the feature off?
They become visible to everyone who has access to the candidate. The only way to hide them again is to turn Fair evaluations back on for the stage.
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