Industry Weight Presets Explained

When you create a new job or configure your default weights in Preferences, HireSalt offers industry-specific weight presets. These presets adjust how much each scoring category contributes to a candidate's overall score, based on what matters most in that industry.

The scoring categories

HireSalt scores 7 categories with 33 sub-criteria. Five carry weight, and the weight you assign to each determines its influence on the final score:

• Skills Match — Required and preferred skills, depth of hard skills, soft skills, and domain vocabulary.
• Experience — Years of experience, role relevance, seniority, career progression, industry experience, achievements, and recency.
• Education — Degree level, field of study, certifications, and continuous learning.
• Semantic Fit — Whether the work described reads like the work in the job description: context, intent, how skills were applied, problem solving, and transferable skills.
• Stability & Trajectory — How coherent the career arc is: tenure against role norms, the kinds of moves made, explainable gaps, and a consistent narrative.

The other two, Practicalities (location, availability, salary, work authorisation) and Engagement Profile, are scored and shown for context. Every preset gives them zero weight.

How Presets Are Designed

Each industry preset is built around a simple question: what hiring signals matter most when screening resumes in this field? The answer varies by industry:

Skills-heavy industries

In Software Engineering, Data Science / AI, and Cybersecurity, skills are the strongest signal of job fit, so these presets give Skills Match the largest share.

Experience-heavy industries

Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Construction, and Real Estate value proven track records, so Experience carries the most weight.

Education-heavy industries

Accounting, Legal, Finance, and Pharma require specific qualifications, so Education carries more weight than in the default.

Semantic-fit-heavy industries

Sales, Marketing, HR, and Nonprofit roles depend on how closely past work resembles the role, so Semantic Fit carries 30% or more.

Full Preset Reference

All weights are percentages that sum to 100. The table below shows every preset.

Using Presets

You can apply industry presets in two places:

1. Preferences page — Go to Settings → Preferences and scroll to "Default Criteria Weights". Select an industry from the dropdown. These defaults apply to every new job you create.
2. Job creation — When creating a new job, select an industry in the Industry field. If you uploaded a JD, HireSalt will suggest an industry automatically. The weight sliders update to match the preset.

Customising Weights

Presets are starting points, not mandates. You can:

• Select a preset, then manually adjust individual sliders. The dropdown switches to "Custom" automatically.
• Save your custom weights as defaults in Preferences so every new job starts with your configuration.
• Override weights on a per-job basis during job setup without affecting your saved defaults.

AI Industry Detection

When you upload a job description during job creation, HireSalt analyses the text and suggests the most likely industry. Look for the "AI detected" badge next to the industry dropdown. You can accept the suggestion or choose a different industry manually.

The detection considers job title, required qualifications, industry-specific terminology, and role responsibilities to make its recommendation.