Hiring
Slate
Slate is the short list of people who actually meet the client, in this frame usually three, after English and work samples have already killed the rest.
How it works
A slate is not a folder of 15 resumes. If 15 reach the founder, the filter failed. Each person on the slate can do the job on the evidence. The founder picks one or you do not invent a fourth to soothe indecision without a new brief. For a U.S. company hiring one Filipino teammate, write this into the brief, the employment contract, and the peso payroll file before the start date. Slack habits do not override the Labor Code, BIR, or NPC. If the local employer of record holds the paper, they run the statutory step; you still owe a clean operating definition so the seat does not fail in week three. Put a number on the example when you budget loaded cost, because a nameless allowance always returns as a December surprise or a missed SLA.
Example: 80 applicants, 12 work samples, 3 on the slate, 1 hired. Time-to-slate is 14 days on a clean role.
How it differs
Scorecard is how you rated them. Role brief is what you hired for. Bench is people you do not have.
Common errors
Sending raw CV stacks and calling it a slate.
In practice
Treat Slate as a week-one operating object. Put this on the scorecard or the start-date checklist. If it only appears in a pitch deck, it will not survive week one. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have slate yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.