I didn't view this webinar, so the speaker may have provided additional information on some of these points. However, I understand your confusion about this question of who must be included in applicant data to be presented to OFCCP. There are many technical terms that are used in this context that aren't explicitly defined in the federal affirmative action regulations and that are frequently not defined by people who are talking about the selection process. You ask about the difference between a "candidate" and an "applicant." Neither of these terms in defined in the federal affirmative action regulations. The term that IS defined is "Internet Applicant." As your webinar most likely said, an "Internet Applicant" is a person who meets four criteria and thus must be included in statistical reports on applicant that are provided to OFCCP during a compliance review. Many people involved in the affirmative action field use the term "candidate" to mean "someone who has expressed interest in a position or is considered for a position, regardless of qualifications." The term "applicant" then means "someone who meets the test to be an Internet Applicant." A better way to understand this may be as follows: there are persons who express interest in or are considered for an opening. We're going to call these persons "candidates." A candidate may or may not meet minimum qualifications. A candidate may have expressed interest in an open job, or may have been found by a company through some kind of passive recruiting technique. A candidate may have been given some form of consideration for the job, or may have received no substantive consideration whatsoever. A candidate may be someone we could potentially hire for an open job, or someone who has no chance whatsoever of being hired. There is a subset of "candidates" who we're going to call "applicants." These are the people who expressed interest in a position, were given consideration, met the minimum (i.e. basic) qualifications for a job, and did not withdraw from consideration. In essence, an applicant is a viable candidate; an applicant is someone who we could potentially hire for an open job. We would technically call these persons "Internet Applicants, " though there will be occasions when certain viable candidate will not have actually applied through the Internet. (One of the fun facts associated with the Internet Applicant rule is that a candidate can be an Internet Applicant without ever having used the Internet to express interest.) When we disposition persons who are associated with our openings, we want to distinguish "candidates" from "applicants." That is, we want to distinguish the non-viable candidates from the viable candidates. The viable candidates need to be given an opportunity to provide demographic information on race, gender, veteran, and disability status, and must appear in the applicant reports that we present to OFCCP during a compliance review. We are not required to given the non-viable candidates an opportunity to provide demographic data (though we can do that if we choose to), and we are not initially required to show the non-viable candidates in reports presented to OFCCP (though OFCCP can ask for information on these candidates if the agency thinks we aren't providing accurate and honest information on who we consider to be viable candidates). You said "If I ask basic qualification questions like those below and they say no, then they weren't candidates???" Based on the definition of the word "candidate" above, persons who don't met basic qualifications are still candidates. They are not Internet Applicants, because they fail prong 3 of the test to be an Internet Applicant. They are not viable candidates who could be hired, and thus they are not "applicants" based on the definition above. Just to make this yet a little more complicated, you said "I'm not sure how the data would differentiate between someone I didn't consider (jobseeker) and applicant." "Jobseeker" is another term that may be used for the entire universe of persons who express interest in or are considered for a position. That is, the term "jobseeker" for these purposes is generally the same as the term "candidate." In any data, we want to differentiate between "candidates"/"jobseeker" and "applicants", because we only want to show persons who could actually be hired in the data presented to OFCCP. In your example, if a candidate/jobseeker received no consideration for an opening, that candidate/jobseeker should be excluded from data presented to OFCCP. In the long run, it's easier to think about this whole candidate/jobseeker/applicant/Internet Applicant thing this way: there is a big pool of persons who are associated with job openings, and a subset of those persons who are viable candidates for those openings. OFCCP typically cares about the viable candidates, and not about the remaining persons. Someone who doesn't meet minimum (basic) qualifications is not a viable candidate, just as someone who applies after a position closes and who doesn't receive any consideration is not a viable candidate. Why does OFCCP care about this question of who is a viable candidate (or, in their terminology, an "Internet Applicant")? It's because OFCCP is generally going to focus on viable candidates when determining if discrimination occurred. Hope this rather lengthy explanation is helpful, Theresa. And don't feel like you're the only person who finds this whole candidate/jobseeker/applicant/Internet Applicant thing confusing. Lots of people do.

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