The Individual-Referential Evaluation Protocol (IREP): An Open Standard for Category-Blind, Trajectory-Rich Assessment in Hiring and Admission

Hiring and admissions systems routinely collect category data (name, photograph, age, sex,geography, credentials) at the stage where it does the most documented damage: before evaluation.Social-psychological research shows that category salience activates stereotype threat in candidatesand population priors in evaluators; audit studies show that identical files receive divergent outcomeswhen only the category signal changes; and the large-scale French anonymous-CV experiment showsthat the intuitive remedy, masking, can worsen outcomes by removing evaluators' ability to readatypical trajectories in context. This paper specifies an open protocol that resolves the tension byrelocating rather than deleting category data: evaluation is category-blind but trajectory-rich;assessment is untimed within a bounded window; demographic and credential data are collected onlyafter the evaluation decision, firewalled from evaluators, and used exclusively for audit, complianceand administration. The protocol treats the individual, not the population, as the reference class, andthe individual's trajectory, not a credential snapshot, as the primary evidence of capability. It ispublished as a free and open standard, with a reference implementation, so that any organization(employer, school, HR vendor, public service) can adopt or build upon it. Access to employment istreated here as a matter of basic equity, not as a market to be enclosed. IREP was initiated by Elodie Aishwarya P. Remoissenet as an open protocol inspired by her earlier work on individual reference frames and longitudinal evaluation. Site: https://irepprotocol.org — Contact: commons@irepprotocol.org.