AIRA reads the name of your meeting type, and most importantly the description and compares it against the call transcript. A type called "Screening" with no description tells AIRA nothing. The same type with a sharp, specific description gets matched reliably.
What a good description includes:
Who's typically on the call — a candidate, a client, internal team only.
What the call is actually for — qualifying fit, defining a search, checking in, making an offer.
What makes it different from your other meeting types — the detail that stops it from overlapping with something else on your list.
Real examples:
Check-in: "A touchpoint with a candidate already in pipeline or post-placement. No evaluation — just relationship maintenance, settling-in pulse, or keeping the door open for future roles."
Intake: "Working session with a hiring manager or client to define the search. Covers ideal profile, must-haves, compensation band, team context, and hiring timeline."
Candidate Discovery: "Exploratory conversation with a passive candidate — no live role in mind. Goal is to map their background, career goals, and openness to move, for current or future searches."
Notice what these have in common: each one names who's on the call, states the call's purpose plainly, and includes a detail that rules out the other types. Intake explicitly isn't an evaluation call. Check-in explicitly isn't either. Candidate Discovery explicitly has no live role attached. That specificity is what keeps AIRA from confusing them.
A custom example, for a "Screening" type someone might add: "First call with a candidate to assess baseline fit — covers compensation expectations, notice period, work authorization, and motivation. Goal is to qualify in or out before investing further." This works for the same reason — it names the participant, the purpose, and a goal (qualify in/out) that distinguishes it from a deeper Candidate Interview type.
What to avoid:
One-word or near-empty descriptions ("Client call," "Candidate stuff"). AIRA has nothing to match against.
Two descriptions that could both describe the same conversation. If you can't tell which type a call should land in by reading both descriptions, AIRA probably can't either.
Padding out a description with information that doesn't help distinguish the call — stick to who, what, and why it's different.
Descriptions have a 300-character limit, so prioritize the details that actually separate this type from your others.
If you're noticing a particular type getting mis-tagged often, that's the signal to revisit its description — see Troubleshooting Wrong or Missing Meeting Type Tags.