Postdoctoral references asked to provide recommendation letters - does it indicate the candidate passed a screening?
While every university has its own processes it is likely that you passed at least some initial screening. But it might not be terribly significant. It might be nothing more than that the university wants to communicate directly with your references rather than some other way to obtain the letters.
If you get invited to an interview then it is much more likely that they find you &quot;interesting&quot;. But at the moment, it probably just means that they put your application in a pile of folks not to be immediately rejected for reasons of obvious ill-fit. Good luck, but don't read too much in to it yet.