One of the most essential tasks for a recruiter is candidate screening. But, going through hundreds of resumes for a particular position and finally deciding on who to move forward within the recruitment process based on insufficient and incomplete information can be an overwhelming responsibility.
So, companies look for ways that can improve candidate screening and create a recruitment process that is more accurate and valid. In this scenario, pre-employment screening plays a vital role, allowing recruiters to select candidates based on visible facts. Pre-employment tests, combined with new screening tools, help in speeding up the recruitment process and choosing the right candidate for a position.
Whenever you hire a new employee, your firm makes a long-term investment with onboarding and training. So, ensuring that you make the right hiring decisions will have a crucial impact on your firm. It also leads to an increase in productivity and lowers the turnaround rate. Simultaneously, if you end up hiring someone who is not the right fit for a particular role, it is possible for the recruit to not succeed on the job. This means that all the time, effort, and money invested in his onboarding in the company are lost.
You can successfully recruit more A-players by putting an effective screening process into place. It will enable you to move faster, take interviews of top applicants, and hand out offer letters much before your competitors. Studies have indicated that top prospects stay available for as low as just ten days. So it would be best if you moved fast once you have succeeded in getting the attention of an A-player with the help of good job descriptions and employer branding. If you have a well-structured screening process in place, it will save a lot of time by decreasing unnecessary phone screenings and interviews that your recruitment team is conducting.
This blog will guide you in setting up a repeatable and efficient screening process while introducing various tools and technologies that help make faster, accurate, and compliant decisions.
A guide to the candidate screening process
The process of screening candidates, whether you have a few candidates or stacks of resumes to browse through, can be done after a thorough understanding of the role requirements.
Below are some of the most common methods used to screen candidates.
Resume screening
Let’s begin with a commonly used and classic technique, going through resumes. It is the oldest technique to determine if an applicant fits the job requirement perfectly. Even though a resume might not define a candidate’s skill entirely, but it is a crucial element in hiring, and it is here to stay.
Cover letters
Even though a resume or curriculum vitae or CV is a good way for a candidate to present skills and capabilities, it can still have a few limitations. If you want to know more about your candidates from the beginning, you can, as part of the application process, request a cover letter with the CV.
Reference checking
One of the other classic candidate screening techniques is reference checking, a vital element when making a calculated decision about a recruit. Because who else can give a better indication of an employee’s performance than their previous employers.
If you thought that checking references was a thing of the past for HRs, you are in for a surprise. Surveys have shown that 8 in every 10 HR professional conducts a reference check for every new applicant. And interestingly, the likeliness of doing a reference check increases with the increase in seniority of a position.
Checking online
How long has it been since you last googled yourself? It is surprising when you see the amount of data about you available online. And, this is one of the most accessible techniques to screen candidates.
A research suggests that about 77% of employers first google a candidate before deciding to hire them. Doing a simple search is enough to show if a candidate has his website, social media profile, public portfolio, or if there are any articles online about them.
Well, speaking of social media, it is quite evident that employers will do some snooping around on candidates’ social media profiles too. Surveys suggest about 70% of employers conduct background checks on social media platforms. Even though going through a candidate’s Twitter profile might not tell you the kind of skills he possesses, but it can suggest the type of person he is.
Skills test
The primary concern for every employer out there is whether a candidate can do a specific job or not. Even though it is not something that can be clearly determined just by going through resumes, conducting reference checks, or searching for your candidate online, what you can do is to use a pre-employment test.
And this is precisely what most employers nowadays are doing, helping them see a candidate’s performance, avoid any bias, and eliminate applicants unfit for a specific job.
Phone Interviews
Even before the advent of video calls, screening over a telephonic conversation was one of the primary communication tools between an employer and a prospective candidate before a proper interview. Surprisingly, it is still one of the most common ways of communication when it comes to hiring. It is a great technique to understand a candidate without hassling them with commuting to the place of the interview. Also, it is relatively easier to carry out and can determine a candidate’s availability and communication skills.
Video Interviews
After a telephonic interview, the next best thing to understand a candidate better is a video interview. With so many video conferencing tools out there, scheduling a video interview is quite easy. A video interview is easy to conduct, and it helps you understand a candidate’s communication and presentation skills as well as their body language.
Applicant Tracking Systems
Successfully conducting all of the above steps is ideal, but it requires time, workforce, and resources. So, it isn’t very easy for all companies to do it, and that is where an applicant tracking system steps in.
An ATS automatically runs through thousands of CVs and makes sure that you find the perfect candidate for a specific role. The right ATS can provide every necessary feature needed by a recruitment firm and also support customizations to match individual requirements.
Now that you have understood the process of candidate screening and the techniques to do it better, you can now successfully move on to the candidate selection process. To know more about the candidate selection process, please read our blog ‘The basics of candidate selection.’
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