Hiring a candidate for a company typically consists of three steps - sourcing, screening, and selection. The first step, sourcing candidates, involves posting the job vacancy on platforms and inviting job applicants to apply for the job.
Thanks to many reasons, such as unemployment, recruiters today receive heaps of resumes and CVs even for a single vacancy. Some of these applications may even be totally irrelevant and impractical. Therefore, the second step of the recruitment cycle - candidate screening - ought to be efficacious to make the recruitment happen.
When a company is successful in implementing effective candidate screening techniques, it is more likely to recruit the best-fitting employee. This also reduces the mis-hiring costs and other resources that go into the whole hiring process.
Additionally, another challenge that recruiters come across is keeping the applicants engaged during the whole recruitment process. It may be highly tempting for them to add a lot of screening steps to get the desired results.
However, this makes the applicants lose interest in the job. Hence, this way is not effective at all. Therefore, we have curated a list of 7 candidate screening strategies that can help you hire the best talent for your company.
What is Candidate Screening?
Candidate screening is the second step in the recruitment process. It involves skimming and reviewing all the job applications to shortlist applicants that match the job requirements.
The candidate screening process comes after you have sourced all the job applications and before you have shortlisted candidates for the interview.
To optimise your hiring process and conclude it with successful hiring, candidate screening is a crucial step. It helps in making your recruitment efficient and effective by reducing your hiring costs, time, and other resources.
It also ensures that you hire the best-fitting candidate for the vacancy in terms of the required skills as well as culture fit. Moreover, when you hire the best candidate, he or she is also more likely to stay with the company for a long time, reducing attrition for the company.
Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to employ one or the other kind of screening strategies for candidates.
Top 7 Candidate Screening Methods
Skill Tests Screening
Skill tests are becoming increasingly popular among employers. According to research by the Harvard Business Review, many companies, especially service companies, reduce their hiring cost by optimizing their recruitment processes with the help of short skill tests as their initial screening step.
The introduction of a skill test to evaluate candidates’ competence, early on in the recruitment lifecycle, helps the employer shortlist a diverse and qualified pool of candidates. The primary objective of skill tests in the hiring process is to assess candidates based on the quantity and quality of hard and soft skills that the job requires.
These tests also provide an unbiased way to filter out unqualified candidates easily and quickly with the help of platforms, like WeCP, that offer AI-powered customized questionnaires to conduct skill tests for almost all kinds of tech positions to determine the best fit for an employer.
Watch how WeCP AI Copilot help in screening candidates & increase the quality of hire:
Phone Screening
Several companies employ the phone screening method to shortlist candidates. Since it is quite time-consuming, it isn’t recommended for high-volume hiring. However, for low-volume hiring, phone screening is one of the best methods to verify the qualifications, skills, and experience of a candidate.
Through phone screening, the employer can possibly understand candidates’ backgrounds, motivations, aspirations, and whether they have the ability to do the job effectively. Moreover, unlike most other screening methods, phone screening provides feedback instantly. The employer immediately knows whether a candidate deserves to make it to the next level.
That said, the biggest disadvantage of phone screening is that it is extremely tiring for the employer because of the time and effort that it needs. Additionally, the employer is devoid of the non-verbal cues of the candidates and thus, it is not a very effective method.
Social Media Screening
Social media may be much more important today, than you think it is. As many as 90% of employers today check out an applicant’s social media activity before making a hiring decision.
An applicant’s social media profiles tell a lot of relevant details about them. An employer gets to know about the candidate’s cultural background, cultural fit with the company, personal interests, motivation, beliefs, and several other informal insights that are important. Social media profiles can even reveal potential red flags of a candidate, such as job hopping, too much holidaying, etc.
However, sometimes, even social media profiles can be deceptive. That’s because most people today post only the best and the most fun parts of their lives on social media, which can mislead employers into believing that a candidate might not be serious about his job.
CVs or Resumes Screening
Reviewing candidates using their resumes or CVs has been one of the oldest and most widely used screening techniques globally. Traditionally, recruiters used to skim through every resume that they received to see if the candidates had the required skills. But today, technology has automated this process.
However, screening candidates based on their CVs isn’t a very reliable method. For mass hiring, if recruiters read CVs quickly, they may leave out some good candidates or shortlist a few unqualified ones. On the other hand, if they go through each one of them extensively they’ll have to spend days, if not weeks, reviewing every CV manually.
Moreover, even if the CV reviewing is done using tools that shortlist based on a few keywords, there are high chances of mistakes. Some candidates may omit essential keywords from their CVs, while others may exaggerate their grades or falsify skills in which they are not proficient.
Hence, most recruiters and even candidates are not in favor of the resume screening method.
Cover Letters Screening
Another very common method of screening candidates is through their cover letters. Cover letters are tailor-made business letters that a candidate writes to the employer to communicate his interest in a particular job and why he should be selected for the role.
These letters provide a bit of an insight into the communication skills and other soft skills of the candidate. It also allows candidates to communicate their essential skills to employers that align with the job requirements, but may not be conveyed through their CVs.
However, cover letters too are considered inefficient in screening candidates by most employers as well as candidates.
First, it is pretty time-consuming to go through each of the cover letters that an employer receives. They can’t even rely on tools to look for keywords in a cover letter, because that’s not what they are meant to contain.
Second, several candidates provide employers with a generic cover letter, sent over and over again to apply for several jobs. Thus, this makes cover letters lose the whole idea of communicating the desired information from the candidate to the employer.
ATS Screening
ATS or Applicant Tracking System screening is nothing but screening candidate profiles using an automated tool. It looks for the desired qualifications and skills based on the keywords that you enter and shortlists candidates who have those keywords in their CVs.
ATS screening is great for avoiding biases based on names, castes, communities, etc. Moreover, it is also the fastest and one of the best methods of screening CVs, especially in large volumes.
However, this method can easily overlook good candidates if they miss adding the exact keywords in their CVs that your ATS is looking for. Contrarily, it can also misread a keyword in a CV and shortlist an unqualified candidate.
For example, suppose you are looking for an “Android App Developer” with the keyword “Android App”, it will also shortlist a candidate who has stated his responsibility as “got the Android App developed for XYZ product”. Now, even though the candidate isn’t an Android App developer, he will be shortlisted falsely.
Introductory Video Screening
After the onset of COVID-19, LinkedIn developed a new method of introduction to the recruitment world in 2020 - video introduction. Slowly, other platforms too emerged with something similar.
The employer can ask the candidate to answer a generic question, something like “Why do you think you are fit for this position?” or “Which of your strengths make you a good choice for this job?” and choose to make it optional for them to submit a video or a written response.
Though a video response can also be misleading in many ways, it’s usually a great way to evaluate a candidate’s confidence in his skills and candidature for a vacancy. A video response gives you clear verbal and non-verbal cues to assess the candidates in all spheres.
However, just like several other methods, video screening is highly time-consuming and cannot work as the sole screening method for most positions.
Conclusion
All in all, the best screening method truly depends on the type and size of your hiring. However, skill assessment, using tailor-made questions for the job that you have, has proved to be one of the most successful methods of screening candidates quickly and effortlessly.
WeCP helps talent acquisition teams test the technical competence of candidates by providing them with assessments that resemble real work scenarios. Our platform also allows you to evaluate candidates’ soft skills, such as communication, problem-solving, decision-making, etc. Additionally, the AI co-pilot at WeCP helps you hire better talent in a faster, seamless and unbiased way.
Contact us for more information or schedule a demo with us.
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