A guide to candidate screening and selection process in recruitment
What is the Candidate Screening and assessment process?
Candidate screening is the process of evaluating applicants at various phases of the recruiting lifecycle. The candidate screening process can involve a number of steps, including resume screening, phone screening, technological or psychological screening, video interviews, in-person interviews, background screening, relevant work experience, and education. Recruiters carry out this process, which has three phases:
- Specifying the screening standards
- Making a brief list of potential prospects
- Communicating with potential data collection applicants
Let’s go over the various steps in the recruitment process for applicant screening and talk about automating the process.
1. Pre-Screening Questionnaire Forms
Prescreening is the process of assessing a candidate’s suitability before reviewing the resume. You should have a fundamental understanding of the position before evaluating candidates. Each position may have specific requirements for candidates. For instance, you may need to know the candidate’s willingness to work a particular shift and their expected CTC. What is the notice period for the candidate? A recruiter advances candidates to the next step of hiring only if they fulfill the essential requirements.
It is time-consuming, difficult, and tiresome to phone multiple candidates and ask them these questions before even seeing a resume. The recruiter’s time would not be best used in this manner- Instead, pre-screen candidates by embedding the prescreening questionnaire in the job application form. ATS and other screening tools allow recruiters to add questionnaires on the job page when a candidate is submitting a resume. Recruiters can see all the answers and a score based on the answers, which helps prioritize the best matches.
2. Automated Resume Screening with Parsing
The next step is resume screening after you have identified the applicants who satisfy the essential requirements. By reviewing resumes, you want to determine whether the applicant has the experience, education, and background to meet your job requirements. Manually screening resumes takes a lot of time, especially if you get more than 200 resumes on a given day. Finding the right applicants may take days or even weeks when you have a mountain of resumes. One way to screen resumes faster is by using automated resume screening tools in ATS or using advanced resume AI tools. These tools can read resumes and sort them based on keywords, job experience, educational background, and locations. These tools will help in screening thousands of resumes instantly.
3. One-Way Video Interview (Replace Your Phone Screening Interview)
Phone screening candidates can be time-consuming because it takes about 30 minutes per applicant and in the first few minutes you are aware that this one is not going to cut. It’s important to evaluate a candidate’s communication and soft skills before assessing them for technical skills. Having a recorded video response to a few important questions assists greatly when hiring for such job roles. In a one-way video interview, on-demand video interview candidates must record their responses on camera as the questions appear on the screen. An efficient method for automating applicant screening is to combine the questionnaire with a one-sided video interview! Asynchronous video interviews are another name for one-way interviews.
Read More: What is a one-way video interview?
4. Candidate Engagement via Messaging
Candidates are more likely to stay engaged and interested throughout the entire recruitment process when your company responds with regularity. Once the interview is over, recruiters can send follow-up messages to stay in touch while the process is still ongoing. Additionally, there are ways to use automated systems that give candidates immediate updates on their applications. Recruiters can also engage with the candidates via SMS with the help of features provided by screening software.
5. Online Psychometric Assessment
Once the candidate has qualified for a one-way video interview, companies may perform a psychometric assessment to evaluate human thought and behavior. They are mainly created to measure the person’s behavior, thoughts, skills, and many more characteristics. Different psychometric test questions measure and analyze different aspects of the human mind.
6. Online Technical Skill Assessment
Technical skill assessments are used to analyze and assess a candidate’s technical expertise. By combining metrics and assessments, these tests assist employers in selecting the best candidates from a pool of applicants rather than relying just on applicants’ resumes or interviews.
For developers, technical evaluations and pre-employment coding tests are effective methods of recruitment for identifying competent candidates and those who are not. They make it simple for HR and recruiting managers to shortlist the top prospects by providing them with clear and comprehensive candidate reports. Employers can use these logical evaluations to determine whether an applicant has the technical ability to succeed in a specific role or not.
7. Background check
The screening process includes a crucial stage called background checks. They can assist you in confirming a candidate’s credentials, work history, and criminal past. Background checks can also assist you in finding any warning signs that can rule out a candidate for the position. Effective background checks are now simpler to carry out thanks to technology. Many internet background check services are available and can deliver immediate results.
