The ultimate candidate screening guide for employers
An efficient candidate screening process is essential for identifying top talent and minimising bias in the recruitment process. Discover key strategies to streamline your hiring in our guide.
Finding the right candidate for a role can be both time-consuming and costly for employers.
Many employers find themselves inundated with job applications once they post an advertisement, adding to the difficulties in identifying the top candidate. That’s why it’s crucial to know how to filter candidates so that you can narrow down the field and devote your time and energy to the most relevant applications.
In this article, we’ll look at what candidate screening means for your hiring process, things to watch out for, and how to implement a successful candidate screening process.
What is candidate screening?
Candidate screening is the process of determining which applicants for a role are qualified, suitable, or a good fit for the organisation and which are not.
It’s an important part of the initial recruitment process, that when implemented correctly, can make recruitment much more manageable, even if there are hundreds of applications for a role.
You can carry out an effective candidate screening process by using the application materials – CVs and cover letters – to quickly determine who is worth investing your recruitment team’s time in.
Why is candidate screening important?
There are several reasons why screening applicants effectively is critical to success in the hiring process. Chief among these is:
- Narrowing down the pool of applicants: You can’t interview every candidate for every job you post. Screening helps cut down applicants to a manageable number, which you can then investigate in more depth during the interview process.
- Reducing bias: Research shows that 48% of hiring managers admit to being affected by bias when selecting candidates. Implementing screening can help reduce bias in your hiring process, as your screening criteria should be only related to the capabilities, skills and experience of the candidates.
- Reducing the chance of a bad hire: Screening is the first line of defence against bad hires. Without a thorough screening process, an unsuitable candidate may slip through to the interview stage, where their personality or speaking skills could potentially land them the role, even if they aren’t fully qualified for it.
Common challenges in candidate screening
While there are many advantages of utilising candidate screening in your recruitment processes, there are some potential challenges that you should be aware of.
This includes:
- Unconscious bias: While screening is important for reducing bias, if implemented incorrectly it could have the opposite effect of amplifying biases, especially unconscious bias.
- Inconsistent screening criteria: If your recruitment team aren’t on the same page when it comes to the screening criteria and what to look for in terms of candidate strengths and weaknesses, the process might be inconsistent and unreliable.
- Missing out on great candidates: The job of candidate screening is to narrow the pool of applicants quickly and efficiently, but there is a risk that a poorly calibrated set of criteria will eliminate candidates who could have been great hires.
How to screen candidates: A step-by-step guide
With so many applications pouring in for open roles, how do recruiters screen candidates quickly and objectively?
Below we’ll examine the steps you can take to implement a thorough and effective screening process that allows you to identify candidates fit for the role you’re hiring for.
Establish your screening criteria
First and foremost, you need to work out what you are actually screening for.
Luckily for you, the hard work should have already been done during the creation of the job description and advert. Here are the key steps for establishing screening criteria:
- Look at the essential criteria or must-haves from the job description and set these as must-haves during candidate screening. These usually include things such as specific qualifications or educational achievements, key competencies and years of professional experience.
- Similarly, you’ll likely have some nice-to-haves or desired criteria, which you can incorporate into your screening too. If you get a lot of applications, you may want to screen out candidates who don’t hit at least two of these, for example.
- You will hopefully have received input from relevant stakeholders before putting out the job advert, and you can call on these same stakeholders to discuss and agree on the screening criteria.
- It’s important to review and update screening criteria for each job that is published, as these can change depending on the needs of the team that is hiring or the wider organisation.
Make efforts to reduce bias
It’s vital to be aware of and counteract bias to ensure your organisation has the diversity and inclusion necessary to succeed.
Research shows that candidates disclosing “they/them” pronouns in their applications reduces positive employer response by 5.4 percentage points, while applicants with white-sounding names are 50 percent more likely to be contacted for job interviews than those with typical black-sounding names.
To reduce this type of bias, ensure screening criteria focuses on competency and experience. You could even introduce methods like blind recruitment, which involves removing any identifying information from application materials, such as names and pronouns, to reduce the chance of bias creeping in.
To decrease the chance of bias influencing decisions further along the hiring process, you can work to reduce bias in your interviews in a number of ways. This could include:
- Using panels to make sure there are diverse perspectives in the interviewing room
- Sticking to structured and scored interview questions and answers
- Implementing unconscious bias training to help make hiring managers and interviewers aware of the risks of bias and how to counteract it
Use technology
In addition to helping to ensure a smooth candidate experience, applicant tracking systems (ATS) can be used to ensure effective candidate screening.
With this software, you can track candidates from the initial application all the way to hiring. Furthermore, platforms with inbuilt artificial intelligence (AI) and automation can near-instantly screen hundreds of applications to check whether they meet your screening criteria.
While there is some controversy around the use of AI in recruitment, our research shows that 52% of candidates are comfortable applying for a job where a small part of the process is AI-driven. While 57% said AI should be used to score and rank candidates based on defined criteria, most don’t want it involved in interviews or making hiring decisions.
That shouldn’t be a consideration just yet for most hiring teams, and even in the initial screening phase, you’ll need to be aware of tricks that some candidates might use to pass an ATS screening. One of these involves using white text on a white background on their CV or cover letter to match job requirements. So, remember, you’ll need a human eye to watch out for these practices and ensure the ATS hasn’t made any errors.
Standardise your processes
Finally, getting the most out of a screening process in the long term will often require standardising your approach.
It’s important to introduce consistency into your processes so that no matter who is conducting the hiring for the role, they are getting the most out of the screening phase. Standardising will also help to reduce the impact of bias from creeping back in and increase fairness for all applicants. Furthermore, giving all candidates a positive hiring experience can help to boost your employer brand and reputation.
To create a standardised process, document how you structured your screening process, and give reasons why. That way anyone can use your reasoning and frameworks to do their own candidate screening.
You could also offer training on setting up a screening for a job role, where you can go over the importance of screening for all the reasons listed above.
Elevate your hiring with efficient screening
In a competitive talent market, candidate screening is essential for building a high-performing team. By implementing a structured and unbiased process, you can quickly identify candidates who meet qualifications and align with your culture.
Continuously refining your criteria and leveraging technology can help you obtain a competitive advantage in the hiring landscape. Remember, the goal is not just to fill positions but to attract top-tier talent with the hard and soft skills to drive organisational success.