Easy Ways To Improve Application Screening

Screening applications for a job is a nuanced process that takes careful consideration. It's important that your process is stringent, efficient and leads to a really good hire for your business.

Higher unemployment increases applicant volume. High volume recruitment can lead to a poor, dehumanising experience for candidates with bad communication negatively impacting your employer brand.

You're no longer seeking to recruit based on skills and culture fit alone. You may also need to hire an employee who copes well working from home.

Avoid unconscious bias:

• Irrespective of current employment status, quality candidates are……….quality candidates.
• Don't select the mirror image of yourself, or the type of person you "like". Focus on skills, experience, psychometric results, endorsements, references and crucially, evidence of performance.
• Selection criteria such as university attended should be used with caution as it does not dictate ability.
• Workers no longer need to be within daily commuting distance of the office. Disabled people are able to work from home. Carers and those seeking part-time or flexible working are able to work from home (we meant to repeat ourselves).

A good candidate experience is vital. With review sites from Glassdoor to Google there are many ways for applicants to share a poor screening and assessment experience. Cumulatively, it negatively impacts your employer brand and may even dissuade a great candidate from applying.

Improve the candidate screening process by:

• Introducing person to person communication as early as you can. Does the candidate really understand the job they've applied for or have they taken a "spray and pray" approach to their job hunt?
• Respond quickly and keep in touch at every stage of the application process, set realistic timelines and stick to them!
• Provide feedback to all applicants, sharing the reasons for decisions that result in elimination from the assessment process.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a massive disruptor and it is used throughout the hiring process in targeted advertising and candidate ranking (eg Linkedin Recruiter); keyword algorithms for profile screening and skills matching; gamification, skills tests and chatbot conversations. AI based tools can drastically cut down the selection time (reportedly used by 67% of hiring managers surveyed by Linkedin) but they do so at the cost of human interaction and automated decision bias.

One-Way Interviews

One-way interviews have grown in popularity as the first step for screening candidates. It's a simple concept that requires applicants video record their answers to pre-scripted interview questions. This is very convenient for hiring managers as the videos can be viewed at any time and can be shared with line managers and team members. Tools such as Willo make the one-way interview a relatively intuitive process.

Nonetheless, it does involve asking the applicant to engage with potentially unfamiliar technology and therefore, requires support and encouragement to maximise engagement. Choose software that provides candidates with a review and re-record option and remember, the recording is personal information and must be treated in accordance with GDPR principles.

A little guidance to short listed candidates will really help them perform at their best during the video interview, if helpful to you, please share this blog on Acing A Video Interview with your applicants.

Psychometric Assessment

There is much more to consider than skills and experience if you want to make a good hiring decision. Psychometric assessment provides insight to candidate behaviour and our preferred tool is Personal Profile Analysis.

This assessment can reinvent the interview process because it provides targeted, individual guidance to the interviewer.

Completed online, the assessment results are immediately available and evaluate strengths, motivations, soft skills, team fit and reaction under pressure.

This assessment can reinvent the interview process because it provides targeted, individual guidance to the interviewer, generating questions specific to the candidate. Particularly important for remote working roles the analysis identifies the best way to manage, and communicate with the candidate based on their preferred working style.

Human Relationships

Technology has an invaluable role to play in good recruitment, but only if it is deployed correctly by the people using it. As part of your recruitment planning, take into account the candidate network and knowledge of your in-house recruiter or preferred agency supplier.

This post is part of our Guide To Remote Recruiting, the complete guide is available for you to download at TMM Recruitment Guide To Remote Recruiting.