How Should You Screen Your Candidates?

Searching for the right candidate can be a difficult, time-consuming process. This is especially true when you have a lot of potential candidates. How can you find the best candidates for your company out of all of the applicants for the position? Finding candidates can be a full-time job just by itself. So what criteria should you use to screen your candidates to make the search easier?

Red Flags to Look Out For

Keeping an eye out for any obvious red flags can help weed out undesirable candidates quickly. These include:

  • Mistakes with spelling and grammar
  • Sloppiness
  • Confusing formatting
  • Indications that the candidate didn’t read or comprehend the job posting
  • Spotty employment history
  • Multiple career changes
  • Gaps in the resume
  • Lack of contact information
  • Unprofessional e-mail address
  • Doesn’t meet the job requirements

If a candidate can’t be bothered to read your job posting or avoid spelling errors on a resume, that shows a lack of care and attention to detail. How would a person who did that on their resume, which is your first impression, be as an employee?

Determine What You Are Looking For

Once you’ve weeded out the candidates who are not what you’re looking for, it’s time to decide what you are looking for. Prioritize your list of requirements. This can help you decide between several candidates who may look promising. The candidates that have the highest-priority qualifications should be considered more highly for an interview.

Organize Your Candidates

You don’t need to read each resume thoroughly the first time. You can skim each one looking for obvious red flags that would allow you to file it in the “do not interview” pile. Once you’ve weeded out those, you can read through what’s left more thoroughly. Any remaining resumes can then be sorted by how much you want to interview them.

Keep all resumes for candidates that you definitely want to interview in the same stack. Any that you’re considering but aren’t as promising, set aside for later. Another position may open up that one of the “maybes” is a better fit for.

Rank Your Candidates

The next step is to use your highest-priority requirements to rank the most promising candidates. It’s time to thoroughly read each of these resumes and to think about what questions you would ask that candidate in an interview. What else do you want to know about that candidate? This will help you prepare for an interview.

Contact Your Candidates

If you have decided not to consider an applicant, it’s important that you contact them and let them know why. Your company will look better for not ghosting candidates, who may still be wondering what their status is with your company. Candidates also won’t need to call to check on the status of their application if they already know they’re out of the running.

Don’t Forget the References

After you’ve completed the interview process, make sure to call references. Someone who looks like a promising candidate could turn out to be a very poor fit. Contacting each candidate’s references before extending them a job offer can save you the hassle of hiring the wrong person and having to go through the whole process again after only a few months.

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