How can you identify top candidates? – it’s as easy as adding pre-screening questions to your hiring process.

When you look through applications, you probably wish you had a way to see through the resume. To be able to see past the wording and polish and find out who was truly the best candidate.

A lot of companies have the same goal. Unfortunately, too many of them hire someone and then regret it – finding out only after the fact that the person wasn’t who they seemed to be, or that the fit was poor.

Even worse, these mistakes are expensive – losing and replacing a new hire can cost up 33% of their annual salary in lost work, job advertising expenses, and HR hours.

Pre-Screening Applicants Leads to Better Interviews

Many companies use interviews to work through applicants. They make their best guess at who is qualified using resumes and cover letters, and then devote dozens of HR hours to talking to each person individually.

These interviews are used to make initial cuts, and then second and further interviews are used to choose the best candidates.

The process takes a long time and uses a tremendous amount of personnel and energy.

When you use pre-screening questionnaires, you save your energy for only the best interviews. You’re able to quickly weed out those who would not do well at the job or in your company.

In this way, you can focus the attention of your HR department only on those who are most qualified and a better fit. In a way, you skip straight to the “second interview and beyond” portion of the process.

Using Questionnaires vs. Phone Interviews

If you’re savvy, you may be using phone interviews to save time for both the applicant and your department. However, even these take 20 – 30 minutes per applicant.

Usually, you use these phone interviews to ask questions that may eliminate the candidate from consideration. Why not do the same thing with a pre-screening questionnaire, which costs your team no time at all?

With a company like Hiringcue, you can request a pre-screen from an applicant in less than 30 seconds. Hiringcue has a library of over 300 pre-made questionnaires, or you can create your own for your specific position. By choosing your questions in advance, you can design a questionnaire that’s as simple or comprehensive as you’d like.

What Questions Should You Include?

It’s likely your HR department already knows what the common sticking points are when it comes to hiring. Perhaps a lot of candidates are disqualified because they don’t have specific software expertise, or they don’t have enough experience working with a team.

Or, you might find a lot of candidates being removed from consideration because they aren’t looking for the salary range you offer. Whatever it is, you can use the questionnaire to pinpoint those areas.

You can also use the questionnaire to ask, “entry-level” questions, like “Why are you looking for a new position?” or “What is your highest level of education?” Of course, you can remove candidates from consideration if they don’t answer the questionnaire.

There are some questions you should not include on the pre-screening questionnaire. Questions designed to test a candidate’s ability to think on their feet, for instance, need to be asked in person. You also want to save for the interview any questions that require you to assess body language as part of the answer.

Save Time by Using Pre-Screen Questions

Streamlining the hiring process may seem impossible because it’s so important to find candidates with the right fit. Fortunately, there are a lot of tools available, and Hiringcue can quickly become one of the most important.

With pre-screening questions, you can avoid spending precious interview time on standard introductory questions. You can eliminate those who aren’t a great fit much more quickly. Best of all, you can focus your time and energy on only the best candidates.

Hiringcue offers other tools as well, including automated reference checks that allow you to spend 60 seconds getting references instead of spending hours playing phone tag. If you’re ready to see what we can do for you, contact us today!

Sign-up today for a free trial. Receive 3 free credits. You may use these credits for Reference Checks or Pre-Interview Questionnaires, and of course, No Credit Card Required.

Gary Kirksey CEO – Hiringcue

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