The purpose of this article is to assist organizations to understand the importance of proper pre-screening before they hire a candidate. “An employer who hires any fool that comes along is only hurting everybody concerned” – Proverbs 26:10
Every industry, every sector and every organization that employs people needs to do proper pre-screening when it comes to recruiting employees.
Employee pre-screening should ideally be applied every time when an organization is recruiting.
What is Pre-screening?
Pre-employment screening is the process of assessing at face value, the applicant’s suitability for the vacant post. Typically, Pre-screening would entail assessing the applicants CVs against the advertised post, doing a short telephonic interview and inviting the shortlisted applicants over for an interview should the minimum requirements be met from matching the CV against the advertised post and the telephonic interviews.
Why is Pre-Screening Important?
It is said that “things don’t go wrong, they start wrong”. By ensuring that proper pre-screening is done before inviting the candidates through for interviews can assist the recruiter to avoid wasting time, doing interviews for candidates that clearly does not meet the minimum requirements of the post.
Examples of Pre-Screening
Pre-screening can be done online, for example, when posting a job advert, include links that let applicants answer the critical minimum requirements. Pre-screening can also be done telephonically. When doing a telephonic pre-screening discuss issues around salary expectations and use this opportunity to clarify items on the CV that you are unsure of that could have a bearing on the success of the candidate in that role
Tips and Reminders for Pre-Screening
When doing online pre-screenings, remember not to make the questions too length because looking for a job can be a full-time job and you wouldn’t want applicants bogged down with completing endless forms and questions. The applicants who are passively looking will most probably not be willing to spend hours completing online forms.
Employee Pre-screening forms part of the recruitment puzzle. Ensuring that you acquire the best talent for your organization. At NxusaHR we have recruitment packages to assist companies with their recruitment efforts to ensure that they recruit the best talent for their unique business needs that fit their organizational culture.
Please click here to request a free recruitment policy. Please browse our website for more information regarding the various recruitment tools that we have available.
Author: [Phumzile Msiza]
Publish Date: [6 August 2019]