According to a recent report by the Society of Human Resources Management, 53% of all job applications contain inaccurate information. Pre-screening employees not only helps you weed out those who exaggerate on their applications, it also helps you get a better sense of candidates’ skillsets, character, attitude, and overall personality. These are just a few of the many benefits pre-screening imparts on the recruiting process. If your company isn’t pre-screening candidates, it may be time to start.
Here are some of the reasons why you should try pre-screening.
Reduce Recruiting Time. When you pre-screen candidates, it reduces the amount of time it takes to hire a new person—from scheduling interviews and preparing questions to blocking out the time to actually meet with candidates. A phone interview as part of your pre-screening process takes substantially less time than having someone coming in for a one-on-one interview. By pre-screening, you’ll weed out candidates that don’t fit the profile so you can make sure you only interview the most qualified candidates face-to-face.
Make Fewer Hiring Mistakes. Have you ever hired someone only to find out soon after that you made a mistake? These kinds of errors can be costly in terms of time and productivity as well as money. Pre-screening candidates helps reduce hiring mistakes that can be difficult to undo once someone is on board.
Decreases Staff Turnover Rates. One of the biggest issues that plague Human Resources is high employee turnover. According to ASTD.org it costs an employer $5,500 to replace an hourly employee who makes $8 an hour. Hiring the right person the first time will greatly reduce the amount of turnover at your company, and its accompanying costs.
Improve Hiring Precision. When you’re going through the recruiting process, it’s important to focus your time on candidates who don’t just fit the job requirements, but also offer something no other candidate does. Improving your hiring precision with pre-screening tools allows you to understand a candidate even better than you can through only a face-to-face interview. You’ll see areas of strength and weakness in a controlled setting with quantifiable results, so you’ll be able to compare candidates across the board.
The recruiting process can sometimes take weeks or even months to complete. Pre-screening tools can help you cut that time down significantly, while providing benefits across the board that result in a better hire. So, next time you’re hiring, take a look at the variety of pre-screening options available, from pre-employment assessments to video chat interviews, to get the optimal results from your recruiting process in the most efficient way possible, and a deeper understanding of a candidate before you make that job offer.
Hiring employees is only the first step on the way to building a strong and engaged workforce. Employee retention is critical to a successful business, since you cannot achieve your goals without experienced and qualified staff. Retaining the best talent is a real challenge today, and one that requires a complex and careful approach.
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4 Comments
Pre-employment testing may be a good tool for employers, but it puts potential employees in a very stressfull situation. Some very talented people become nervous and do unreasonable mistakes when they see a countdown at the top of the screen.
I think that pre-screening testing represents a valuable alternative to pre-screening interviews. Moreover, it’s one of not so many ways to check professional skills of candidates. They do make recruiters’ lives easier.
The only drawback I can think of pre-screening testing is that you can’t be 100% sure that your candidate passed the test him/herself without any help. Isn’t it possible that a candidate asked somebody to take a test for him/her?
Well, there’s an exception to every rule and there really can be people who could try to trick the system. All-in-all pre-screening is still a win-win situation both for an employer and a candidate, because they don’t waste their time and money on multiple interviews.