3 Tips to Reduce Time Spent on Candidate Shortlisting & Selection for SMBs
Applications per job ad continue to rise, shifting the job market further from a candidate-driven market to an employer-driven market. If, like most HR professionals, you’re dealing with more applications than you can handle, here are 3 tips to streamline your shortlisting & selection process, so that you can: save significant time achieve better hiring outcomes ensure a positive candidate experience, and enhance your employer brand. Shortlisting & Selection can be a particularly time-consuming part of an internal recruiter’s role. This is especially the case when you have a high volume of applications, and you need to evaluate potentially hundreds of candidates against role requirements. Here are three tips to help you speed up your shortlisting & selection process and how Scout Talent can support your efforts (for less than what you might think!). 1. Implement AI-Powered Screening Tools Competition for roles at the moment is extremely high, with applications per job ad rising 3% in May 2024 (source: SEEK). At Scout Talent, we have clients who are receiving over 200 applications for a single role! Sorting through this volume of applications can be overwhelming without the right tools and resources in place. This is where AI-powered candidate screening tools can help, like Scout Talent’s AI Screen. AI screening tools have revolutionised shortlisting & selection. They can summarise hundreds of applications in seconds and quickly identify top candidates whose skills and experience align with the job criteria. Not only does this save a significant amount of time, but it also enhances hiring outcomes and reduces human bias. These tools continuously learn and adapt, refining their processes to meet evolving organisational needs. By quickly identifying unqualified candidates, internal recruiters can focus their time on progressing the most promising candidates. Scout Talent’s AI Screen helps internal hiring teams quickly evaluate a large number of applications, ensuring a more efficient and effective shortlisting & selection process. AI Screen is available to add onto Scout Talent’s lite ATS (:Recruit Essentials) for a total cost of just $450 per month. Or, when you run a recruitment campaign with Scout Talent, we’ll include 12 months of access to :Recruit Essentials, making access to AI Screen even more affordable at only $300 per month. Reach out to the Scout Talent team today if you’d like to find out more. 2. Automate Candidate Communication and Interview Scheduling Communicating with candidates and scheduling interviews is another time-consuming aspect of shortlisting & selection. In fact, it is estimated that these activities account for over 40% of an internal recruiter’s role. Tools that automate this part of the recruitment process, like an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), can significantly reduce the time spent on candidate shortlisting & selection. Here are three ways to use your ATS to reduce time spent on shortlisting & selection: Set up automated communications for different stages of the recruitment process. For example, an email or text message to acknowledge a candidate’s application, an update if their application has progressed to the next stage, or unsuccessful feedback if they haven’t been selected. Auto-assign candidate statuses based on responses to application screening questions. For example, a very simple screening question might ask if a candidate has an open drivers licence. If this is a key requirement of the role, you can configure your ATS to mark anyone who answers ‘no’ as ‘unsuccessful’ and automate subsequent communications. Use scheduling tools that allow candidates to book interview slots that suit their availability. This eliminates the back-and-forth communication typically involved in setting up interviews and helps to prevent scheduling conflicts and errors. Investing in recruitment software like an ATS can be out of reach for many SMBs. But with Scout Talent :Recruit Essentials, you can have a fully implemented system and achieve incredible ROI using features such as those listed above for an affordable investment of $1800 per year. That’s only $150 per month! Or, if you run a recruitment campaign with Scout Talent, we’ll include 12-month access to :Recruit Essentials for no additional cost. 3. Leverage Expert Shortlisting & Selection Services Shortlisting & selecting the right candidates from a pool of applications is often cited as the most challenging part of recruitment. As mentioned above, we’re currently seeing hundreds of applicants apply for some roles. Reviewing this volume of applications can be a significant drain on resources, and partnering with an outsourced shortlisting & selection specialist can make a substantial difference. Examples of expert shortlisting & selection services that Scout Talent offers include: Shortlisting & Selection: Our specialists can act as an extension of your team, completing tasks such as rating and ranking candidates against job criteria, conducting first-round video interviews, scheduling second-round interviews, running necessary checks and tests, and more. Group Interviews: Our Shortlisting & Selection Specialists are experts at delivering customised Group Interview and Information Days (GIIDs). These are perfect for roles with high numbers of applications. A GIID will help you uncover top talent through a range of activities, games, and tests. Anyone can run activities or interviews, but it’s the design of the activities and interviews that is pivotal, and this is where it’s best to get a specialist involved. Having a specialist facilitate the day gives hiring managers the opportunity to observe candidates for a range of relevant behaviours. With experts designing your GIID to uncover relevant behaviours (and running it on your behalf), you’ll be able to focus on reading candidate behaviour. That is, instead of being preoccupied with the administration of the day. Skills and Behavioural Testing: Internal HR professionals often partner with Scout Talent to act as an extension of their team to distribute skills and behavioural tests to candidates efficiently. Our Shortlisting & Selection Specialists are trained to interpret the sometimes ambiguous language appearing in skills and behavioural test reports (which can be up to 40 pages long!). For example, ‘dominating,’ ‘analytical’, and ‘social’ can differ depending on the industry. It’s these nuances that can mean the difference between a behavioural fit and a poor choice. Our Shortlisting & Selection specialists
9 interview questions to recruit high-performers
Kirk Peterson, Managing Director for Performance Shift, a corporate training and consulting business focused on helping leaders and teams reach their full potential, shares the best interview questions to recruit high-performers. Many of us want to recruit the best possible candidates – the High Performers. As Steve Jobs said, “go after the cream of the cream. A small team of A-players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.” But you need the correct criteria and to ask the right questions to be able to identify high performers, the A-players Steve Jobs refers to. Having worked within, led and trained many high-performing teams, here’s my outline to attract, select and retain high performers and interview questions to recruit high-performers. Identifying high-performing people Below are three key traits that I believe are the identifiers of a high performing person. Assessing these will enable you to readily determine a high performer. Emotional Intelligence – Motivation and Desire Emotional intelligence consists of the following: Motivation and the desire to improve Self-awareness Self-regulation Empathy Social Skills People with high emotional intelligence will be in full control of their emotions, calm in a crisis, and will make decisions sensitively while reading the emotions of others. Their can-do attitude can bolster morale in other team members. Grit Grit can be measured by passion and perseverance. These may be the building blocks but grit is more than the sum of its parts. People with grit are goal-oriented, purpose-driven and will do whatever it takes to achieve. This is where effort counts as much as talent as someone with grit refuses to quit. Does a person stick to their long-term goals or are they distracted by new ideas and projects? If a person is too easily distracted, they won’t become a high performer. Resilience This consists of: Wellbeing- mental and physical Recovery Ability to Bounce Back A resilient person will be one who when faced with a setback or negative outcome, will recognize it, learn from it and quickly move on. They will recognize the importance of movement, nutrition and sleep and act accordingly to maintain their physical and mental health. Using the above as a baseline we can compile a list of interview questions that will enable us to recognize these characteristics in a candidate. 9 Interview questions to recruit high-performers What are your motivations and purpose in your job? What feedback has been given to you that has surprised you? What have you done when you’ve been given poor feedback? Give an example of when you have displayed empathy. How do you build rapport with your team members? What are you passionate about? Give an example when you have displayed perseverance? When did you bounce back from a negative situation and how long did this take you? What physical activity do you do and how much sleep would you get on average, each night? By asking these nine interview questions to recruit high-performers, you’ll get a great understanding as to whether a candidate has the characteristics that you’re looking for. You can glean some valuable insights about a candidate’s attitude, work ethic, tenacity, and sense of teamwork – all of which are key drivers in high performance. Ask for multiple examples in your interview, using the questions above. Many candidates can come up with one example to answer your question. High performers will come up with several. This will also eliminate candidates who may have practised or rehearsed their answers. It’s also important to appreciate that salary is not the sole driver for top performers at work. During your interviews, connect with them to find out what their drivers are. This could include flexible work hours or working on innovative projects. Show them how your organization can fuel their growth – they want to be challenged and motivated and will have a growth mindset – so this will be important to them. High performers are always in demand, so you need to sell them on your organization in the interview. Asking about these drivers will also deliver key information for the next stage – retention. Once you have successfully recruited a high performer, the next challenge is to then retain them. High performers will add value to your organization, but it is important to know how to effectively manage them. For support with any part of your recruitment process, please feel free to reach out to us via email at hello@scouttalent.io.
Eliminate the guesswork when hiring using pre-employment testing
In a market where being indecisive costs you candidates, it is hard to find the right balance between doing your due diligence and acting fast to secure great talent. Considering that it costs on average six to nine months of an employee’s annual salary to replace them, making a bad hire is a scary thought for modern recruiters. Pre-employment testing is often used as an extra step in the talent acquisition process to give internal recruitment teams the assurance that an individual will go the distance. This is particularly important when you consider that 20% of new hires resign within the first 45 days. Reference checking and interviews aren’t enough Busy recruitment professionals might wonder: “Why do I need to go to the effort of testing applicants when I already do interviews and check references?” Interviews are here to stay, and for good reason. Interviews allow you to discuss a candidate’s experience, and get an idea of their personality. However, interviews give little insight into how an individual might act when faced with certain situations. It is natural for an interviewee to only show their ‘best self’ during an interview, so getting an idea of how they would act in certain situations can be challenging. Reference checks also have their limitations. Although giving a bad reference is legal in Canada, unlike in some other countries, often the information you get from a candidate’s references is limited. Sometimes that an employer is simply trying to wash their hands of an employee or may not want the potential repercussions of giving a negative reference. Why pre-employment testing is especially important in customer-facing industries. For office-based roles with limited customer interactions, interviews might be enough to determine someone’s suitability. During interviews, you can see how someone behaves in a corporate setting and interacts with co-workers. Interviews alone are less effective when recruiting for customer-facing roles. When dealing with the general public, employees meet new people from all walks of life every day. They will be faced with more challenges and be required to provide a level of service and courtesy that back-of-house staff often don’t. Consider the healthcare industry: employees in this industry are faced with challenging situations daily, and are expected to be empathetic, resilient, and good communicators. To simply interview a candidate in the healthcare industry, and not administer pre-employment tests, you run the risk of having no idea how the individual will react in certain situations. Similarly, consider the hospitality industry. Employers in the hospitality industry, employers might want to identify employees who thrive in high-pressure environments. Candidates who can maintain a high level of service when faced with a challenging customer are equally desirable. Customer-facing roles require a specific set of skills that are hard to identify during traditional methods of assessment, such as interviews. However, there are specific types of testing that can help employers to find that ‘needle in a haystack’ employee. What types of testing can I do? Skills testing This type of testing measures a candidate’s specific skills. Skills testing is important in industries such as healthcare, where a lack of skills can have significant consequences. Scout Talent offer Talengent skills tests as part of our Talent Engagement service. Great for: the healthcare industry Behavioral testing A behavioral assessment is a pre-employment test that evaluates how an individual might behave in specific situations. This type of test is useful when hiring for a custom service role, where there are high expectations for behavior, even in difficult situations. An example of a behavioral test is McQuaigs Word Survey, which Scout Talent offer as part of our Talent Engagement service. Great for: the retail and hospitality industries Motivation testing While being having specific skills is important, it can be useful to understand what motivates a candidate to pursue a specific job. While skills can be taught, motivation and preferences are innate characteristics that don’t generally change significantly over time. Scout Talent’s partner, Prevue, offer comprehensive testing that will reveal if a candidate’s interests and preferences align with what your organization is offering. Great for: the not-for-profit industry Benchmarking Many pre-employment tests are generic, and assess a candidate’s skills or behaviors without considering the role in question. By assessing the characteristics of top-performing employees already working in your organization, you can create a profile of the ideal candidate for a role. Having this benchmark, allows you to administer tests and draw comparisons between current employees who already excel in the job. Scout Talent’s partner, Prevue, have a unique benchmarking service that allows you to compare your candidates with your existing A-players. Great for: sales teams Adding a step to your recruitment process doesn’t have to cost you time. Although internal recruitment and HR teams are often under pressure to reduce their time to hire, it’s hard to argue against the benefits of pre-employment testing. Fortunately, there are several ways to counteract the additional time spent testing candidates. Check out Scout Talent’s resources below to learn more. Free Guide: ‘5 Communication Hacks to Speed Up Your Recruitment Process’ On-Demand Webinar: ‘5 Things You Can Do To Significantly Reduce Your Time-To-Hire’
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An innovative way to land multiple higher-quality candidates and recruit efficiently is through a group information and interview session (GIIS). Learn why you should have a GIIS in your talent acquisition process.
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Introducing our new talent engagement product structure, encompassing our most valuable shortlisting & selection solutions.
