Pre-screening your job applicants is essential!
Although it’s best to keep your hiring process quite fluid, so that you can modify it over time, if you’re looking for some guidelines on virtual applicant screening, for assembling a high quality virtual squad, we have listed a 7-step process below that we have used in the real world to great effect.
We take you through the pre employment screening process with some typical responses from a position we advertised and filled.
1. List Your Ad
List your ad on some job sites that you like to use e.g. JobStreet.com. Remember to be as specific as possible with your job description and include a few questions that respondents need to answer for their application to be considered. This shows that they are paying attention to what’s required, which will be an important characteristic in the future.
2. Collect Resumes
Collect applications and resumes that people submit. We received 121 responses to our job posting, but this will vary with how specific you are in your ad, whether it’s a specialist task, or whether it’s a long-term position on offer. Ours was the latter.
3. Pre-screen Applicants And Send Off A Questionnaire
Pre-screening can start with discarding any applications that haven’t responded to the questions you asked. You will be looking for past experience and how well they have presented themselves in their cover letter. We chose 15 applicants that we sent questionnaires to, with a view to assessing communication skills and finding out a bit more about them and their salary expectations.
4. Collect Returned Questionnaires
We received 11 questionnaires back from the 15 that we sent out. When the questionnaires come back you can firstly eliminate any from applicants whose salary expectations are “off the chart”. Next, assess how well they have answered the questions and maybe narrow it down to 5 or 6 who you can give a trial to.
5. Assign Tasks And Set Up the Trial
The tasks you assign for the trial can be relatively simple and can be set either by your business or outsourced to a web site like Expertrating.com which will set and manage the task and allow you to see how each applicant fared. This is important in assessing the applicant’s real-world ability on a given task. It won’t tell you everything you need to know, but will give you a guideline to their capabilities. We assigned tasks to 5 applicants.
6. Conduct Interviews
The next step is to conduct Skype-style interviews with those who completed the task(s) the best. We gave interviews to 3 people and it’s an essential step to getting to know that person a little better.
7. Hire!
You’re all set to hire. We ended up hiring a permanent staff member who is still with us and someone who we kept on the virtual team bench, with the agreement that we would assign tasks to them if they were available and if any future opportunities came up they would be a candidate.
Learn more about how you can approach job applicant screening so that you can hire the best virtual team and virtual “squad”. Visit our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/theseomethod to watch some of our outsourcing tips.
Doing pre-screen is really important also to get rid of applicants who are applying without even fully understanding what the job requires of them. When I was in the call center before, there were applicants who reached the interview process only to find out that they will be answering calls and not answering emails if they get the job.
When asked, they told me that they know that they are going to apply in a call center, but they still tried their luck even if they are more comfortable in doing email support because they are thinking that they can bargain to be assigned in an email support instead. This is almost the same as the case of those ‘serial applicants’ who did not assess their skills before they submit their resumes.
There are many employers, and I’m talking here about those who are into the internet businesses, who are very lazy when it comes to screening their applicants. The end result is they get an employee who is a complete mismatch to the needs of the business. I am not saying that screening is perfect, but at least you have higher chances of hiring A-players.
Specific job descriptions are really helpful to both applicants and employers. The applicants would know right away if their skills are for the job or not. The employers on the other hand get to attract its targeted applicants…Great guideline looks accurate and helpful.
Sending online questionnaires to pre screen applicants works well to save time and energy in going through all these applications. After reviewing their answers, you can easily know who among these candidates have the best potential to work for you while keeping the rest of the applications on ‘active file’.