When it comes to cost-effective recruitment, candidate screening is possibly one of the most crucial ways to save time and money. It is also essential for ensuring you have the right person in the right job, that the person will fit in well with the ethos of your organisation and that they are the right instrument to help your business achieve its goals in the years to come.

At first glance, screening seems to take a lot of unnecessary time to complete. When handled by a recruitment specialist such as SOLOS Consultants, this is something the business doesn’t need to worry about. However, the time spent on screening should be considered an extremely good investment – as it can save an enormous amount of time and resources later on.

Screening helps you to discover things about a candidate that you simply can’t tell from a CV or an application, ensuring you only put as close to the perfect candidate as possible through to interview. This saves your panel time, and hopefully prevents you from having to go through the whole process again in a year’s time when it doesn’t work out with a new recruit.

So, what do you need to know?

Screening can be as in-depth as you need it to be, depending on the role and the importance you place on finding a candidate with the right attitude, professional goals and passion as well as skills and experience. It can involve:

• Psychometric testing. This is a kind of occupational testing that can determine a candidate’s compatibility with the company and its goals, as well as giving you a better insight into their personality
• PreVisor testing. A candidate can tell you what they perceive to be their strengths and weaknesses, but PreVisor tests can accurately identify them. They use various methods including simulations and situational judgement to evaluate suitability for particular job roles.
• Skills testing. If a candidate’s CV says they have a particular skill, then they should perform well in a test to prove it. Skills tests are particularly important in technical, IT and digital roles, for example.
• Detailed reference checking. This is a vital task that can end up taking the most time for employers, which is why most use recruitment specialists to handle it for them.

Will this approach put candidates off?

You will find that most candidates applying for positions in certain industries and at certain levels have come to expect screening and assessment before they actually sit before an interview panel. As long as the screening process is streamlined and candidates are informed of the benefits of screening – namely, that is saves them time as well as the employer – then it shouldn’t scare anyone off applying.

To find out more about candidate screening, either as an employer or an individual looking for a new role, get in touch with digital, IT and tech recruitment specialists SOLOS Consultants.

image courtesy of Master isolated images @ freedigitalphotos.net