3 Tips to Screen Candidates Quickly and Efficiently at High Volume

Sometimes finding people interested in an open position at your office can be a slow and tedious process. Not enough people apply, and you scramble to get the word out there to let every potential candidate hear of the opportunity. However, the opposite can be equally true. When people are desperately seeking employment, there is a surge of applications requiring rapid screening to determine who is worth employing.

When dealing with this high volume, finding ways to go through the different applications at a reasonable pace becomes vital. Fortunately, a few techniques can be extremely useful in helping you find an ideal candidate promptly.

If you ever find yourself needing to screen candidates quickly but efficiently at a high volume, you'll want to know these tips to assist with the process.

Tip #1: Cover Letters

Now, the idea of having to keep an eye out for and read through a cover letter probably seems counter-intuitive. After all, reading through an entire letter explaining the candidate's reasoning for thinking they qualify is not something done quickly. However, a cover letter can still serve as a valuable indication of a candidate's worth without even reading through it.

Essentially, if you receive an application with an attached cover letter, it can serve as valuable insight into the applicant's level of thought and consideration in their application. By composing a cover letter, it shows how committed they are to gaining employment with your firm and helps to offer additional context when it comes to the content of their résumés.

While it is not a perfect screening method, it might help to slim down the number of applications you wind up going through by limiting your efforts to the applicants who included a cover letter in their application.

Tip #2: Certifications

Another decent method to use when screening an applicant is taking a quick look at their résumé with the specific goal of checking for certifications. A vast number of professions have supplementary certifications that help employees establish new skills.

Such certifications are especially prevalent in the IT world, where the technical skills needed to succeed are ever-changing and evolving. When an application comes in, it can be highly beneficial to scan through the résumé for these certifications to see if the applicant has gone the extra mile to enhance their skill set. If nothing else, it can help screen which applicants have the additional skills you might need to round out the edges of your office.

Tip #3: Instructions in Listings

This particular technique is a pre-emptive screening method that requires you to make the job listings you post oriented towards screening out applicants. Specifically, you can place special instructions in the job listing you post to see how well an applicant can follow instructions in general.

Suppose you were to place a listing on an online job listing site such as Indeed or LinkedIn. In that case, you could add a sentence halfway through the listing, instructing any applicants to include something specific in their résumé or cover letter. By doing so, you see how much attention to detail the applicant paid when considering the position and if they follow through.

For example, telling them to add a specific word to the beginning of their cover letter shows that they both read through the posting and that they can follow instructions.

This method allows you to quickly check their applications for this specific task and see if they completed it. If they did, they are worth evaluating in full. If they did not, you might want to re-focus your efforts on those who did.

Take the Leap

If, after all this, you find that you still lack the time you need to thoroughly evaluate applicants for a position, we can help. Here at Bear Staffing, we specialize in helping find qualified individuals to fill the roles you need. We will screen them for you and pass along the best résumés for the job because this bear has no fluff, just results. So, contact us today and see how we can help add to your pack.