Any good interview process consists of several steps. Similar to a sales funnel, the goal of the hiring process is to narrow down all of the available candidates for your position into the person best fit for your company. The pre-screening interview is a critical first step to narrow down your candidate pool.
What is a pre-screening interview?
The pre-screening interview consists of a series of questions that you ask a candidate in order to quickly determine whether or not they are the right fit for your position. These questions are generally aimed at determining whether or not the candidate meets the minimum requirements for your job. Pre-screening interviews generally occur before any on-site interviews. The pre-screening interview will help you to invite the candidates most likely to succeed in your on-site interviews.
A good pre-screening process compares candidates based upon their experience and qualifications only. In an ideal pre-screening interview process all candidates in your pipeline will be asked the same set of questions. Each interview should be evaluated by the members of your team best suited to determining whether the responses match up with the requirements of the open position.
How to conduct a pre-screening interview
Pre-screening interviews are generally conducted either via a telephone call or web form.
Web form pre-screening interviews result in maximum flexibility for your candidates. These forms can be complete outside of business hours and submitted to be reviewed by your company at your leisure. The downside of a web pre-screening interview is that the candidate may copy their answers from other sources and use them as their own. Web pre-screening interviews are best used when the questions you are asking are more about the candidate themselves, rather than about specific job requirements.
Phone pre-screening interviews are useful because they allow your reviewers to see how the candidate reacts to questions on their feet. Candidates do not have the opportunity to research answers to the pre-screening questions during a telephone interview. Phone pre-screening interviews require that your reviewers and candidates are available at the same time. Due to scheduling constraints, phone pre-screening interviews are usually held during business hours. The requirement to complete the interview during business hours may result in a longer hiring cycle if schedules conflict.
Automating the Pre-screening interview
The best of both worlds is a pre-screening solution that allows your candidates and reviewers to complete the pre-screening process on their own time. Automated phone screening is similar to a web-form in that candidates can complete the interview after hours or on weekends. At the same time, because responses are recorded, reviewers get to hear candidates react to questions without time to research answers.
Automated pre-screening interviews have the added benefit of allowing your team to have multiple reviewers all review the interview at different times. These reviewers can review the interview without knowledge of the candidate and provide immediate feedback to the hiring manager on whether or not to move the candidate forward in the process.
It is easy to see how adding a pre-screening interview step to your hiring process can result in higher quality candidates in on-site interviews. If you’d like to automate your pre-screening interview process and start hiring better candidates, check out our automated pre-screening tool, SpokenHire.