How to improve your candidate screening process

In a recent report on recruitment trends, 45% of HR decision makers will be prioritising improving their quality of hire in 2025. This indicates that there could be a bigger focus on the efficiency of screening candidates and recruiting the right talent, as the screening process can have significant implications for your recruitment.

Screening your candidates takes skill, but you also need a good foundation to start with. In fact, there are a lot of tools that can assist you in making the right decisions when hiring top talent. Having a solid screening process can also help with improving your candidate experience and employer brand.

We’ve compiled a list of tips and tricks below that can help you improve your screening process!

Creating a good foundation

For successful screening, there’s work that needs to be done even before your candidates begin to apply. Having a good foundation will make your job easier going forwards.

Ensure the job description is clear and concise

As we mentioned before, a lot of the work should take place before the job even goes live. A well-written job description is essential in helping ensure your screening process is more successful. If the job description is clear and concise, this will make sure the right applicants are applying from the get-go. 

Have clearly defined responsibilities and must-haves. Avoid being too broad or including information that might confuse qualified candidates and discourage them from applying.

Use templates for job descriptions

Consistency is key for job descriptions. Use templates to ensure that the information and tone of voice is consistent across all your roles. This makes it easier for your candidates to understand the expectations as well as your internal team to know what they’re looking for.

Having standardized templates for your job roles also means saving time going forwards. You'd only need to adapt certain elements, but keep things like tone of voice and employer brand the same throughout.

Customize your hiring flow

Every role is unique, so having a hiring flow that's customizable means you can tailor the needs of the role to your process. This goes back to setting yourself up for success and creating a good foundation.

You can decide how many stages you'd like for each role and tailor them to the role itself. For example, if you're hiring for a designer, you could include a portfolio review stage. Or a case study stage for a sales role. Having your hiring flow tailored and set up beforehand will make the overall process a lot faster.

This will ensure that you and your hiring managers are already prepared for what screening stages are necessary. This also improves candidate experience as you can share the entire process with your candidates beforehand.

Screening tools for your recruitment process

Automate your hiring flow

It can be frustrating to go through every application, only to realise there’s something that disqualifies the candidate that you’d requested in the job description. For example, if someone without a drivers license applies to a job that requires one, but you didn’t realise until you’d already gone through the application. This wastes not only the recruiter’s time but the job seeker’s as well.

Automated triggers can help streamline this part of the candidate screening process. For instance, having questions in the application process that will filter out those potential candidates.

In this case, asking whether the candidate has a drivers license or not. If they answer ‘no’, then your ATS can automatically reject those candidates based on the answer. This will save you huge amounts of time and make sure you’re only advancing the most qualified candidates.

Anonymizing your hiring

Bias can still be present the recruitment process, so we must be intentional with our efforts to reduce it. Anonymizing candidate data in the initial stages ensures that you're only focusing on important things like skills and experience.

Some applicant tracking systems will have this ability within the system. By removing things like names, addresses or profile pictures, you prevent assumptions related to gender, age, or ethnicity. This fosters a more objective screening process.

Suggest existing candidates

AI in recruitment is quickly becoming essential for many organizations. AI can help to simplify processes and save time on manual tasks. Some applicant tracking systems have implemented AI features to help with things like drafting job descriptions and sending emails to keep up candidate communication.

There are a lot of areas where AI can be of help in your recruitment. Your database is likely full of candidates who weren’t right for a certain position, but they could be perfect for another role.

When you go live with a position, your ATS can then use AI to suggest a number of suitable candidates from your existing talent pool who would suit the role. This saves you a huge amount of time and means you wouldn’t have to solely rely on new applicants.

To learn more on how AI can help suggest candidates, click here.

Use recruitment metrics

Tracking certain data and metrics within your ATS can help set you up for success in the long-run. Metrics like time-to-hire and quality of hire (QoH) are essential for refining your screening process. 

Generating reports can help you identify bottlenecks, areas of improvement, but also areas to focus on. For example, you might notice that your most qualified candidates or candidates with the lowest time-to-hire are coming from a certain source. You can then invest more in those channels to ensure more qualified candidates apply, making your screening process much more efficient.

Attract passive candidates

Having a way for passive candidates to show interest in your company can be a game changer for your recruitment. Perhaps there isn't a current role on your career site that's interesting to a potential candidate. That doesn't mean one won't become available in the future, especially if they're interested in working for your company.

A feature on your career site which allows candidates to show interest in upcoming roles in certain departments can help build your talent pool. You can ask them to upload their CV and answer pre-determined questions. This way, you can already get an idea of their experience and what they're like.

When the time comes to fill a role, you'll already have a pool of candidates you already know are qualified to choose from. This significantly reducing your screening time and streamlines your recruitment process.

Takeaways

Screening your candidates is an important part of the overall recruitment process. If done successfully, it can have positive consequences for your organization as a whole. Having a good foundation before you begin is a great recipe for success. A good foundation will save you time, money and make the overall screening process much easier.

Another way to set yourself up for success is to automate your process. Using tools and automations wherever you can will cut down your time-to-hire and streamline your screening. If you'd like to explore how Teamtailor can help you screen your candidates, click below!