Screening interviews: Essential for fair and effective recruitment

Technology built for hiring is a powerful tool that can streamline the candidate screening process and enhance efficiency in the hiring workflow. In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of automated solutions like SMS and on-demand interviewing to effectively screen candidates. 

Why conduct screening interviews?

Proper screening of candidates not only quickens your time-to-hire but also ensures you’re advancing the most qualified candidates through your hiring funnel. 

With the right tools in place you can ensure more efficient candidate selection by narrowing down a large pool of applicants to identify those who best match the job requirements—and unlock their potential in the process. In addition, through a proper assessment of skills and competencies, recruiters and hiring managers can assess a candidate’s ability to not only succeed today in a role but throughout tomorrow’s challenges as well. 

Types of screening tools

When you begin to audit your screening process what thoughts come to mind?

Email blackholes? Endless phone tag? Texting from your *personal* phone? Frustration? 

Without hiring technology designed to quickly and easily reach candidates where they are, you’re starting your whole workflow in the red. 

Provide recruiters with text recruiting software that allows them to easily text 1:1 or campaign messages to increase engagement, and speed up hiring—all while reaping the benefits of compliant software. 

With SMS, you’re able to text candidates pre-screening questions including: 

• Describe your previous work experience.
• When can you start? 
• What are your salary expectations? 

And when candidates can easily respond with a simple reply via text, you show them you value their time and respect them as people—not just employees. 

Data driven assessment with on-demand interviewing

On-demand interviewing is another great tool for screening candidates and finding who your high potential candidates are—before inviting them to a live interview. 

And with tools, like Builder, designed to create interview guides and templates for any role, you can ensure you’re evaluating based on the right criteria—and mitigate bias in the process by ensuring every candidate is asked the same questions. 

As a result, teams reap the benefits of saved time and increased insight. On-demand interviews streamline the hiring process by eliminating the need for extensive scheduling coordination. By conducting asynchronous interviews, they’ll save time for both candidates and hiring teams. Plus, screening candidates based on the proper criteria, based on role, allows teams to leverage AI-driven insights to make informed decisions. With stacked-ranking, teams can rely on science and data, instead of gut-instinct—which is frequently riddled with bias, even when it’s unconscious. 

Case study: Cathay Pacific 

Cathay Pacific receives over 300 applications a week for their customer service and flight attendant roles. Before implementing HireVue, hiring teams were relying on manual efforts like CV screening, phone screens, group interviews, and a final in-person interview. And with 30% no-show rates, it took months to fill roles. 

The airline turned to HireVue OnDemand interviewing to replace their phone screens. Those who pass the video interview are then invited to the office for the final round. They’ve not only streamlined their process by eliminating steps but created a data-driven hiring process that treats candidates with respect. As a result, Cathay Pacific has now reduced their hiring time from 3 months to 2-3 weeks.

Read the full case study here. 

Ready to abandon outdated phone screens and black hole email tag for data-driven insights? Confidently identify and prioritize top candidates fast with HireVue. Request a demo here.