How Do Recruiters Balance Speed With Thorough Candidate Vetting?
Recruitment Interviews
How Do Recruiters Balance Speed With Thorough Candidate Vetting?
In the fast-paced world of recruitment, balancing speed with thorough candidate vetting is crucial. We've gathered insights from Founders and CEOs, who are deeply involved in the hiring process. From optimizing pre-screening with tech tools to leveraging ATS for both speed and verification, discover their strategies in our compilation of four expert answers.
- Optimize Pre-Screening with Tech Tools
- Trust in Network-Based Sourcing
- Automate Initial Candidate Assessments
- Leverage ATS for Speed and Verification
Optimize Pre-Screening with Tech Tools
Balancing the need and time sensitivity to recruit candidates demands optimal planning skills to leverage resources in an organized fashion. Pre-screening measures, at a minimum, can take place over the phone, Zoom, or even interviewing apps like HireVue, SparkHire, or VidCruiter. These apps have evolved in their operational efficiency over the recent years and can help you shortlist candidates after they record their audio and video responses to specific questions that align with the vacant requisition.
Candidates are granted a fixed deadline by when to respond for the pre-screening. This can help cut recruiting backlogs by a sufficient amount of time, permitting the recruiter to focus on the next steps or filling multiple open roles. If additional steps require additional interview rounds using an app or a skills assessment, these prerequisites can be addressed within a matter of three to five business days prior to scheduling any final interview.
Also, there are skills assessment tests that can be done offline without any supervision; as well, some of these tests need to be performed in front of a real-time camera using a candidate link that tracks your progress and presence, ensuring you're not using any unauthorized tools to complete the assigned tasks. Candidates may require a panel interview or multiple rounds due to the nature of the role before a job offer is extended. It's possible to close the recruiting cycle for a role from initiation to extending an offer within a two- to three-week time period. Some organizations take longer, within a period of three to nine weeks, which is contingent upon the availability of the candidates and the members who are interviewing and reviewing these job candidates.
Trust in Network-Based Sourcing
The key to balancing speed and vetting in recruitment is trust. If I didn't believe wholeheartedly in the judgment of my associates, I'd be unable to get anything done.
While a thorough vetting is always required, sourcing through my network means I never have to worry that I'm moving forward on a candidate with a questionable history—my links simply wouldn't pass such a person on.
Sometimes it's necessary to go outside my network to find a candidate, and whenever I do, I notice how much longer it takes to validate their history. If I didn't have such a broad circle, and was forced to do more cold sourcing like this, timing would be a real issue.
Automate Initial Candidate Assessments
A lot of our recruitment process happens without a recruiter being involved at first. We use a tool that allows candidates to take tests and answer specific questions through a video response. This method enables us to quickly assess a wide range of candidates based on their skills and how they handle certain situations.
After this initial screening, only the candidates who meet our criteria move to the next stage. This might involve interviews or further assessments. By doing it this way, we save time in the early stages of hiring. We still get a good sense of who the candidates are and their abilities, which helps us make sure we're choosing the right people to join our team.
Leverage ATS for Speed and Verification
When building Teamdash recruitment software, we have always acted on the fact that speed in recruitment is a must in today's labor market. Companies looking to hire top talent can't miss out on great candidates by lagging behind the competition.
That being said, especially in high-volume roles, it is important to run the checks and ensure that the candidates have not provided any information in their CVs that is untrue or misleading. That's when a modern ATS like Teamdash helps avoid unnecessary compromises.
The ATS does the initial parsing, highlighting candidates who match the keywords you're after, provides AI-powered summaries, and also helps schedule interviews or send out emails or text messages directly from the software. That saves up to 70% of the time that can be used to vet the candidates, run background checks, or interview the candidates. Teamdash users have also found asynchronous interviews to be especially useful for screening purposes.
