Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire
How to Align Your Screening Process with Your Hiring Process

How to Align Your Screening Process with Your Hiring Process

The hiring process is an essential part of ensuring a strong future for your company. However, many hiring managers inadvertently overlook the importance of the screening process prior to beginning interviews. They simply see the screening portion as a necessary step to getting the hiring process moving, not realizing that it can be a crucial tool to making the entire experience streamlined. To verify that your screening methods are perpetuating an effective hiring process, take these necessary steps:

Set standards and values for your business

Before you hire any new employees, your management team needs to get together and establish what exactly you’re looking for in these new hires. What kinds of traits would the ideal employee have? What do you want the business to accomplish in the future? Cementing this and making sure that everyone is on the same page allows you to make smart hiring choices so you’re not talking to candidates who simply aren’t a good fit.

Establish priorities

No candidate is perfect, so you’ll need to determine what traits are the most important for your company at this time. Do you need the candidate to have a particular degree or certification? Are you looking for a certain personality type? Focus on three or four traits that are essential for your employee’s success, and then think of the others as an added bonus. If you spend your time searching for a potential employee who’s absolutely perfect, your hiring process will drag on and on.

Set a timeline

Prior to beginning the hiring process, those involved with recruiting talent should establish a timeline and make it a point to stick to these deadlines. Without a timeline, the hiring process can begin to drag on for far too long, putting a strain on both management and those who are interviewing. Another negative of a lengthy hiring process: you may lose talented candidates as they get offers from other companies that are able to act faster.

Finding out about a candidate’s past experiences and personality matters, but to ensure a good long-term fit, you want to make the discussion a bit deeper. Incorporating talks about how the potential employee’s values line up with the business’s priorities is a helpful part of the hiring process. Many companies find that listing their values or vision right on the company website and then discussing these points during an interview allows them to get a better sense of how this individual would fit into the organization.

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Lauren Levine

Lauren Levine is a copywriter/blogger who contributes to a number of magazines and websites including The Frisky, USA Today, and others. She also authors her own blog called Life with Lauren. She loves cooking, anything on the E! network, and is trying to convince herself that running isn't so bad.