Recruitment

Screening

If you are using the Recruitment Timeline Planner, you should have already allocated time on your calendar to complete screening the week of the posting period end date. Once your initial posting period has concluded, log into to your iCIMS portal and navigate to your Open Jobs and select the corresponding position.

Here you will be able to view your candidate pool and as you review each resume, select Advance or Reject option in the top right.

Hard Skills vs Soft Skills

Begin the process by identifying 3-5 of your most critical Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSAs) that are listed in the Job Description and fall under the category of hard skills. When screening applicants, hard skills represent the measurable and technical abilities required to do the job (e.g., years of experience, certificates, applicable skills like coding, accounting, etc).

Soft skills should not be used during the resume screening process, as they are the intangible personal traits and behaviors that dictate how a candidate works, collaborates, and navigates challenges in the workplace (e.g., communication, empathy, and adaptability). Soft skill evaluation will begin at the interview phase.

Simplify the Process

Grade each applicant on the same KSAs, and group them into 3 broad groups; not meeting qualification, meeting qualifications, or exceeding qualifications.

For those that clearly don’t meet qualifications, you can Reject them immediately and select the corresponding reason for rejection.

Depending on the size of your pool, you may want to preliminarily place candidates who meet and exceed qualifications into two buckets so that you can review further and narrow down the pool that you will move to 1st interviews. If your pool is small, then you can immediately select Advance and move them to 1st round interviews.

Screening Conversations

Scheduling 10- 30 minute screening conversations ahead of interview can be useful in ensuring that candidates meet basic requirements related to work hours, location, duration to start, and basic qualifications. This should not be treated as an interview or in lieu of an interview. This process helps to filter out mismatched candidates before time-intensive interviews with hiring managers and panels.

Tips

In the Advance selection, you have the ability to mark candidates as Decision Pending, which is a placeholder bucket until you make a final decision of whether or not to move them to interviews.

You can also move candidates to a PreScreen category from the Advance menu, where you can hold screening conversations prior to selecting for interviews.