Article: What is the best medium to screen for candidates?

Talent Acquisition

What is the best medium to screen for candidates?

Screening for best candidates till date remains one of the biggest challenges for organizations. Learn what organizations can do to ensure zeroing down on the best candidate for the required role.
What is the best medium to screen for candidates?

Screening plays a vital role in the process of talent acquisition. Screening candidates is where an organization is vetting the candidates through various stages to ensure they are the right fit for the firm. 

Importance of screening in talent acquisition 

With almost three hundred applications being received for every role on an average, the selection for the right candidate who is fit for the role becomes a complicated process. A  larger targeted number of employees of an organization may result in a tremendous attrition rate.  To manually screen these applications for a person becomes a very time-consuming and tedious process, which we are still trying to figure a way to make the process efficient. 

The screening process for every organization is different, be it nationally or globally. The global process has different rules and regulations that one needs to follow. An organization handles different levels of people as per their ranks in the hierarchy. 

According to Nivedita Nanda, CHRO of Kaya,” For different levels and ranks the different levels of screening should be used. But most importantly, one should screen for people who fit in the culture of the organization.”  Screening or selection is an essential aspect of talent acquisition as. If you hire a wrong candidate, an organization might take three months to recognize the mistake costing the firm in terms of growth. For higher hierarchy, the duration increases by at least a year. 

Different levels of screening

As mentioned above, screening is an essential aspect of the entire process of hiring a candidate, but using the same screening process for every position in an organization can lead to mistakes and hiring misfits. Screening for every position should have a different approach to find the right candidate. You can use a performance-based approach that is not based on qualifications or academic achievements, which might be based on the premise of the candidate's past performance. 

Head- Talent Management of GroupM, Vandana Tilwani says, “The past performance of an individual is an indicator of what he and she are going to do in the future.” The interviews for performance approach can be and are very objective, and the line of questioning will be on those specific objectives. This approach has found to be valuable in terms of hiring a candidate, decreased the attrition rate, and increased the retention rate by 90%.

Screening for Mergers and Acquisition

Acquiring the company and screening the employees can be a tricky process. Some leaders might scrutinize people to get the best of the candidates through screening. The success of a merge depends on what kind of employees have been selected from the acquired company. The employees of the acquired company may not be allowed to leave as per the contract sometimes. 

An organization has to be very careful under the circumstances or else they might hit a deadlock. Taking over a global company can be more difficult in the situation mentioned above and challenging in terms of reading their culture and body language, which is why an organization should find the culture fit between the two companies. In this situation, getting into skill set analysis is waste as the employees have been working there and are skilled for the job. The best solution for this is to create a questionnaire where an organization can read the attitude of the employees of the acquired company and whether they will get along with the employees of the organization that is acquiring. 

How important is screening candidate on social media?

Screening candidates on social media can be subjective from an organization to an organization while some organizations may find it ethical and vital to see how the candidate they plan to hire has portrayed him or herself on social media or learn about the candidate's interests. Other firms might find it unethical and invading the candidate's personal space. At the same time, some companies screen candidates of higher rank in social settings by calling them for lunch or dinner as the more senior position requires a lot of interaction. 

Where is screening headed? Will human intervention be out of the picture?

Between candidates sending applications to HR and tech companies sending a mail about tools for solving the problems revolving around hiring, there is no winning. The technology will take over the unproductive process of talent acquisition, but a human will always be there to drive the process. However, in situations like mass hiring, organizations rely on AI. Further, even with AI, organizations are aware of the limitations of AI. The AI is incapable of screening for cultural fit candidates. And with depending on software and tools completely, an organization might miss on a great candidate for minute errors like grammatical mistakes. For the best results for this is to use humans and technology together. 

 

 

(This article is based on a Fireside chat on ‘Screening for success’ conducted during TAC 2019 by People Matters.)

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Topics: Talent Acquisition, #PMTAC

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