How to Save Time with Pre-screening Questions!

Pre-screening Questions

Going through hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of resumes can be very time-consuming.  Being a human resource professional, there are many items on your to-do list and freeing up some time is always a plus.  That is where Pre-screening Questions can come in handy.

Here are a few ways to save time using pre-screening questions:

Location-based Pre-screening Questions:

Once you have a clear understanding of the job requirements you can easily set up pre-screening questions to bypass those candidates that don’t meet the job criteria.  For example, if your job is for a specific location, you might want to make that a pre-screening question.

“Are you able to work in the New York City office?”

or you can be extremely specific about the location

“Are you able to work 9:00 am – 5 pm EST in the office located on 23^rd Street and Madison Ave. in NYC?”

Answers to both questions can be set to “Yes” or “No” where “No” would be a knock out question.

Salary-based Pre-screening Questions:

Another pre-screening question that can save you a lot of time is to set up a yes or no question for a salary-related question.  (Please be aware of your state and local laws regarding salary questions – some states are no longer allowing salary-related questions).  If you are looking to hire someone for a job and know the salary cannot exceed $85,000, getting a clear understanding of salary expectations might be beneficial.  Consider creating a pre-screening question such as:

“The salary for this position is $75,000-$85,000.  Is this salary range acceptable to you?”

Where the answer provided is either “Yes” or “No” where “No” would be a knockout question:

Experience-based Pre-screening Questions:

Experience-based questions are another fitting example of pre-screening questions.

If you are looking for candidates with a minimum of 3 years’ experience as a C# developer, you could set up experienced-based questions with a range:

“How many years of C# development experience do you have?”

With the following ranges:

< 1-year

1 – 2 years

> 2-years

You can either set up a value for the ranges and/or set <1-year experience as a knockout question.

Having multiple pre-screening questions can save valuable time for a human resource professional in finding the top candidates and ultimately the right new employee. 

Try ApplicantStack for yourself and see just how easy setting up pre-screening questions are!

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