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How to Shortlist the Right Candidate for Your Project

Human Resources November 15, 2022




How to Shortlist the Right Candidate for Your Project

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Talent acquisition is a work of art; doing it right will build an operational organization. 

A typical job opening attracts an average of 250 resumes, but only 2% get an invitation to interview. It is challenging to match your company’s requirements with candidates’ abilities. 

Shortlisting skilled candidates is challenging and incredibly time-consuming. You may have to refer to specific profiles in the future. With an easier and quicker way to shortlist qualified candidates, you can: 

  • Reduce time-to-hire – top candidates will be less likely to have accepted another position before you offer. 
  • Spend more time on qualified candidates and spend less time sifting through more profiles and resumes. 
  • Expend fewer resources on unqualified candidates during the interview process. 

In this article, let’s briefly discuss the process for faster talent acquisition.

1. Develop criteria to shortlist candidates

You must create criteria to decide which applicants qualify for the shortlist, encapsulating the essential and ‘desirable’ skills, traits, and qualifications for the role, for two reasons: 

  1. Include it in the job description to help candidates help you make your job easier. 
  2. Know what you were looking for before looking at available candidates. 

Your shortlist criteria must be based on qualities and traits of top-performing employees you have currently in the same or similar roles. 

When you use criteria correlating with job performance and the needs of the specific role, it is unlikely you will be accused of discrimination based on factors prohibited by law.

2. Use a shortlist matrix

A shortlist matrix can be used as a scorecard to track each candidate’s pertinent details. It serves two purposes 

  1. It helps apply the criteria consistently across the candidate list.
  2. It tracks applicants and ranks them while they move through the screening process.

3. Determine the limit for the list

On average, 75% of applicants are unqualified, and 88% do not move forward to the interview phase. So, you must have the maximum number of strong candidates to pass the screening process. 

Recruiting benchmarks suggest that the average applications to interview conversion rate is 12%, and the interview to offer conversion rate is 17%. Out of this, only one candidate will accept the offer if your talent acquisition process goes well. 

However, the number of candidates on your shortlist may change during high-volume talent acquisition events for which talent intelligence platforms may come in handy more than a shortlist matrix. 

Assessing and Shortlisting Candidates Efficiently 

Talent acquisition teams can access essential skills with skill assessment tools with carefully designed questions and tasks. 

Some assessment platforms have an assessment library with templates that talent acquisition teams can use to assess candidates for various roles. They can draw questions to create assessments. 

Some recruiters prefer using artificial intelligence-based skills testing platforms to score candidates and resume screening to predict someone’s performance in a role. Candidates, too, will get a chance to show their skill sets in an easy-to-use environment. 

Considering there are more candidates today than before, with 250 applications on average, there are talent intelligence platforms that allow you to search for individuals using keywords and then match your search for particular skill sets. 

These platforms can automate part of your screening process and display candidate profiles in an easy-to-read format. Talent acquisition teams are challenged to foster diversity while adding candidates with desired criteria to their shortlist. 

That’s why they use talent intelligence platform like Draup to look for candidates and match their company’s requirements for skills with that of the candidate. 

Draup lets you shortlist candidates in one click with its Chrome extension when you come across a desirable profile on LinkedIn. 

The Chrome extension lets you: 

  1. Save and shortlist relevant LinkedIn profiles. 
  2. Know the candidates’ skills, education, and contact information. 
  3. Add relevant LinkedIn profiles to your Draup project. 
  4. Shortlist candidates directly. 

Global enterprises trust Draup to receive in-depth candidate information and assess talent attributes.

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