You need to put your candidates through a screening step before the interview stages. 

This is done so that they meet the minimum requirements for the role, saving your time from interviewing unqualified candidates in-person.

Pre-screening interviews are frequently used by employers, and adding them to your hiring process can have a major positive effect. 

What is screening?

Before conducting a thorough interview, you can gather some basic qualification details about the candidates during a pre-screening interview, often known as a pre-employment screening. 

Screening usually includes basic questions about a candidate's professional goals or ambitions, basic questions about skills and competencies, and any career preferences. A basic skills exam can also be used as a pre-screening question to weed out unqualified candidates before spending too much time interviewing them.

Screenings are an excellent technique to filter out candidates who are qualified but may not be the best fit for the position.Screening improves candidates' comfort levels with the interview process by allowing recruiters, interviewers, and candidates to get on the same page before the actual interview.

Questions to ask during screenings?

Use the best interview questions possible once you've picked whether to do your pre-screening interview over the phone or online.

The questions you ask should uncover details related to a candidate's success on the job, but they should not be so in-depth as to drag out the interview process. Pre-screening interviews must strike a balance between efficiency and detail given that they are done for a large applicant pool. 

You can use the sample pre-screening questions listed below in your pre-interview, but be sure to add some that are relevant to your company and the role.

• Why are you leaving your current job?

• What are your life goals and how does this job help you achieve them?

• How do you usually manage large projects?

• What do you do for fun?

• What is the best and the worst part of your current job? What have you done to change these?

• What makes work fun for you?

• What is a project that you’re proud of?

• What life challenges have you faced and how do you think those help you with this job?

• What are your salary expectations?

• What’s your notice period at your current role?

• When was the last time you succeeded to meet a deadline? How did you manage that?

• Why do you think you might be a good fit at this role?

• What’s a complex project that you’ve worked on? And what made it especially complex?

• How do you prefer to communicate with colleagues?

• What other companies are you also interviewing with?

• Would you consider yourself an Optimist or a Pessimist?

• What got you started in this career? 

• Do you have any portfolio items that can be shared with the interviewer to showcase your skills?

• What is the management style you hate the most? Which do you like the most?

• What do you do when you get stuck on a problem?

The screening questions you ask should be a combination of both motivation-based and behaviour-based. Different kind of questions will help you understand various aspects of the candidate’s talents, personality and perspective. 

Closing thoughts.

Screenings before an interview let you spend your valuable interview time only on the best fit candidates.

You can use hirevire to gather video answers to the screening questions. This can be done async - saving your time as well as letting your candidates give their best answers at a time of their choosing. The hirevire screening videos will help you find those diamonds that can be interviewed.