Rethink Screening of Job Applicants to Identify Serious Candidates

“It's your career. It's your life. It's your time.” This rallying cry to job seekers sits on the home page of one online career site, which also urges: “Add your resume and let your next job find you.” No wonder HR leaders increasingly feel they are chasing candidates in the digital world — and organizations continue to improve the ease and experience of their digital application process to stay in the game. But this approach often yields quantity over quality.

“ The average recruiter spends nearly one-quarter of his/her time screening applications — and candidates must wait and wait”

“In a recent survey of over 2,300 job candidates, more than one-fifth told us they agree or strongly agree that jobs should search for them,” says Cian Ó Móráin, senior principal at Gartner. “But in this environment, to identify good candidates and reduce time to fill, HR needs to redesign processes to enable candidates to demonstrate their commitment and quality earlier in the process.”

Read more: Are Your Employees Quitting in Their Seats?

Talent acquisition costs are soaring

Once upon a time, simply submitting an application showed a candidate’s serious interest in a job, but the one-click application has sharply reduced the transaction costs for job candidates. Commoditized searching means candidates don’t need to expend much effort on applications, and it’s practically effortless to express interest in a position.

With job applicants being less discriminating at the moment they apply, HR is receiving more applications per job posting than it once did. Spurred on by the response, especially since it is often hard to find sought-after talent, many in HR continue to invest more and more in simplifying the application process, even though the hiring process is often less and less productive.

The average recruiter spends nearly one-quarter of his/her time screening applications — and candidates must wait and wait for their applications to be screened.

Acquisition costs jumped 26% between 2015 and 2017. Those costs include branding, events, employee referral programs, sourcing technology and tools, as well as recruiter time spent on branding, needs definition and sourcing. The overall cost of hiring rose 18%. That includes the acquisition costs, assessment expenses — including recruiter time spent on screening and interviewing — and costs of conversion activities such as background checks.

Instead of simply investing in improving the application experience for candidates, progressive organizations are building a messaging strategy that focuses on what candidates value, starting with job descriptions that resonate with sought-after talent.

The best companies then build into the screening process ways of tracking signals of interest and suitability that candidates themselves generate via their own actions.