Guide for Screening Applicants

The purpose of screening applications is to decide whether applicants for a position meet the basic qualifications. To do that, you need to be very clear about which skills are essential for the person to have and which skills are “desirable.” Once you have identified the “must have” skills for the position, you will want to remove the applications from persons who lack those basic skills. This will save you time and money as you have reduced the number of applications.

You should then review the remaining applications for evidence of the skills, qualities, education and experience you asked for in the job posting. The following rating form may be helpful to you in comparing the applications. Simply insert your own values to each of the criteria you are using and your total points value, rate the applications, and the candidates with the highest total scores are the ones you would most likely interview.

Candidate Resume Rating Form

For more tactics and strategies you can use in your employee interviews,  check out the Employee Screening course in the Hiring Process bundle on Smartforce NL at https://secure.coursepark.com/learningnetwork/courses/index/id/718.

Please click Next for a list of tips for reviewing resumes.