Screening Questions Essential Or Waste of Space

Screening Questions Essential Or Waste of Space When the time comes to advertise a new vacancy for your business, there are lots of things you need to consider to ensure you get the best candidates applying and you receive relevant, qualified applications that have a genuine interest in your business. Job title, salary, job description, location you name it, they can all affect the type of person your advert attracts and the type of candidates that want to apply so its worth considering each one carefully. In addition to all that, theres another important element you need to consider when it comes to advertising your vacancy screening questions. The theory behind screening questions is pretty simple you create a set of specific  questions related to the vacancy that appear when the potential candidate clicks the apply button. These questions can range from Do you have the right to work in the UK? to Do you have relevant eCommerce experience and  are used to  effectively screen the candidates  eligibility the idea being that any unqualified or irrelevant candidates wont be able to answer yes to these questions so will be deterred from applying for your vacancy. Now, as screening questions can help to cut out irrelevant applications, it goes without saying that they can help to save your business time and money but just like everything else, they come with both pros and cons. What am I talking about? Well, depending on the advertising platform, setting up screening questions can be extremely complicated, laborious and time consuming and on top of that, theres no guarantees theyll even work.  Why?  Because unfortunately theres no lie-detector attached to these questions. Unfortunately, its really easy for a candidate to click yes to every screening question that appears, whether theyre being truthful or not. Similarly, other candidates might believe they have an outside chance of securing the job so again, will be determined to apply, regardless of any screening questions you put their way which might suggest otherwise. With screening questions, you can normally only provide a couple or possible answers and unfortunately all a candidate has to do is click the right answer to be taken the next stage of the application. Theres nowhere for them to submit proof that theyve answered these questions truthfully and no platform which allows them to back up their answers. While screening questions can work to deter the majority of unsuitable candidates from applying, theres always that small number of unsuitable candidates that will lie and apply anyway and unfortunately, theres not a lot you can do about that. In terms of whether screening questions are worth the effort, just like everything else with job advertising, it all comes down to your business and individual needs. As I mentioned at the start of this post, if youve got a super niche job and youre looking for a very particular candidate, screening questions might be worth the effort particularly if the role is quite senior and youre looking to deter more junior candidates from applying. However, if the role is pretty standard and youre not looking for anything extra special or unusual from a candidate, screening questions might not be worth your time and effort. Think about it; even with screening questions, youre still going to have to put some time and effort into sorting through applications because there will always be a couple of irrelevant applications that get sent through so giving screening questions a miss at the start and using the time you save then  to sort through applications properly at the end of the process might be a more effective use of your time and resources. As ever, Im keen to hear your thoughts on this one. Have you used screening questions and found them to be effective? Or do you think theyre a waste of time and should be scrapped? Leave me a comment below.