Why is shortlisting done

A simple example of an essential criterion is whether the candidate is legally able to work in the country. Desirable criteria, on the other hand, are ones that would make someone a stronger candidate for the role. These are often considered nice-to-haves. An example of a desirable criterion is a professional certification. In a lot of cases, the difference between essential and desirable criteria often becomes blurred.

For example, a hiring manager may desire a minimum of three years of experience in a particular role. If the majority of the candidates have at least three years of experience, that criterion becomes essential by default when candidates with less experience get screened out.

Remember to keep your process consistent across all candidates to avoid legal and discrimination issues. The purpose of this scorecard is to list out each criteria so that you can assign a rating for each screened in candidate. When it comes to deciding the length of your shortlist, most people have a pre-determined number in mind. For example, interviewing four to six candidates to get one successful hire. For high volume recruitment roles like customer service representatives where you need to hire hundreds of people, you might shortlist any candidate that meets your criteria.

The best way to determine the length of your shortlist is to work backwards from the average conversion rates in your own recruitment process. Traditionally, screening and shortlisting candidates were manual processes. These days, a job opening receives resumes on average, which can take up to 23 hours per hire just to screen resumes, rate each candidate using your scorecard, and determine your final candidate shortlist. Recruiters and talent acquisition leaders realized long ago this was a major problem, so they turned to technology: the Applicant Tracking System ATS was invented.

In many ways, ATS software has been a boon. Unfortunately, some of these strengths of an ATS have become their weaknesses. So while ATS software is virtually a must-have these days for recruitment and talent acquisition departments, their limited functionality is understandably frustrating.

But just like the invention of the ATS, technology is again coming to the rescue to enable the next generation of candidate shortlisting. The current explosion in data analytics technology is enabling the next generation of shortlist tools. In a nutshell, intelligent shortlisting is adding functionality to an existing ATS that allows it to rate, rank, and shortlist candidates beyond keyword matching.

Initial results are extremely promising. Couple this with the 23 hours you save per hire by automating screening in the first place, AI-powered shortlisting represents the holy grail of recruitment. Remember to bookmark this post and keep it as a resource to answer all of your shortlist questions! Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.

The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". You may also erroneously shortlist candidates who are not the best qualified, whilst inadvertently screening out suitable candidates that meet all of the specified criteria.

Throughout the shortlisting process you should endeavour to be fair and unbiased. You should also adopt clear and fair shortlist criteria based on what is essential and desirable to do the job, only rejecting candidates that you deem unsuitable for the role based purely on these requirements.

Once the job role has been advertised, no additional criteria should be introduced into the recruitment and selection process, such that every applicant is assessed on the basis of the same factors throughout.

The importance of effective and fair recruitment should not be underestimated, both in legal and practical terms. Indeed, there are various areas of risk when recruiting a candidate for a new job, from unlawful discrimination during the shortlisting process to inadvertently screening out suitable candidates. It is unlawful to discriminate against someone by reason of a protected characteristic, in other words, to treat them less favourably than someone who does not possess the same characteristic.

In particular, you will need to ensure that your criteria for shortlisting does not discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against any legally protected classes of applicant. It is also crucial to apply your criteria consistently, fairly and objectively across all applicants, regardless of their gender, race and so forth. Additionally, albeit with limited exceptions, under the Act you are expressly prohibited from asking job applicants questions about health or disability during the early stages of the recruitment process, thereby minimising the risk of disabled applicants from being unfairly discriminated against.

Whilst health and disability questions can be asked to determine whether any reasonable adjustments need to be made to enable a disabled person to participate in an assessment, or to attend an interview, you must ensure this information does not negatively impact on any shortlisting decision.

In addition to the legal risks, your shortlisting process may also pose a number of practical issues for your business, not least in losing a potentially ideal candidate though either overly stringent or unsuitable shortlisting criteria, or inadequate and ineffective methods commonly used to apply that set of criteria. In particular, the use of software systems in the shortlisting process, especially those that use automated keyword matching to screen resumes, has limited functionality and can easily lead to distorted results.

Needless to say, relying solely on technology, and absent any experienced and trained recruitment personnel, your shortlisting process is likely to fall far short of what is legally and practically required to select the right candidate for the job. Notwithstanding the legal risk of unlawfully discriminating against applicants by reason of a protected characteristic as identified above, there are certain steps that an employer can take in the shortlisting process to actually assist people who share a protected characteristic.

This is known as taking positive action. Under the Act, it is entirely lawful for an employer to take positive action to assist people who share a protected characteristic and who are disadvantaged by reason of that characteristic or under-represented in the workforce. By way of example, an employer can lawfully offer a guaranteed interview scheme for disabled applicants who, having met the minimum shortlisting criteria, will automatically qualify for interview.

That said, although the statutory provisions relating to positive action will allow an employer to recruit a candidate by reason of their protected characteristic who is of equal merit to another candidate, positive action does not allow an employer to appoint a less suitable candidate just because that candidate has a protected characteristic that is under-represented or disadvantaged.

It is also important to bear in mind that positive action is entirely voluntary. There is no legal requirement for an employer to apply the provisions relating to positive action, either in the context of recruitment or otherwise. To help make the shortlisting process a little more manageable, the following practical steps set out below provide a good starting point, namely:. You will first need to decide how many candidates you want to shortlist for interview. This will create a target when sifting through the applications, and will ensure that you are not left with too many, or too few, candidates to assess.

When deciding on your shortlist length, you will need to have regard to how much time you will have to interview these candidates, and what has worked well in the past, possibly even factoring in the average conversion rates in your own recruitment and selection processes.

There is no ideal number to shortlist to get a successful hire, nor is there any legal minimum or limit on how many people you can interview. Equally, even with a pre-determined number in mind, you do not need to be confined by your shortlist number and miss out on a potentially good candidate in consequence. Having determined the target length of your shortlist, you will next need to decide on the key criteria that you feel is necessary for the job role, although these should, at least in part, have already been captured within the job description and person specification as advertised.

Typically, any shortlist criteria should be correlated with job performance rather than personal opinion, based on the qualities and traits of top performing employees currently in a similar role. Desirable criteria, on the other hand, are those that would make someone a stronger candidate for the role, such as professional certifications. The next stage in the shortlisting process is to take the essential and desirable criteria you have identified above and create a shortlist scorecard for your pool of candidates.

The purpose of this scorecard is to assign a rating to each of the criteria for every screened candidate. By way of example, if you are hiring someone for a retail sales role, your scorecard might include: education level, retail experience, customer service experience and communication skills, where you would provide a score of say based on how well they fit a particular criteria.

Having a shortlist scorecard serves two purposes: it ensures you are applying each criterion fairly and consistently across all candidates, where candidates are assessed against the selection criteria and not against each other, and also allows you to easily and objectively identify and rank the strongest candidates. Before ranking candidates against your shortlist scorecard, you may first want to screen and reject any applications that are missing the essential criteria.

With a large number of applications, you may even need to reject the ones with the fewest desirable criteria. Only once you are somewhere close to your target shortlist number should you rank remaining candidates against your scorecard.

In some cases, if you have more candidates on your shortlist than you need, you may want to consider other eliminating factors. That said, whatever your reason for removing someone from your shortlist, you will need to make sure that your reason is not connected to a protected characteristic.

One possible way of addressing the problem of too many candidates is to introduce a further screening aspect into your shortlisting process, for example, a short Skype chat or phone call prior to interview. Again, however, you must ensure that any decision to remove someone from your shortlist is not related to a protected characteristic revealed through any form of direct communication. Your shortlist criteria should be carefully drawn from your job description and person specification based on both essential and desirable requirements.

To improve the quality of the pool of applicants from which you will be able to select suitable candidates, you must ensure that the criteria is specifically tailored to the role in question and the needs of your business. As explained above, it is important to bear in mind that any criterion used during the shortlisting process does not discriminate against any legally protected categories of applicant.

By way of example, it is better to set out the type of experience needed, rather than ask for a certain number for years that could potentially discriminate against an applicant by reason of their age. We can support development and application of fair selection criteria, and support HR and managers in decision making that supports the needs of the business while mitigating legal risks.

Shortlisting is a critical stage in the recruitment process where employers identify candidates from the applicant pool who best meet the essential and desirable criteria for the job opening in question, and invite them to the next stage of the recruitment process.

To avoid any allegations of bias or complaints such as discrimination, it is advisable that more than one person contributes to the shortlisting process. This will depend on the role, the location and the number of applications received, among other factors. Analyzing the outcomes of past interview-to-hiring conversions is also useful. One way to screen applicants is by manually creating a shortlisting scorecard grid to rank and identify the strongest candidates to move forward.

These days, many organizations use HR software tools like Applicant Tracking Systems that automate parts of the screening process, weeding out applicants based on keywords or answers to screening questions. Understand how to create job ads that actually work. Leverage winning strategies to best promote ads.

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