5 Features to Look For in a Candidate Screening Tool

Candidate screening tools are key for building an efficient and streamlined recruitment and hiring process. These tools leverage technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and standardized methods to evaluate and filter job applicants — and do so quickly — allowing organizations to capture quality candidates faster than their competitors.

But not all candidate screening tools are created equal. Here are five features to look for in a candidate screening tool and why they’re crucial to helping your talent acquisition (TA) team build a solid recruitment strategy.

1. Chatbot

An intelligent conversational chatbot is a game-changer in the recruitment process. Not only does it work for your TA team 24/7, but it can automate sourcing, screening, and scheduling while answering candidate FAQs. It helps candidates find the right job faster by surfacing best-fit opportunities based on candidate location, experience, skills, and more.

Chatbots also benefit recruitment teams by surfacing leads, increasing talent pipelines, and even screening candidates (via text, audio, or video) before their first recruiter interaction. It can automate interview scheduling, so candidates who are recommended to move on to the next step in the screening or interview process can simply choose the best time that works for them and the interview time automatically syncs to all involved stakeholder calendars.

2. Resume Parsing

We’ve all been there. You’re applying to a job, upload your resume, and then are prompted to fill in your work experience manually. When candidates are forced to input duplicate information, they’re much more likely to abandon the application process — and your company — altogether.

Because of this, it’s important that your candidate screening tool has resume parsing capabilities, allowing it to analyze and extract information from resumes accurately. This helps ensure candidates don’t have to re-type their information manually during later stages in the application process.

Not only does this save time and effort, ensuring that candidate details are automatically organized and accessible, but it leaves them with a much more positive view of your company.

3. Fit Scoring

For TA teams, gathering candidate feedback and scoring from all stakeholders can be a long process, with 17% of TA professionals reporting it can take them more than four days. This is much too long if you want to remain competitive and keep talented candidates in your pipeline.

To eliminate this time-consuming process, your candidate screening tool should provide automated rankings and scores for candidates based on their qualifications, experience, and fit for the role in real time. This helps recruiters identify the most promising candidates early on, send all their information to hiring stakeholders at once, and allow for quicker decision-making in regards to next steps and moving them through the interview process.

4. One-Way Interviews

One-way interviewing is a tool that allows candidates to record their responses to screening and interview questions on their own time, while permitting recruiters, hiring managers, and other stakeholders to review and assess candidate information all in one place. Finding a candidate screening tool with one-way interviewing capabilities is a great way to streamline the screening process for recruiters, save time for hiring managers, and deliver great first impressions for candidates via video, audio, and text responses.

One-way interviews allow TA teams to:

Screen more candidates faster
Apply an equitable approach to screening candidates at scale
Give candidates screening options to help them put their best foot forward, either by video, voice, or text
Optimize hiring team communication by enabling feedback in real time

Related reading: 4 Ways to Improve the Interview Process

5. Automated Workflows

Automated workflow features are a must when choosing a candidate screening tool, as they enhance the overall recruitment process by saving time, reducing bias, ensuring consistency, and providing valuable data-driven insights.

Automated workflows can:

Process and review a large volume of candidate applications by taking over manual tasks like data entry, email or text communication, and interview scheduling
Send candidates automated messages and updates on application status
Ensure that all candidates go through the same screening process by adhering to set standardized steps and criteria
Generate data and analytics that provide insights into quality of candidates at various stages, helping to inform process improvements and decision-making

With AI-powered candidate screening tools in your pocket, your TA teams can find, screen, and interview quality candidates faster, capturing talent before the competition.

For more ways to boost efficiency and streamline your recruitment process, check out our Definitive Guide to AI Recruiting.

Maggie Blehar

Maggie is a writer at Phenom, bringing you information on all things talent experience. In addition to writing, she enjoys traveling, painting, cooking, and spending time with her family and friends.