Employment Screening

What are the most time-tested methods of employee screening? The most classic screening tool is the interview. The format of the interview may vary, depending on the formality of your business, but essentially, what an interview does is to allow a senior person in your organization to develop a feeling for the employment potential of a candidate.

According to business journal statistics, interviews tend to be far more accurate than resume checks in determining the future productivity of employees. That said, when you rely too heavily on interview results, you may get a skewed view on the candidate. After all, even the most sober and objective interviewer comes to the table with built-in biases and prejudices.

Mechanisms to Screen Employees

Therefore, to make the interview process as fair as possible, you might want to invite multiple interviewers to adjudicate, at least for the final round of screening. That being said, it's important to go into the screening process with a very clear objective in terms of what skills and personality attributes the candidate must have to qualify. The more precisely you identify what constitutes success, the easier it will be to find a good applicant.

Theoretically, you want the most qualified candidate for the job. However, if you're interviewing for a low level position, you might not want to hire the best applicant. After all, if a position is way below the candidate's aptitude, chances are that she will want to move on in a relatively short period of time. Then you will be stuck back at the beginning, and you'll have to pay for training and replacement costs.