Automatic pre-screening of your candidates

Automating recruitment processes in simple manual work should be the goal of every employment agency in the 21st century. Today’s technology allows us to hire employees faster, more efficiently and bring more profits to each agency. Time should not be wasted on missed phone calls, irresponsible people and those who declare that they are only looking for a job in the future and are not able to come faster than in 2-3 weeks. The vast majority of temporary employment agencies have to recruit people for the next 2 weeks and this blogpost will be about how to do it faster and more efficiently.

In the video below, we tell you what pre-screening is, what it should look like and what benefits it brings to recruiters.After watching the video, we encourage you to continue reading this blog post where we describe in detail how to implement such pre-screening in your own agency. We also offer these services to our clients.

Pre-screening is nothing more than asking candidates questions that help determine their chances of getting a job at our agency. Questions are asked at the application level, before the initial call from a recruiter.

You can ask any questions, of course without discrimination for any reason.

We will now show the most common questions that our clients ask their candidates depending on the position they are applying for. Let us introduce 5 different professions. Of course, each agency may use different questions, this is simply a generalization.

No. 1 – Greenhouse Employee

We assume a scenario of mass recruitment for seasonal work in the Netherlands. We are looking for 200 workers in 2 months and we need them to work 12 weeks on the harvest.

In this case, we asked the following questions / provide proposed answers:

• When can you start?
  • Immediately / within 2 week / within 1 month

• Do you have a driving licence?
  • Yes / No

• Do yo want to come alone or with a group of friends/relatives?
  • Alone / + 1 person / + 2 people / More than 3 people

• Are you willing to stay for the whole 12 weeks?
  • Yes / No / I want to stay longer after

By asking such questions, recruiters will quickly understand who to call first and who not to waste time on. In particular, it will be easier for them to plan drivers and allocate employees to cars. All the questions can be freely modified at your discretion.

No. 2 – Forklift driver

• When can you start?
  • Immediately / within 2 week / within 1 month

• Do you have a forklift certificate?
  • Yes / No

• Do yo speak a foreign language in a communicative way ?
  • No / English / Dutch / More than one

• How long do you want to stay at your job?
  • Up to 3 months / more than 3 months / I want a permanent job

For forklift drivers, the questions are usually a bit different. Most job offers require a reachtruck certificate and knowledge of a foreign language. Sometimes we can also ask if anyone has worked on a reachtruck in a given industry (e.g. fruit / electronics).

No. 3 – Supermarket employee

• When can you start?
  • Immediately / within 2 week / within 1 month

• Are you willing to work a nightshift (22:00 – 6:00 )?
  • Yes / No / Sometimes

• Are you willing to work on the weekends?
  • Yes / No / Sometimes

• Do yo speak a foreign language in a communicative way ?
  • No / English / Dutch / More than one

• How long do you want to stay at your job?
  • Up to 3 months / more than 3 months / I want a permanent job

In the case of supermarket employees, we often have to deal with working night shifts and stocking goods on shelves. In this case, clients also sometimes ask about education and only employ people with secondary/higher education, because this work requires good coordination and is something between intellectual and physical work.

No. 4 – Welder

• When can you start?
  • Immediately / within 2 week / within 1 month

• Are you willing to work overtime ?
  • Yes / No / Sometimes

• Do you have X certificate ?
  • Yes / No

• Do yo speak a foreign language in a communicative way ?
  • No / English / Dutch / More than one

• How long do you want to stay at your job?
  • Up to 3 months / more than 3 months / I want a permanent job

Welders are highly sought-after workers on the market. Agency commissions are usually much higher than in the case of greenhouse work. Recruiting a welder will always be more costly, but keep in mind that the same rules apply here as in the case of employees at other levels. You shouldn’t waste time on people who have no chance of getting a job and from our experience welders are much better at going through forms to apply for a job, which is why pre-screening here is a great solution. It is often the case that our client may not officially be looking for a given welder, but he knows someone who needs one, so it is even more worth collecting information from them.

No. 5 – Construction Worker

• When can you start?
  • Immediately / within 2 week / within 1 month

• How many years of experience do you have working in Germany/Netherlands ?
  • 0 / 1-2 years / 2-3 years / More than 3 years / More than 5 years

• Are you experienced with X ?
  • Yes / No

• Do yo speak a foreign language in a communicative way ?
  • No / English / Dutch / More than one

• How long do you want to stay at your job?
  • Up to 3 months / more than 3 months / I want a permanent job

Construction workers are a very broad topic. Some need employees with general skills for construction or renovation, and some are looking for specialized employees for, for example, building roads or buildings of a specific type. Depending on what we are looking for, we can change the questions accordingly.

Please note that each agency may wish to ask different questions to applicants. Each end customer may seek answers to other questions before accepting a candidate. We can call the above examples “good standards” when it comes to pre-screening and our methods of recruiting candidates allow us to freely change the questions asked to candidates without changing the code on the website.

If you have any questions about the above content or would like to talk about pre-screening in your recruitment department, write to mateusz@marydconsulting.eu or contact us on WhatsApp/Signal +48 787 258 650.