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Screening phone interviews are certainly nothing new in the recruitment game. It’s simply standard practice for most companies. They’re important to understanding a candidate more than their resume can say alone.
Although hiring managers certainly know a solid resume and cover letter on sight, it comes with the profession, but an experienced recruiter will tell you that the best of resumes can still come from an unexpected candidate. That’s why separating these candidates early in the hiring process is an absolute must for efficient recruitment. And that is where the screening interview comes into play.
But what exactly is a phone screen interview? What does it entail? Simply put, a phone screening is designed to assess whether a candidate possesses the skills they’ve claimed. After all, anyone can write a skill on a resume, but it’s another thing entirely to back that up during an interview. As such, recruiters ensure they spend time on the right candidates rather than passing unqualified candidates to the hiring manager. And it only takes a brief 15 to 30-minute interview.
So when we discuss, “What is a phone screening?” We’re not referring to the stage where recruiters make an offer. We’re referring to narrowing the candidate pool to the most qualified to make finding that ideal candidate easier.
The questions to ask during this stage should be the make-or-break questions. Does the candidate meet the absolute necessary qualifications? This can be as simple as asking if the candidate is looking for full-time or part-employment or asking an experienced candidate if they’re willing to relocate. What experience matters most to the position? These are just a few things you can catch during the screening phase of recruitment.
Phone screenings can be a serious time sink in your hiring process and quickly become a serious drag on your overall time-to-hire. According to Yello, it takes a recruiter an average of 30 minutes to 2 hours to simply schedule the interview. Then there’s the matter of conducting said interview. At the end of the day, even for a small batch of candidates, this can be several hours of work that would be better spent on actual screening.
Enter stage, the virtual interview. This approach to phone screening has become remarkably popular with recruiters in recent years. The recruiter simply records the interview on their end, and the candidate responds at a time of convenience. This produces a consistent interview process that can be reviewed in as little as 5 minutes per candidate. Let’s take a look at what that process would look like.
The virtual phone screen steps are as follows:
The demands of the modern labor market have been stressful for recruiters. That’s no secret. Recruiting the best talent on the market has become an incredibly competitive game. Recruiting teams need to adapt to this new reality, or risk falling behind in terms of ROI and the quality of talent they hire.
There are many things holding recruiters back, and that includes relying on outmoded recruitment methods. And This brings us to how traditional phone interviews slow the hiring process and keep recruiters from sourcing and recruiting the ideal candidate.
Let’s first consider the most inherent problem with traditional phone interviews - they’re slow. It’s as simple as that. Today’s labor market demands speed, and live phone interviews simply can’t keep up. As we established, simply scheduling one of these traditional interviews takes upwards of 2 hours. That means if a recruiter wants to schedule 5 candidates for an interview, they’ll need to invest up to 10 hours to do so. And that’s not even including conducting the actual interviews. Such a large time sink makes it very difficult for small recruiting teams to achieve either an ideal ROI or quality of hire.
Then there are lost candidates. Traditional phone screenings add up to a week to the hiring process. Worse yet, research has found that when the screening phase takes too long, a company could find itself losing up to 89% of its potential candidates. That’s nearly 9 in 10! If the remaining 10% doesn’t make the cut, recruiters are back to the drawing board, sourcing new candidates to find that perfect talent to fill the role.
And it gets worse. If lost candidates and a huge time sink weren’t bad enough, traditional phone interviews are leading to recruiter burnout. According to Undercover Recruiter, conducting consistent phone interviews means recruiters spend 78,352 minutes on the phone every year. That’s over 1,300 hours for those counting at home. With traditional interviews, those long hours are filled with monotonous one-on-one interviews that wear out even the most passionate recruiter. And when that happens, the recruiting team will find itself recruiting for itself to fill that gap or be forced to go without a team member, slowing the hiring process even more as a result.
So, to avoid all of these shortcomings, it’s time to adapt. To save your recruiters and recruitment time, turn to on-demand phone interviews to recruit better and faster today.
