THE STEPS OF RECRUITMENT

Section 1: What is shortlisting?

Shortlisting is the process of identifying the candidates from your applicant pool who best meet the required and desired criteria for the open requitment and who you want to move forward onto the next step of your recruitment process, which is usually some form of interview.
In other words, creating a “short list” of candidates you want to talk to.
In the recruitment process, shortlisting comes after sourcing (finding and attracting) and before interviewing and further assessing. Screening and shortlisting often happens simultaneously: as you screen resumes from candidates, you shortlist the best ones to move forward.

Section 2: How to shortlist

Step 1: Determine your shortlisting criteria

Shortlisting criteria are the essential and desirable criteria needed to do the job and the minimum level that the shortlisted candidate should possess.
These criteria should be related to on-the-job performance and ly should be captured in the job description.
Developing the right shortlisting criteria is a delicate balance between setting standards that are high enough to ensure a good quality of candidates to move forward, but not too strict that you’d be unnecessarily screening out a lot of great, qualified candidates.
Shortlisting criteria should be based on:

• the qualities and traits of top performing employees currently in the role

Shortlisting criteria should not be based on:

• personal opinion or gut feeling of what managers think are required for success
• personal similarities of the candidates with the recruiters or hiring managers

A short note on legal and discrimination issues:

Using shortlisting criteria that are correlated with job performance helps you avoid legal and discrimination issues. Make sure your criteria doesn’t discriminate against any legally protected classes in the first place. The important thing here is to apply your criteria consistently, fairly, and objectively across all candidates.

Shortlisting criteria can include:

• Education
• Work Experience
• Skills and Knowledge
• Personality Traits
• Competencies

Differences between essential and desirable criteria:

Essential criteria are the ones that a candidate must meet to be considered for the role. A simple example of an essential criterion is whether the candidate is legally able to work in the country. These types of criteria are often called knockout questions because either the candidate has it and can move forward or they don’t and gets screened out immediately.
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.
Again, remember to keep your shortlisting criteria consistent across all candidates to avoid legal and discrimination issues.

Step 2: Create a shortlisting scorecard

Take the essential and desirable criteria you’ve identified above and create a shortlisting scorecard for your candidates. The purpose of this scorecard is to list out each criteria so that you can assign a rating for each screened in candidate.

For example, if you’re hiring for a retail associate role, your scorecard might look like this:

Having a shortlisting scorecard serves two purposes:

1. Ensures you are applying each criterion fairly and consistently across candidates.
2. Allows you to easily identify and rank who the strongest candidates are to move forward.

Step 3: Determine the length of your shortlist

How many candidates do you have to shortlist to get a successful hire? 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, the length of your shortlist may be to move forward anyone that meets your shortlisting 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. As a reference point, the industry average application to interview conversion rate is 12%, the interview to offer conversion rate is 17%, and the offer to accepted conversion rate is 89%.
According to these numbers, for every 100 candidates you source, you need to shortlist 12 of them to interview, two of them will receive an offer, and one candidate will accept in order for you to get one successful hire.