Ace candidate screening for high volumes of applications

The pandemic has shifted the recruiting narrative from ‘war for talent’ to ‘war for jobs’. On one side, companies have struggled to survive and shut down. On the other side, the new post-pandemic era has also brought forth opportunities, leaving a lot of candidates in transit. For recruiters, these candidates translate to high volumes of applications on their radar.

Wading through a sea of applications and discovering the best from the lot is never a simple job, but with the right candidate screening tools and strategies, it can be swift and seamless. 


Let’s look at 5 simple but effective ways to handle high-volume applications.

#1 Draft great Job Descriptions

A clear job description enables candidates to figure out if they are eligible to apply for the job and clarifies if it is a job that they would like to apply for. A good job description becomes your first round of screening. That’s why it should have these following basic qualities.

  • Accurately indicate the nature of the job
  • Should be self-explanatory 
  • Define the role and responsibilities without ambiguity 
  • Have a straightforward recognisable ‘Title’ for the position (In case applicants want to compare it to similar jobs.)
  • Direct them to the next steps of the application process

Freshteam has a rich repository of well-written job descriptions that you can simply pick and use.

#2 Pre-assessment tests  

For some roles like engineering or tech, you may recruit for multiple positions at once. In such cases, pre-assessment tests help screen a huge number of candidates efficiently through pre-designed online tests or interviews. Pre-assessment tests such as HackerEarth, HackerRank, Codility, etc are a great way to evaluate the candidates for their problem-solving or coding abilities. It eliminates all bias from the process and enables all stakeholders to stay objective throughout. It saves time, removes hiring-manager dependencies and enables you to find candidates who are time-worthy, and should be advanced to the interview stage.

#3 Custom application forms

Cut the chase and get to what really matters with custom application forms. Resumes are important but they may not be the best way to screen candidates in some situations. For example, let’s say you want to select candidates who have a working visa in your country. You can ask candidates to fill out a basic application form with the vitals and filter them based on the same without tiring through resumes.

Custom application forms are again incredibly useful when you want to collect information that may not be available on resumes like willingness to relocate, visa information, etc.

#4 Showcase your culture through a career site

A candidate screening software like Freshteam allows you to set up an appealing career site in minutes. It’s the place to share your company’s story, values, what it’s like to work with you and more. You can channel candidates from job boards and job ads to your career site so they learn a bit about your culture and values and choose for themselves if they’d be a good fit or not.

#5 We saved the best for the last: Screening Automations 

You can set up screening automations which automatically advance or reject candidates based on location, experience, visa status, location, years of experience and more. It can cut down your time-to-hire by at least 50%. You can use automations to cut down other screening chores like sending out rejection emails, following-up on assignments, nudging them to take tests, advancing them to the next stage based on test score and more. This would just be a fantastic add to your recruiting tool kit. 

Wrapping up

In a high-volume-applications season, it’s easier to look through half the pile and settle for the first candidate that fits. That however wouldn’t be justice, to the company and the applicants. With a tool like Freshteam, you’ll be able to streamline candidate screening and better the experience for everyone involved – recruiters, interviewers, hiring managers and candidates, even when high volumes of applications are flooding in.

Ultius has extremely high quality standards (in terms of hiring writers), so the required volume of talent sourcing is high. Our hiring funnel processes thousands of applications just to hire a few contractors. We used SmartRecruiters, Indeed, Monster, and manual spreadsheets. It was a complicated system. We also used an organized folder system within our email. Though the process worked, it was clunky and time-consuming. With Freshteam, we were able to review 40% more candidates” – Melissa, Ultius

About Freshteam

Freshteam is a simple and smart HR software with very efficient candidate screening capabilities that empower recruiters to up their sourcing game – resume parsing abilities, customizable application forms, a career site that blends with your brand, smart candidate profiles and automations that just make screening 100X easier.

If you are interested in trialing Freshteam, sign up here.