Using Standard Application Screening Questions

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to use Standard Application Screening Questions.

Introduction to Screening Questions

Effectively screening candidates is crucial for identifying the right talent and ensuring a smooth hiring process. SmartRecruiters offers powerful tools to create and manage screening questions, allowing recruiters to filter applicants based on specific criteria. This saves recruiters time and assists them in gathering demographic data for compliance and reporting.

Screening questions helps recruiters quickly identify the right people by gathering key information in the beginning. They can add application screening questions to job applications to filter candidates based on specific skills or experience. Similarly, community screening questions in SmartCRM help them to qualify leads by capturing relevant details before they enter the talent pool and then filter candidates based on those details.

The following question types can be created:

Question Set: A question set is a group of predetermined questions used on the application to standardize and streamline the screening and interviewing process for a specific job or role. They are assigned to jobs via org fields.
Community Question Set: Community questions are used in CRM lead capture forms to capture additional information about potential candidates that can be used to filter communities of talent.
Job-Specific Questions: These questions are job-specific and can only be added by the Hiring Team of a specific job when publishing it via the Screening Questions option in the Job Ad tab. .

By tailoring your questions to the role or community, the recruiter can save time, focus on the most promising candidates, and make better hiring decisions from the start of the process.

Watch the video below for more details about Screening Questions.

This video is for demonstration purposes. Any references made in this video to previous or later videos in this course (including titles, numbers, links, or sequence) may differ from the current course structure. Additionally, some functionalities shown may have evolved over time due to ongoing enhancements or business decisions.

Pre-configured Application Screening Questions

SmartRecruiters has curated a pre-configured library of questions which contains default questions, diversity questions, and has the option to create new custom questions.

The following standard default and diversity questions can be accessed immediately using the Question Library.

Pre-configured Application Screening Questions

Category	Topic	Question
Standard	Work Permit	Are you authorized to work in <job location>? Yes/No.
Standard	Criminal Record	Have you ever been convicted, pleaded guilty or no contest to a crime, or are criminal charges pending against you? Yes/No.
Standard	Driving Current	Do you have a current driver’s license?
Standard	Driving Revoked	Has your driver’s license ever been revoked? Yes/No
Standard	Employment Record	Have you ever been terminated from or asked to leave any previous positions?
Standard	Refugee Status	Do you identify as a refugee?
Standard	Ethnicity	Are you Hispanic or Latino?
Standard	Languages	Add languages and indicate your proficiency level
Standard	Work Shifts	preferred days and hour range
Standard	Attachments	Add additional attachments
Standard	Your Name
Standard	Today’s Date
Diversity	OFCCP - Disability	Do you have (or have a history/record of having) a disability? Yes/No/Prefer not to answer.
Diversity	OFCCP - Veteran	Are you a protected veteran?
Diversity	OFCCP – Reasonable Accommodation
Diversity	OFCCP – Race and Gender	Dropdown lists for choosing both.
Diversity	Ethnicity	Are you Hispanic or Latino?
Diversity	Veteran Status	Are you a veteran? Yes/No.
Diversity	Disability Status	Do you claim disability status? Yes/No.

Note

Pre-configured questions are translated with the appropriate language being determined by the user’s browser settings, irrespective of the language used by your own custom questions.

Therefore, it is best practice to use the pre-configured questions where possible rather than creating custom questions.

Question Sets

Question sets allow you to group related screening questions and apply them to specific jobs. To create a new set, click the New set button. You can title the set, specify whether it's for internal or public use, and configure options, such as allowing candidates to submit pictures.

The configuration options enable you to assign question sets to jobs based on organizational fields like Country, Brand, and Department. For example, you can create a question set that applies to all jobs in the Customer Service and Engineering departments.

When building a question set, you can select from default questions and custom screening questions you've created. You can also change the order of questions and mark them as required or as knockout questions.

Use Standard Application Screening Questions in the Default Question Set

All SmartRecruiters systems will have a default public question set. You can customize the default question set for external and internal hiring.

Steps

Navigate to Settings.
Select Screening Questions within the Configuration section.
Select the Question Sets tab.
Select the pencil icon next to the Default set.
1. Selecting the Default set for the Public Job ad type category will create a default question set for external candidates.
2. Selecting the Default set for the Internal Job ad type category will create a default question set for internal candidates applying through the employee portal.
Enable the Active setting to ensure this question set status is set to active.
Expand the Questions section to add questions to the set.
1. If adding a pre-existing question, search for the question to add it to the set.
2. Alternatively, you can create a custom question to be added to the set.
When adding questions, you can modify the Settings (which determine the behavior of the system dependent on the answer provided by the candidate) and/or modify the Attributes. (Mark a field as required or set what user access is needed to view answers. For example, all users can view the answer).
Select Save.

Summary

Screening questions in SmartRecruiters helps filter candidates based on specific criteria and gather relevant information.
SmartRecruiters offers pre-configured standard and diversity questions that can be used immediately.
Question sets allow you to group related screening questions and apply them to specific jobs based on organizational fields.
You can customize the default question set for external and internal hiring by adding pre-existing or custom questions.

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