Prescreening Candidates

Understanding the Prescreening Section in the Requisition

The Prescreening section in the requisition may contain disqualification questions, prescreening questions, and competencies used to find the top candidates for a position. The combination of these three elements is referred to as ACE Prescreening because they help identify ACE or top candidates for a position.

A disqualification question is a single-answer question that contains the minimum requirements for a candidate to be eligible for a job. For example "Are you entitled to work in the United States?" When candidates apply for a job, it’s mandatory to respond to the disqualification questions. Answers to the disqualification questions decide if candidates move forward in the selection process or are automatically disqualified. When you create a requisition, you can't add disqualification questions. It's your administrator who creates and manages disqualification questions and defines the context when the question is used. Disqualification questions are displayed in a requisition if the locations and job fields of the question matches the locations and job fields of the requisition.
Prescreening questions are used to learn more about a candidate in areas such as their career goal, job preferences, knowledge, and more. For example, you can ask "How good are your Java skills?". If the prescreening question is configured as mandatory, the candidate can't skip it while applying for the job. You can add questions to a requisition and you can create questions specific to a requisition.
You use competencies to gather proficiency levels and years of experience of a candidate. Competencies are supplied with the system. You can add competencies to a requisition.

Disqualification questions, prescreening questions, and competencies are answered by candidates. The candidates' responses are filtered and presented on the candidates list of the requisition. The Ace Submission icon identifies top candidates, and the amount of requirements and assets that the candidate has achieved with their responses is also displayed. You can then review the candidates list and decide to reset the Required, Asset, and Weight indicators as well as the ACE flag alert to modify the threshold if necessary to obtain a viable pool of top candidates.

Question and Competency Properties

When you define prescreening questions and competencies for a requisition, you need to consider several elements.

Apply Model

When you define competencies and questions for a requisition, you can apply the predefined model of competencies and questions associated with the requisition. When you click Apply Model, competencies and questions that match one location or one job field of the requisition are added to the requisition.

Minimum Proficiency and Experience

When you add competencies to a requisition, you can specify the minimum proficiency level of the competency and the minimum years of experience required.

Your administrator decides if and how you can define that info. These three configurations are possible:

Simple format: Instead of overwhelming candidates with a list of competencies where different values must be assessed for each, the simple format presents a much simpler and faster experience where candidates simply check off those competencies where they have the required proficiency and experience.
Detailed format: The detailed format lets candidates assess each competency using 4 different metrics: Proficiency, Experience, Last Used, and Interest.
Simple or Detailed: You can use the simple format, the detailed format, or even both. When using both formats, candidates first go through a process in simple format and later, they're asked to provide the additional details. If you need to specify requirements that are different from those set by your administrator and used with the simple format, you need to select the option "Modify the minimum requirements of proficiency and experience" before you can select a minimum proficiency level of a competency and the minimum years of experience required.

Required and Asset

When you add questions and competencies to a requisition, you can specify if a certain answer is required or maybe just an asset.

Required: The candidate must have the competency or the right answer to a question to be considered for the job. It's like the minimum requirement.
Asset: The candidate doesn't need to have the competency or the answer to a question to be selected for the job, but it would distinguish a candidate compared to others. It's like a strongly preferred or nice to have qualification.

Here are some examples.

Example	Question
This is a single answer question for which the candidate will only select one answer. If a Bachelor's Degree is required, you must mark that answer and all answers greater than that answer as required. Otherwise, a candidate that answers Master's degree won't be recorded as having met the requirement, even though candidates with a Master's degree do meet the minimum requirement.	Indicate the highest level of education you have completed. High School Associate's Degree Bachelor's Degree - Required Master's Degree - Required PhD - Required None of the above
This is a single answer question for which the candidate will only select one answer. If a minimum of 2 years of experience is required, you must mark "1 to 3 years" and all answers greater than that answer as required. Otherwise, a candidate that answers "3 to 6 years" won't be recorded as having met the requirement, even though those candidates have at least 3 years of experience and do meet the minimum requirement.	How many years of experience do you have in Java programming. No experience Less than 1 year 1 to 3 years - Required 3 to 6 years - Required 6 to 10 years - Required More than 10 years - Required

Example

Question

This is a single answer question for which the candidate will only select one answer. If a Bachelor's Degree is required, you must mark that answer and all answers greater than that answer as required. Otherwise, a candidate that answers Master's degree won't be recorded as having met the requirement, even though candidates with a Master's degree do meet the minimum requirement.

Indicate the highest level of education you have completed.

High School
Associate's Degree
Bachelor's Degree - Required
Master's Degree - Required
PhD - Required
None of the above

This is a single answer question for which the candidate will only select one answer. If a minimum of 2 years of experience is required, you must mark "1 to 3 years" and all answers greater than that answer as required. Otherwise, a candidate that answers "3 to 6 years" won't be recorded as having met the requirement, even though those candidates have at least 3 years of experience and do meet the minimum requirement.

How many years of experience do you have in Java programming.

No experience
Less than 1 year
1 to 3 years - Required
3 to 6 years - Required
6 to 10 years - Required
More than 10 years - Required

Weight

Weight is a numerical value added to a given answer to give it more consideration when prescreening candidates. The weight criterion is an optional third level filter. To use the weight feature, you assign a certain number of "points" to the answer you want to weight. Keep it simple, weighting is used to refine requirements and assets, so it should be used selectively.

Weighting can be helpful with a high volume requisition as there will be more questions and you will need to have extensive filtering of the candidates list.

If you decide to use weight, here are some tips to keep in mind to know what to weight:

First determine what answers need points. Not all questions or answers need weighting.
Only weight assets not requirements, and only those assets that really need to stand out from the others to sort your ideal candidates to the top of the list.
One exception to the asset rule is you can put weight on single answer requirements if the questions are minimum or greater like we saw earlier.
Another exception is if the Prescreening requirement column is strictly used for OFCCP compliance, then typically assets aren't used, and some organizations may want to use weighting in that case to help sort the list.

Example	Question
This is a multiple answer question where you may have several assets. Weight helps you identify preferred, or super assets over other assets listed. Here we see MS Project is the most important asset out of the 4 assets. 3 out of the 4 assets are weighted with extra points. When using a list that includes requirements and assets, never assign weight to requirements. The candidate will either meet the requirement or not, and adding weight to a requirement listed won't help in providing further differentiation from other candidates. The total weight for this question is 100%. You can assume that this is the only question weighted on the whole questionnaire. If a candidate selected all the assets with weighting they would receive 6 asset points or a 100% result.	Indicate which computer applications you have used to perform your job duties in the past. Select all that apply. MS Access MS Word - Required MS Excel - Required MS Publisher - Asset, Weight: 1 (17%) MS Project - Asset, Weight: 3 (50%) Adobe Acrobat - Asset, Weight: 2 (33%) Adobe Pagemaker - Asset None of the above Total for Competencies and Questions - Weight: 6 (100%)
This is a single answer question. The one exception where you would weight requirements is on a question like this one. In this example, we are hiring a junior level HR Generalist, so a preferred level of years experience is indicated even though anyone with one or more years of experience would meet the requirement. Here, we see that 3-5 years is the most desirable out of all the choices. The 5-7 years is a medium level. And the over 7 years gets the least amount of points as they may be overqualified.	How many years of experience do you have as a Human Resources Generalist? No experience Less than one year More than 1 year and less than 3 years - Required More than 3 years and less than 5 years - Required, Weight: 3 (100%) More than 5 years and less than 7 years - Required, Weight: 2 (67%) More than 7 years - Required, Weight: 1 (33%)

Example

Question

This is a multiple answer question where you may have several assets. Weight helps you identify preferred, or super assets over other assets listed. Here we see MS Project is the most important asset out of the 4 assets. 3 out of the 4 assets are weighted with extra points. When using a list that includes requirements and assets, never assign weight to requirements. The candidate will either meet the requirement or not, and adding weight to a requirement listed won't help in providing further differentiation from other candidates. The total weight for this question is 100%. You can assume that this is the only question weighted on the whole questionnaire. If a candidate selected all the assets with weighting they would receive 6 asset points or a 100% result.

Indicate which computer applications you have used to perform your job duties in the past. Select all that apply.

MS Access
MS Word - Required
MS Excel - Required
MS Publisher - Asset, Weight: 1 (17%)
MS Project - Asset, Weight: 3 (50%)
Adobe Acrobat - Asset, Weight: 2 (33%)
Adobe Pagemaker - Asset
None of the above
Total for Competencies and Questions - Weight: 6 (100%)

This is a single answer question. The one exception where you would weight requirements is on a question like this one. In this example, we are hiring a junior level HR Generalist, so a preferred level of years experience is indicated even though anyone with one or more years of experience would meet the requirement. Here, we see that 3-5 years is the most desirable out of all the choices. The 5-7 years is a medium level. And the over 7 years gets the least amount of points as they may be overqualified.

How many years of experience do you have as a Human Resources Generalist?

No experience
Less than one year
More than 1 year and less than 3 years - Required
More than 3 years and less than 5 years - Required, Weight: 3 (100%)
More than 5 years and less than 7 years - Required, Weight: 2 (67%)
More than 7 years - Required, Weight: 1 (33%)

Add Questions to a Requisition

You can add prescreening questions to a requisition.

Go to the Requisitions menu.
Open the requisition.
Click the Requisition Info tab.
Go to the Prescreening section and click the Edit icon.
Go to the Questions section and click Add.
Select one or more questions.
Click Add Questions.

The questions are added to the requisition. If you added several questions, you can reorder them. Select an order number from the list and click the Reorder button. You can also define required and asset criteria, and weight.

Create a Question for a Requisition

You can create questions for a specific requisition. It's recommended to do this only when the question isn't readily available in the Questions Library. Ideally, the content manager should create that question for you and place it in the library such that all users and candidates can benefit from that question. When the question is created, it's not available in the Questions Library and for other requisitions.

Go to the Requisitions menu.
Open the requisition.
Click the Requisition Info tab.
Go to the Prescreening section and click the Edit icon.
Go to the Questions section and click Create.
Enter the question in the Question field.
Select the type of answer:
- Single answer: The candidate selects one answer from a list of choices.
- Multiple answers: The candidate selects as many answers as applicable from a list of choices.
- Text answer: The candidate types a brief answer in response to a specific question. Use text questions sparingly; use them where they can allow for expansion of information asked in a previous question.
For a question with a single or multiple answers, decide if you want to display the answers with radio buttons or using a drop-down menu. Then provide possible answers to the question.
For a text answer, indicate the number of lines available for the candidates to provide an answer.
Click Save and Close.

Create a Question Based on a Library Question

You can copy a question from the Questions Library and use to create a question specific to the requisition.

Go to the Requisitions tab.
Open the requisition.
Go to the Prescreening section and click the Edit icon.
Go to the Questions section and click Copy from Library.
Select a question from the list.
Click Add Questions.
Click on the question and modify it to fit the requisition purpose.

Add Competencies to a Requisition

You can add competencies to a requisition to gather proficiency level and years of experience of a candidate to find the best candidate for a job.

Go to the Requisitions tab.
Open the requisition.
Go to the Prescreening section and click the Edit icon.
Go to the Competencies section and click Add.
Select one or more competencies.
Click Add Competencies.

The competencies are added to the requisition. If you added several competencies, you can reorder them. Select an order number from the list and click the Reorder button. You can also define properties such as the minimum proficiency and experience levels, required and asset criteria, and weight.

Flag ACE Submissions to Identify Ideal Candidates

With the ACE submission flagging, you can set a threshold to identify the ideal candidates for a job. ACE candidates are identified based on their responses to the competencies and questions in the requisition file.

When you activate this feature, you must set the prescreening outcome that you want to flag a submission as being ACE. You can also choose to notify certain people by email.

Go to the Requisitions menu.
Open a requisition.
Click the Prescreen Alerts tab.
In the ACE Submission Flagging section, click Activate.
Select options as needed.
- Result: A submission meeting all the prescreening required criteria and obtaining a result of at least n %: Candidates who meet all the required criteria and the result value will be considered ACE candidates.
- Asset: A submission meeting all the prescreening required criteria and obtaining n of n assets: Candidates who meet all the required criteria and the minimum number of assets will be considered ACE candidates.
- Both Result and Assets must be met: Use this option to identify ACE candidates using the result and asset conditions.
- Either Result or Assets must be met: Use this option to identify ACE candidates using the result or asset condition.
You can send an email to specific recipients to inform them that ACE submissions were submitted. The email contains a PDF of the candidate files. All recipients receive the same candidate files, regardless of their permissions to view candidate information.
Click Done.

When the ACE submission flagging is set on a requisition, the ACE star icon appears on the Requisitions list, next to a requisition and on the requisition summary card. Candidates who apply to the requisition and meet the criteria are marked as ACE candidate on their respective submission. The ACE star icon is displayed.

Filtering ACE Submissions

There are several ways to filter ACE submissions.

Sorting ACE Submissions: The submissions list of a specific requisition contains the ACE Submission column. Submissions with this icon are ACE submissions. You can sort the list by ACE submissions. You can also use the Requirements, Assets Met X/Y and Result columns to sort candidates.

Using the ACE Filters The ACE filter can help you to only display ACE submissions for a requisition. The Meet required criteria is another way to filter the submissions list to show active candidates who meet all the required criteria of the Prescreening section of the requisition. You can also use the Assets Met and Results between (%) features to filter the list.

Adjusting Required and Asset Criteria: If your submissions list shows too many or too few ACE submissions, you can go back to the requisition Prescreening section and adjust the Required and Asset criteria. You may realize that a response you marked as an asset should have been marked as a requirement.

Updating the ACE Alert: If you do adjust the Required and Asset criteria, then you need to review the ACE Alert. You may need to adjust the selections of assets or adjust overall settings based on the modifications you made in the requisition Prescreening section.

Request More Information About Submissions

With the Request More Information feature, you can contact candidates who meet prescreening required criteria for a job and you can request more information from them. Candidates receive an email inviting them to return to their submission and provide additional information.

Here's an example where you might want to use this feature. Instead of creating an application flow that could be too long for most candidates to complete, the Request More Information option allows you to stick to only the most basic information. Candidates who meet your criteria are invited to provide additional information. This results in a much better user experience for candidates as you're showing a special interest for those candidates.

Go to the Requisitions menu.
Open a requisition.
Click the Prescreen Alerts tab.
In the Request More Information section, click Activate.
Select the options as needed.
- Result: A submission meeting all the prescreening required criteria and obtaining a result of at least n %: Candidates who meet all the required criteria and the result value will receive an email to provide more information.
- Asset: A submission meeting all the prescreening required criteria and obtaining n of n assets:Candidates who meet all the required criteria and the minimum number of assets will receive an email to provide more information.
- Both Result and Assets must be met: Use this option if you want both result and assets to be met.
- Either Result or Assets must be met: Use this option if you want either the result or assets to be met.
Click Done.

When the ACE submission flagging is set on a requisition, the ACE star icon appears on the Requisitions list, next to a requisition and on the requisition summary card. Candidates who apply to the requisition and meet the criteria are marked as ACE candidate on their respective submission. The ACE star icon is displayed.