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In today’s recruitment landscape, with new challenges cropping up at every turn, traditional candidate scoring processes have been unable to keep up.
87% of HR professionals reported that they could not find qualified applicants for the position they were trying to fill.
It’s time for HR teams to upgrade their recruitment strategies with effective practices like candidate scoring.
Candidate scoring, if done right, can successfully eliminate recruiting inefficiencies stemming from improper evaluation, hiring bias and limited insights into a candidate’s profile.
What is Candidate Scoring?
Candidate scoring essentially refers to scoring and consequently ranking candidates based on different criteria to assess their suitability for a role. This way, recruiters can identify top candidates much quicker, while maintaining an unbiased approach.
Candidate scoring practices can be integrated into three steps of the evaluation process:
- Resume scoring: Candidates can be scored on their experience and skills match to the job criteria.
- Interview scoring: An interview score card can be used to evaluate their soft skills and cultural fit. It can also help hiring managers gain better insights into a candidate’s overall profile.
- Assessment scoring: This allows hiring managers to understand candidates’ capabilities better by scoring them based on skill-based assessments.
Benefits of Candidate Scoring
Scoring candidates based on a carefully designed scoring process can greatly improve the recruiting process. It has the following benefits:
1. Enhances Candidate Experience
With a set evaluation process in place, the entire recruiting process becomes much quicker. This helps recruiters get back to the candidates with the status of their application promptly. It can contribute positively to their candidate’s experience. Besides, an efficiently implemented scoring system shows a professional, structured, and data-driven approach to recruiting practices. This not only reflects well on the company’s image but also contributes to enhancing the overall candidate experience.
2. Increases Efficiency
Candidate scoring is especially beneficial for positions with a high volume of applicants or in cases of bulk hiring. AI driven Applicant Tracking Systems skim through large applicant pools by scanning resumes for relevant keywords as per the job criteria. This allows the most promising candidates to move up higher in the ranks and recruiters can invest more energy in conducting in-depth evaluations for them. This leads to reduced hiring time, filling open positions much faster and improving operational workflow.
3. Cost-Saving
As a scoring system already skims the best candidates, recruiters must spend less time and resources on the less promising applicants. And because faster hiring decisions can be made, this also translates to less expenses for the company in advertising and sourcing candidates for an open position.
4. Better Job Matches
Automated candidate scoring systems filter resumes by keyword, extracting resumes with the most promising profiles. This inadvertently emphasizes a focus on required skills and experience. As a result, the most qualified candidates appear at the top of the list. That way, when a candidate is selected, it helps ensure that they are compatible with the position. In this way, companies can build hiring processes that can hike up retention rates.
5. Reduces Unconscious Bias
Implementing a candidate scoring system creates a transparent evaluation process. A human can have inherent biases and stereotypes which can influence their decisions. But scoring candidates through a standard process eliminates that possibility. Factors like age, gender, ethnicity or career gaps that can affect an evaluation are not considered. Instead, every applicant is given an even playing field where they are ranked according to compatibility.
Automating Candidate Scoring
While candidate scoring can also be done manually, automating it achieves greater efficiency.
Today almost 99% of Fortune 500 companies implement an Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) for candidate sourcing and evaluation.
But if you consider the number of steps involved in crafting an efficient candidate scoring process, it can be quite a few! That’s why your best bet at finding the perfect ATS that is tailored to your hiring needs would be opting for an integrated solution like Akrivia HCM.
Akrivia’s AI-powered ATS offers a comprehensive solution to streamline your recruitment process. With an OCR-enabled resume parsing feature along with scoring and ranking candidates, it makes the recruiter’s job way less time consuming.
Additional features like requisition management and dynamic interview scheduling can also be used to automate repetitive tasks. This allows recruiters and hiring managers to invest more time in evaluating and engaging candidates who can convert into potential hires.
To know more about what Akrivia can do for your business, request a demo today.
Conclusion
The foundations of a resilient workforce begin with finding the right candidates for the right positions. With effective candidate scoring, you not only find the most qualified talents but also find the most compatible ones. This also reduces turnover, boosting retention and ensuring a sustainable employee life cycle.
Would you consider an ATS for your recruitment strategies? Let us know in the comments!
