Definition
Applicant screening
Applicant screening is the step between an application arriving and a person being offered work. It checks whether the applicant can do the job, holds the certificates the job requires, can physically reach the site at the start time, and is likely to show up.
Also called candidate screening, pre-screening, phone screening. Last updated .
For a permanent hire, screening ends in an interview. For temp staffing it ends in a decision about a pool: is this someone we can put on a shift next week, and on which kind of shift. That is a different question, and it gets asked far more often.
Volume is what breaks the manual version. A warehouse posting can take a hundred applications, most from people who will never answer their phone. Working down that list in order is how a coordinator spends a morning to find four people worth talking to.
The checks worth running first are the ones that disqualify: can this person legally work here, can they get to the site for a six in the morning start, do they hold the card the site requires, and do they pick up the phone. Everything else can wait for the conversation.
Screening by phone beats screening by form in this market, for two reasons. The answer to whether somebody can reach Brampton by six is a sentence, not a checkbox. And a worker who does not answer during screening will not answer at four in the morning either, which is the single most useful thing the call tells you.
Screening also produces a record, and the record outlives the coordinator who made it. When a client asks why a particular person was sent, or when the person who took the call has moved on, what matters is a note of what was asked and what the applicant said, attached to that worker rather than sitting in somebody's inbox.
Where Kordis fits, and where it does not
Kordis screens by placing a structured phone call, scoring the answers against the rubric you chose for that role, and writing the transcript and the score onto the applicant's record. You read the shortlist. The call says who it is calling for, and it leaves a voicemail rather than talking to an answering machine.
See how Kordis worksCommon questions
What is the difference between screening and an interview?
Screening decides whether a conversation is worth having. It is short, identical for every applicant, and it checks facts: eligibility, distance, certificates, availability. An interview is longer, specific to the person, and it decides whether to place them.
Can applicant screening be automated?
The fact checking can be, because the questions are the same every time and the answers are checkable. The judgement should not be. The split that works is that the calls and the scoring happen without you, and the decision to hire stays with you.
Is a phone screen better than an application form for temp work?
For light industrial work, usually. A form tells you what somebody typed. A call tells you whether they answer, how they sound about an early start, and whether the distance is real. Those three predict attendance better than a form does.
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