It’s time to talk about something that keeps hiring managers up at night: candidate screening. There’s nothing spookier than getting candidate screening wrong and making an expensive hiring mistake. Screening doesn’t get as much attention as interviewing or reviewing resumes, but it’s something you need to get right. When done correctly, screening saves you so much time in the future. When you get it wrong, it can drain resources and time. While it’s important to know what to do, it’s equally important to understand what not to do. Here are 5 spooky candidate screening mistakes you are making.

Under a time crunch, it may seem important to get the screening done quickly or tempting to skip over this process entirely. Rushed screening is a great way to make a hiring mistake. Hurried screening makes it easy to overlook red flags, encourages bias, and ultimately leads to wasted time and money. It’s important to do the due diligence in the screening process. A vacant position harms productivity for a short time but one and hiring mistake can be harmful to company culture and cause setbacks for a long time. Don’t rush screening, you’ll thank yourself in the future.

Hiring managers are busy and it’s hard to make time to prepare before getting on a screening call with a candidate. Coming unprepared to a screening call or not reviewing a candidate’s resume beforehand, leads to mistakes. Great questions help guide the conversation and ultimately help you understand if the candidate is the right fit for the position. Review the resume and identify any potential red flags or aspects you’d like to explore further.

Whether you’ll continue speaking to the candidate or not, everyone should at least receive a thank you note. A candidate may not be the right fit this time, but you never know if they will be in the future. Ghosting a candidate after a screening call leaves a bad taste in their mouth and a bad impression of your company. A quick thank you email helps build your employer brand and is an investment for the future.

When combing through resumes and you see a candidate that is obviously overqualified, it’s easy to skip over it. It’s time to break that paradigm. Although on paper the candidate is overqualified and wouldn’t be the right fit, don’t discount them. It’s worth your time getting on a call. You never know who the great next employee may be.

Last but certainly not least is ignoring the culture fit of a candidate. It’s easy to feel rushed and jump into business straight away. Instead of skipping the get-to-know-you questions, take the time to get to know the person behind the resume. The opening small talk of the conversation is a great way to assess how someone would fit into your culture. When culture fit isn’t probably assessed, it can lead to problems in the future. Here’s a spooky stat for you: 73% of professionals have left a job because of poor cultural fit. Don’t become another stat; evaluate culture as early as the first screening call.

Avoid the horror of making the wrong hiring decision and don’t commit these candidate screening mistakes. Screening is the first step you need to get right in the hiring process. Do you need help? Maybe you don’t have the resources necessary to dedicate to screening. Recruiting Connection can help. Connect with us!