Pre-screening Forms

Overview

Pre-screening forms in Evolve ATS provide a highly effective way of saving your recruiting team time and effort in reviewing resumes for baseline qualifications. Some pre-screening form highlights include:

• Scoring Candidates - Evolve ATS screening questions can be used to score candidate responses and apply weighting to give recruiters an overall form score.
• Workflow Options - Candidates can be moved to a different workflow step based on individual question responses.

Audience

Admins, Hiring Managers, and Recruiters.

Best Practices

• Keep forms short (1 – 5 questions).
• Ask only need-to-know (not nice-to-know) questions.
• Require responses to all questions.
• Use screening forms for all positions with objective requirements (e.g., degree, certification, license, min. years of experience).
• Provide your recruiting team with information about new forms (they only see form titles).
• Create new forms expeditiously (in one sitting, as forms are immediately accessible to end users).
• If you map the information back to a standard or custom field, you can add said field to the candidate profile. This way, recruiters can quickly see the answers to the questions without going to the form.
• Use a Reject Later status for knocked-out applicants.
• Invite candidates to apply, vs. adding them to a requisition with pre-screen questions.
• Provide any third-party agents with your expectations regarding these forms.
• Make sure all questions are legally phrased.
• Use text response questions only when necessary (wide range of possible responses or to gain writing sample/narrative).
• Provide every applicant the ability to be truthful.

About Forms

Screening forms can be used in two places:

• Career site application process
• Pre-Interview Form

Typically, forms with knock-out or knock-in questions should only be used in the application process or as a pre-interview form before the very first interview a candidate would be invited to.

NOTE: When using knock-out or knock-in question scoring - which results in a status change for the respondent - be sure that you do not send the form to the applicant in later steps of the hiring process after their status has already been changed any number of times. For example, if they have been advanced to the Interview step and then sent the form that contains a question with a knock-in response that changes their status to Submit to Manager, they could be moved backward in the workflow.

Career Site Application Process

Candidates complete the form when they apply for a job.

To configure this option, navigate to your user menu > Admin > ATS > View Requisition Library > View Requisition Templates > select a requisition template.

Make sure you have the field Pre-Interview Form in your requisition templates.

NOTE: If this field is missing, expand the Details section and drag the Pre-Interview Form into the form.

Click Save.

Repeat this process for each requisition template as needed.

Pre-Interview Form

Forms may be in the interview invitation sent to candidates.

To configure this option, navigate to your user menu > Admin > ATS > View Interview Types and select the interview type where you want to include the form.

Select the Evaluation Name.

Click the Candidate Invitation Email tab > Add Form.

Select the Form from the list that you want to include in the email.

Click Submit.

Create Screening Form

To create a form, navigate to your user menu > Admin > ATS > View Screening Forms.

There are two ways you can create a screening form:

• Add Form
• Copy Form

Add Form

Add a form name in the Form Title Text field.

Drag and drop form elements into the form from the list on the right side of the screen.

Edit form elements by clicking the P (properties) icon.

You can then do the following:

• Edit the Field Name
• Mark as required
• Include extension
• Map with existing Standard or Custom Candidate Form Fields
  • Available for Standard or Custom Fields
  • Can create a new custom field
  • Can be added to the Candidate Search
  • If editing older forms (with responses), consider migrating the data (will pull in responses for the past year for searching purposes) 
  • Ensure the field types and labels match

Click Save.

Click Preview to see how the form will appear to candidates.

When you are finished, click Save.

Copy Form

Instead of creating a new form, you can copy an existing one.

Click Copy Form.

Select the form you want to copy from, then click Submit.  

You will then see a new form called Copy of the form name. You can click the form name to edit it, including changing its name.

Add Scoring

If scoring is enabled, every question is automatically given a weight. The weighting is distributed equally across all scored questions (i.e., if you have four scored questions, each will have a weight equal to 25%). The weight for each question can be changed so that the most important questions are scored higher than questions of lesser importance. To change the weight, select the weight in the form. The value must be between 0 and 100; the sum of all weights must be 100.

When the candidate completes the form, the score is calculated according to your scoring for each answer and your weighting for each question. This score will be between 0 and 100 points.

The following Form Elements support scoring:

• Radio buttons - At least one answer must be worth 10 points. For example, if you have three choices, the answers could be worth 0, 5, and 10 points or 7, 8, and 10 points.  
• Checkboxes - Multiple answers can be selected, so the sum of values must equal 10 points. The total for all answers must be 10 points. For example, if you have three choices, the answers could be worth 3, 3, and 4 points or 2, 3, and 5 points. The Advanced Options score is based on all answer values selected, not just one.
• Pulldown Menus - These can work like a radio button or a checkbox, depending on whether it's Allowed multi-select. If it doesn’t allow multi-select, it works like a radio button; if it does, it works like a checkbox.
  • Pulldown Menu allowing multi-select - If Allow Multi-select is selected, the pulldown menu scoring works the same as the checkboxes. Enter a score between 0 and 10 points for each answer. The total for all answers must be 10 points. For example, if you have three choices, the answers could be worth 3, 3, and 4 points or 2, 3, and 5 points.
  • Pulldown Menu not allowing multi-select - If you have not selected Allow Multi-select, the pulldown menu scoring works like the radio buttons. Enter a score between 0 and 10 points for each answer.  At least one answer must be 10 points.  For example, if you have three choices, the answers could be worth 0, 5, and 10 points or 7, 8, and 10 points.

Add scoring by clicking the P (properties) icon.

Click Add Scoring. Enter the Scores in the fields next to the answers.

Click Save.

Advanced Workflow Options

Advanced Workflow Options can be configured at both the individual and form levels. The steps below detail how to configure them at both levels.

NOTE: Candidates rejected through ‘knockout’ do not receive a rejection email. Their status is just changed to Rejected. You could then send out the rejection email later. If a candidate is moved automatically to Submit to Hiring Manager, the Requesting Candidate Approval (Triggered by Form) template will be sent to the hiring manager.

Question-level workflow options are always applied before form-level options. For example, suppose a candidate’s response to a question changes the candidate’s status to Screened, and the candidate's form score moves the candidate to Rejected. In that case, the system will move the candidate to Screened and not apply the second rule.  

Individual Question Workflow Options

By default, the most important question is at the top. Evolve ATS won’t look at the knock-out questions after the first one if their workflow changes. If the workflow doesn’t change, the next knock-out question will apply.

In Edit Properties, check the box for Add Scoring, then Advanced Workflow Options.

Complete the fields:

• Move to – Select the workflow state to which the candidate will be moved.
  NOTE: This dropdown menu will only contain workflow states shared by all your workflows, excluding Pending Approval and Offer Accepted.

• If Score between - Enter scores in these fields to configure automatically moving the candidate to a different workflow status based on their score.

To add another workflow option to the question, select Add Screening Criteria and follow the steps above.

Click Save.

If you have enabled workflow options for multiple questions, you can choose the order in which Evolve ATS will apply the rules. By default, the questions appear in the order in which they appear on the form. To change the order, click on the questions and drag and drop them into the order you prefer.

When using knock-out or knock-in question scoring, which results in a status change for the respondent, be sure that you do not send the form to the applicant in later steps of the hiring process after their status has already been changed any number of times.

For example, if they have advanced to the interview step and then sent the form containing a question with a knock-in response that changes their status to Submit to Manager, they could be moved backward in the workflow.

Form Level Workflow Options

To configure advanced workflow options at a form level, click Advanced Options.

Click Add Advanced Workflow Options.

Complete the fields:

• Move to – Select the workflow state to which the candidate will be moved.
  NOTE: This dropdown menu will only contain workflow states shared by all your workflows, excluding Pending Approval and Offer Accepted.
• If Score between - Enter scores in these fields to configure automatically moving the candidate to a different workflow status based on their score.

To add another workflow option to the question, select Add Screening Criteria and follow the steps above.

Click Save.

We automatically weigh the questions as they’re added. Click to change the weight; you must change the weight of all questions to equal 100%.

Weights are used to calculate the form's total score. Multiply the weight by the score you received, then times 10.

Reviewing Scores

Scores are visible in the respondent's application record under the Forms section of the Application tab. This is also where you can see what questions are on a pre-screening form. 

Navigate to the candidate profile, then click the Application tab.

Select the Forms tab. This will display the screening form with the questions and scores.

FAQ

Q. How do screening questions get answered for internal candidates and/or candidates whom agencies submit?

A. Internal candidates apply using the same process as external (career site) candidates, so any pre-screening questions will also be presented to them.

For agency-submitted candidates, you must decide on a policy or practice for gathering pre-screen information.

Q. Do knocked-out candidates receive an auto-rejection letter?

A. No. This would be a poor candidate experience. For this reason, we recommend an (active) status of Reject Later to help track knocked-out candidates for later rejection, either when the requisition is closed or at some regular interval as determined by your recruiting team.

Q. Is it possible to edit or delete an existing pre-screen form?

A. You cannot delete a form attached to any active requisitions; however, you can edit a form at any time. It is not best practice to fundamentally change any active form if candidates have already responded to the original (prior) version.

Q. How can pre-screen answers be searched for?

A. In the pre-screen form, you can map a pre-screen question to a standard or custom field (field title, type, and response array must match exactly); then, be sure the candidate field is added to the Search filter list (Admin > ATS > Candidate Search).