Shortlisting Applicants: A Simple Guide to Choosing the Best Applicants

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<h2>Key Takeaways</h2>
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<li>Shortlist applicants every day.</li>
<li>When filtering applicants, work hard to avoid all forms of discrimination on the basis of gender, age, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability, or similar factors.</li>
<li>To draw up your shortlist, do the following steps: review your Great Performance Profile, compare applicants to your required Key Competencies, note any areas on CVs that need exploring, divide applicants into qualified, possibly qualified and unqualified, and take action immediately.</li>
<li>Keeping track of your applicants can usually be done perfectly well with simple tools like email and spreadsheets.</li>
<li>If you don’t get enough qualified applicants, consider whether you need to use more Applicant Attraction Channels, lower your expectations, improve your advert, offer more money, stop displaying your logo or stop directing applicants to your employer career page.</li>
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If you follow my advice and use multiple Applicant Attraction Channels you should have a regular stream of applications coming in. 

Some hiring managers want to wait for more responses before starting to shortlist. This is unwise; a great applicant who sent you their details on day one might accept a job offer elsewhere. My #1 shortlisting tip is to schedule time in your diary to review applicants, preferably every weekday morning. Shortlisting is best undertaken by a single member of the Recruitment Team so they can quickly assess whether your Great Performance Profile is realistic.

Keep shortlisting even when you start interviewing because you never know what will happen. Candidates might not attend interviews, they may be unsuitable, or they might reject your job offer. There’s so much that can and does go wrong in recruitment; you need to be in control of your shortlist.

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How to Shortlist Applicants

Gather responses from all your Applicant Attraction Channels (if you received applications via an employee referral, or from recruitment agencies, you can skip straight to Telephone Interviews). Then draw up your shortlist following my simple step-by-step process:

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Step 1: Review your Great Performance Profile

Remind yourself of the Key Competencies essential to the job.

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Step 2: Briefly read through each application

• Remove obviously unsuitable people such as international applicants if you can’t offer a work visa. 
• Remember that discriminating on the basis of gender, age, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability, or similar factors isn’t just legally and ethically dubious, it’s bad business. By not discriminating you’ll enhance the diversity of your company, improve innovation, and create a better business culture.
• Looking at the remaining applicants, find positive reasons why you should interview each of them. Compare applicants to the Key Competencies defined in the Great Performance Profile rather than to the other applicants.
• Now run through the following checklist: 
  • Does the CV have spelling and grammar mistakes? This will be more of a problem if your job requires good writing skills or attention to detail.
  • Are there gaps in the applicant’s work history or sudden changes in the kinds of jobs they’ve had? Have they moved around a lot?
  • Do they have relevant qualifications or training that’s useful to the job?
• Finally, don’t discount people who live far away as they may be looking to relocate. And don’t rule out unemployed applicants as this might not be their fault and they could have a lot to offer.

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Step 3: Sort the applicants

Divide applicants into three categories:

1. Qualified: Applicants have all the necessary skills and competencies.
2. Possibly qualified: Applicants have most of the skills and competencies.
3. Unqualified: Short of skills and competencies. Don’t be afraid of rejecting applicants and deciding based on the information you have.

You’ll need a simple way to keep track of applicants from this point so you don’t get in a muddle. Often, the best solutions are the easiest because they get used. 

• Applicant Tracking Software (ATS): Hiring managers with ongoing requirements may use an ATS to organise applications. However, this won’t necessarily mean less work and may not be a good fit if they are complicated to use.
• Email: If applications arrive by email, create two folders in your inbox: “Qualified”, and “Possibly Qualified”. When you decide, drag their application email into the appropriate folder. (For unqualified applicants, once you’ve declined them by email, delete the application.)
• Spreadsheets: Create columns for the two shortlisted categories. As you decide on each applicant, enter their name in the appropriate column. (Spreadsheets in Google Docs can be shared with your Recruitment Team so everyone can contribute.) You can create more advanced versions by adding folders or columns, such as Left Message for Telephone Interview, Arranged Interview, Arranged Reference Call, Made Job Offer, Sent Job Offer and so on.
• Printing CVs: Some hiring managers are happy printing CVs, and literally putting them into piles, or in the bin! This does lack the ability to share progress with the rest of the Recruitment Team though.

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Step 4: Take action immediately

• Qualified: Don’t let your competitors beat you to the best applicants! Start carrying out Telephone Interviews. (See our guide Effective Telephone Interviews: Save Time & Find Top Talent for more details.)
• Possibly qualified: Retain their details and come back to them if your qualified applicants don’t work out. 
• Unqualified: Email unqualified applicants to let them know that they haven’t been successful.You should be striving to deliver a good candidate experience throughout the recruitment process, so diarise some time to send a bulk “We’re sorry you haven’t been successful” email (see our Template for Declining Unsuccessful Applicants by Email).

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<span class="purple-callout"><p>Are you looking for some advice or hands-on help? Let's chat – get your free consultation.</p><p>Also, be sure to check out my recruiting book for more tips - it's a bestseller.</p><p>I can even advertise jobs on the best UK job boards for just £199.</p></span>

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Why You Might Not Get Many Qualified Applicants

There could be various reasons for this, so don’t panic! Think about whether any of the following apply to your situation:

• Not advertising enough: This problem is often solved by advertising on more job sites and using other Applicant Attraction Channels. See our guide Fill Your Jobs Fast: Use Multiple Channels to Attract Great Performers and chapter 4 for ideas on where to advertise your vacancy.
• There’s no perfect person: Is your Great Performance Profile so stringent that the person you’re looking for doesn’t exist? If so, you need to amend it. For more on this, see our guide Realistic Recruitment: The "Perfect" Employee Doesn’t Exist and chapter 3.
• You have a poor advert: To improve your advertisement so that it attracts the best people, make sure that it explains clearly why a jobseeker should join your company rather than a competitor. See our guide Revealed: The Ultimate Structure for High-Impact Job Adverts and chapter 6 for guidance on how to write an effective advert.
• The advert does not utilise keywords: Your advert headline needs to use keywords jobseekers search for.
• The salary is too low or not stated: You may need to offer more to get the kind of person you want. And if you don’t state a salary in your advert you’ll end up with 80% fewer applications.
• You require application forms: Applicants hate these! They have already uploaded their CV and don’t want to spend time on a form. When I help companies with their recruitment process, I can quickly speed things up and help fill jobs simply by removing application forms.
• You’re displaying your logo: If you’re hiring regularly and identifying your company in your adverts, jobseekers might be interpreting this as an indication that you have a high staff turnover. This might be putting them off applying.
• Your advert diverts jobseekers to an employer career page: If your advert takes applicants from the job site to your employer careers page then you’ll tend to lose over 90% of them. Don’t do this!  For more on this, see our guide Why Most Employer Career Pages Fail (& How to Make Sure Yours Doesn't) and chapter 4.
• Take action!: You must act quickly to alter the advert, and advertise more widely, otherwise the response will likely stay the same.

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Additional Resources

• Recruiting Book; The Secrets of Great Recruitment: How to Recruit Great Employees.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Simple Steps to Shortlist Applicants Efficiently & Fairly.
• Article; How to Shortlist Candidates for Interview and Avoid Costly Mistakes.
• Article; How to Review Modern CVs: Hiring Managers Beware.
• Article; Manage Jobseeker Enquiries Professionally.
• Article; What to Do When Current Employees See Your Job Advert.