Unique Job Specific Screening Questions

Around here, we sometimes call the unique job specific screening questions available in our applicant tracking software portal the “deal-breaker” questions. You may attach these questions to individual job postings in order to gather more objective information about applicants up front. In turn, the Screening Questions Reports allow you to quickly compare applicants’ answers to one another and change status codes on the fly. This saves a lot of time as you don’t need to view the entire applicant record if an applicant has already answered a deal-breaker question in such a way that he/she removes him/herself from consideration for a position by failing to meet basic requirements.

But job-specific screening questions are also a great place to feature thought-provoking essay-type questions so that you may better understand an applicant’s motivation, inspiration and passion.

Here are some questions worth noticing from both categories. Maybe you’ll feel inspired to use some of them in your own job listings…

Deal-Breaker Screening Questions

1. What is the current expiration date of your [insert license/certification here]?
2. How many years of experience do you have in [insert desired field/discipline]?
3. Please list your salary history and minimum salary requirement.
4. What is the maximum number of employees that you have supervised in a job?
5. Are you experienced in administering performance evaluations?
6. Have you ever terminated an employee?
7. Do you have any experience using Excel for [insert desired activity…i.e. financial reporting]?
8. The work schedule for this position is generally 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday. Will this schedule work for you?
9. Do you have experience using a cash register and/or handling cash?
10. Please mark all locations at which you are interested in applying.
11. I am aware that the company may require a drug test as part of the hiring process. Y/N.
12. Mark all languages in which you are either conversational or fluent.
13. Do you have a valid CDL?
14. Mark all the software applications in which you are proficient.
15. What machine equipment are you able to operate?

Essay Screening Questions

1. What do you feel is the most difficult part of customer service?
2. Share a difficult issue you have had to confront with an employee and how you resolved it.
3. Describe your level of experience with third party audits and/or governmental agencies.
4. Think of a time when you knew a co-worker was taking shortcuts that you knew would impact quality negatively. What did you do?
5. What volunteer work have you done that has prepared you for this position? Why do you feel it was of value?
6. Imagine you were in a job where you had the opportunity to do what you do best every day. How are you spending most of your time? What results are you generating?
7. What are your learning goals? What particular skills do you want to learn? What specific challenges do you want to experience?
8. What is the most dangerous aspect of your current job? How do you manage the risk?
9. What are some things you would like to avoid in a job?
10. What is the best feedback you have ever received from a supervisor? What made it so good?
11. Please list the top 3 things that are most important to you in considering new employment.
12. In what kind of culture and environment do you do your best work?
13. What really productive partnerships or mentors have you had? What was it about these relationships that made them work so well for you? What did you contribute to these relationships?
14. What are your favorite screening questions to use when narrowing your field of applicants? Please let us know with your comments.

If you are interested in using job-specific screening questions in our applicant tracking software, please contact ExactHire to schedule a demo.

Image credit: Question! by Stefan Baudy (contact)