Use cases

Screening by situation

The same first round goes wrong in different ways depending on who you are hiring and when: a festive peak, a pile of fresh graduates, applicants more at home in Malay or Chinese, or a business with no one whose job is hiring. These pages cover what the first round has to settle in each situation, and the questions that settle it.

• Shift and part-time hiring

  Part-time and shift roles fall apart on availability far more often than on skill. The applicants are usually at work or in class when you call, so the first round has to reach them when they are free and pin down the hours they can actually give.

• Seasonal and festive hiring

  Seasonal hiring squeezes weeks of recruiting into days, just before the busiest trading of the year. The first round has to settle dates rather than intentions, because a temporary hire who is away on the peak days is a gap in the one week you cannot afford one.

• Multilingual hiring

  In Malaysia the language an applicant interviews best in is often not the language the job advert was written in. A first round held only in English screens out people who would do the job well, and one that never checks language misses the roles where it matters.

• Small business hiring

  In a small business, the person hiring is usually also running the shop, the kitchen or the accounts. Screening happens in the gaps between everything else, which is exactly why good applicants wait too long and go elsewhere.

• Recruitment agencies

  An agency is paid for speed and for the quality of the shortlist it sends. The first round is where consultants lose most of their hours, calling applicants for roles that several clients need filled at the same time.

• Graduate and intern hiring

  Graduate and internship intakes draw hundreds of applicants with near-identical CVs: the same degrees, the same societies, little work history. The first round has to find out what the CV cannot say, and fit around exams and university dates.

Hiring in one sector? Screening by industry. For one specific role, screening questions by role.