In the amusement park world of hiring, who gets to go on your wild hiring ride? Screening is the bunny-arm of the hiring process, the first step in deciding who makes it to the next. Looking back on my time as a manager, I remember being faced with a stack of applications and resumes while the pressure to hire mounted. “Screening” sometimes became synonymous with handwriting analysis.

If the application wasn’t legible, it was a ‘No.’ If a candidate did not bother to match the Professional Objective section of the resume to the job, it was a ‘No.’ Understandable, perhaps--I needed a way to weed through the pile. But as an effective means of filtering out applicants who couldn’t do the job, reading tea leaves or consulting a psychic might have been better ways to go.

Screening is a critical part of the hiring process. When done well, it saves hiring managers time, effort and expense while leading to better hires in the end. While your screening strategy is probably more sophisticated than handwriting analysis (it is, right?), it’s surprising how many of us miss the mark.

Here, some of the ways our screening falls short:

1) Looking Only at Experience. Doing keyword scans on resumes is often the screening method of choice. But what an applicant has done in the past (if you can believe the resume) is not always a good predictor of future performance. A high-quality pre- employment assessment helps you screen by filtering out applicants not capable of critical job behaviors, regardless of experience.

2) Screening Too Late in the Process. If interviewing is your idea of screening, you’re not protecting your time or the company’s resources. Interviewing should be the last step on the road to selection. Screening should be the first.

3) Not Keeping It Job-Focused. Just as handwriting legibility was probably not predictive of retail selling prowess, things like credit checks aren’t either (ask the EEOC). Whatever your method, it should focus on capabilities relevant to the job.

A good screening strategy is essential to an effective hiring process. It can prevent bad hires from sneaking in the back door by focusing your efforts on only the capable candidates.

So, what’s your bunny-arm?

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