Pre screening

[DodgyAgent]

I would like to know exactly what this means

Does it mean that an agency has spoken to the individual?
Does it mean that they have checked that the individual is alive, doesnt have bad breath and wears a beard?
Does it mean that they have validated skills (which agency has skills validators????)

Or what?

[DimPrawn]

Surely it just means you have gotten all the juicy references off the punter before a job even exists?

[malvolio]

I would like to know exactly what this means

Does it mean that an agency has spoken to the individual?
Does it mean that they have checked that the individual is alive, doesnt have bad breath and wears a beard?
Does it mean that they have validated skills (which agency has skills validators????)

Or what?

Out of interest, if you were given two candidates, one of whom had all that id, history and residency horsefeathers certified as true and one had not, would either one have an advantage as a candidate?

[KevinS]

Out of interest, if you were given two candidates, one of whom had all that id, history and residency horsefeathers certified as true and one had not, would either one have an advantage as a candidate?

The one the agent can convince to accept the lowest rate.

[malvolio]

The one the agent can convince to accept the lowest rate.

Not what I'm asking. For one thing, agents keep moaning about the time take on all these ancillary checks; I'm half wondering how much that's true, and if we could remove that workload, would it help their margins sufficiently to give an otherwise equal candidate an edge.?

[DimPrawn]

They do pre-screening at the STD clinic too. Maybe it's similar.

Ahem, allegedly.

[DodgyAgent]

Out of interest, if you were given two candidates, one of whom had all that id, history and residency horsefeathers certified as true and one had not, would either one have an advantage as a candidate?

The cheapest would get it

[tim123]

Shouldn't you be asking clients what they are expecting by this?

It used to be common for agents to actually insist on interviewing candidates to pre-screen them.

After getting caught out once by this process as a useless waste of time, I refused such offers in the future even if it meant that I didn't get put forward (which it did!)

tim

[Turion]

My first and last agent interview/screening was 10 yrs ago, when I first started contracting. Quick learner me

[shoes]

It means an agent has met the applicant and talked bull at them for 20 minutes while they sat there wondering why they bothered turning up.

I suppose the only benefit it might have is to weed out applicants who wear sandals and have beards. However this is probably a stipulation the agents client hasn't actually made, and if they are recruiting for a pure techy role it might even be an unspoken requirement.

It's another way for an agent who doesn't understand the role they are recruiting for to make poor decisions and restrict the pool of available talent to the client.


You're a factoring and cv filtering service, it's better for us all if you don't try to do any actual recruiting.