Here’s Our In-Depth Guide to Shortlisting Candidates
Speed and efficiency are everything in recruitment, and both depend on smart shortlisting.
Unfortunately, over three-quarters of applicants are typically unqualified for the roles they apply to—a common frustration for hiring managers. It’s not only a waste of time, but it burns everyone out and increases cost per hire.
That’s where shortlisting comes in.
It’s the process of weeding out the candidates who don’t meet your needs so you can focus on the ones who do. In this Willo article, we'll share everything you need to know to start shortlisting candidates more effectively.
What Is Candidate Shortlisting?
Candidate shortlisting is the process of narrowing down a pool of applicants to a smaller, more focused group of candidates who meet the key qualifications for a role. This allows you to concentrate only on those who have the skills and potential to succeed in the position.
How short should your shortlist be?
There's no one-size-fits-all answer.
It depends on factors like your team's capacity, the role's complexity, and your company's hiring history. Most hiring managers aim to shortlist 3-7 candidates for standard positions, with the number trending lower for senior roles and higher for entry-level positions where you might want to interview more candidates.
We also recommend having a reserve list of 2-3 strong candidates. Keep these candidates engaged with brief weekly updates on your timeline, and be transparent that you're pursuing other candidates first.
If someone from the shortlist drops out or doesn't respond within 48 hours of an offer, you can quickly move forward with your reserve candidates while maintaining hiring momentum.
Why Is Candidate Shortlisting Important
Effective candidate shortlisting isn't just helpful—it's essential for maintaining a strategic and efficient recruitment process.
Here's why:
Minimal risk of bad hires
Bad hires are costly and disruptive, both in terms of time and resources. In fact, managers spend about 17% of their time supervising bad hires and many companies end up losing an average of $17,000 per bad hire.
Shortlisting helps reduce the chances of making a poor hiring decision by focusing on key qualifications, experience, and role alignment right from the start.
Improved time to hire
Without a shortlisting strategy, sifting through hundreds of applications can slow hiring and lead to delays. Shortlisting lets you focus on the top candidates from the beginning, speeding up the interview and selection stages.
This helps you fill roles more quickly and efficiently.
Better candidate experience
A long, drawn-out hiring process doesn’t just affect your team—it affects candidates as well.
An efficient, and timely recruitment process will not just improve the candidate experience, it also increases the likelihood that they’ll have a positive view of your company, even if they don’t get the job this time around.
How to Shortlist Candidates Effectively
1. Define your shortlisting criteria
Shortlisting criteria must be the specific qualifications, skills (both soft and hard), and traits candidates must have to be considered for a role. These should be established right at the start of your hiring process and built into job descriptions to minimize irrelevant applications and ensure transparency throughout the hiring process.
So, before anything, meet with relevant stakeholders (managers, supervisors, etc) and come up with a comprehensive list of the necessary skills and traits. Once you’ve done that, categorize them into three groups: mandatory, important, and preferred.
This helps clarify what’s nonnegotiable versus what’s nice to have:
- Mandatory: The absolute minimum requirements. If a candidate lacks these, they should be eliminated early in the process.
- Important: These are skills or traits that are important, but there may be some flexibility. A candidate missing an important skill might still be considered if they excel in other areas.
- Preferred: These are nice-to-have qualifications or traits that would set a candidate apart but aren’t necessary for success. Candidates who have these bring additional value, but their absence shouldn’t be a dealbreaker.
These categories will guide your candidate assessments later in the process.
So, if you’re hiring for a sales manager position in a B2B company, here’s what that would typically look like in practice:
When listing criteria, be sure not to include any protected characteristics, like age, gender, race, or disability status. Ethically, these factors should never influence a candidate's suitability for a role. And if they do, there could be legal consequences.
2. Create shortlisting questions and create an assessment
Now, it's time to build your shortlisting questions. Start by revisiting the shortlisting criteria you established earlier. Each of these should guide the questions you create for your shortlisting assessment.
For example, if one of your criteria is the ability to develop and implement sales strategies, you’d want to create a question like: “Can you describe a time when you successfully developed and implemented a sales strategy? What was the outcome?”
3. Choose a shortlisting method
With your questions prepared, you can now select the most effective method to deliver them to candidates. While ATS filtering is popular for shortlisting, it's far from perfect. It can overlook strong candidates due to missing keywords, and manually reviewing every application is too time-consuming.
So, how should you shortlist candidates? We recommend asynchronous video shortlisting—here’s how this method works:
- Send candidates a set of questions tied to the criteria you defined earlier.
- Candidates record their responses at a time that works for them.
- Your hiring team can review all responses at your convenience and advance candidates that meet your criteria.
This method achieves two key goals. First, it gives you much more information than traditional resumes—personality, communication skills, and even technical abilities. Second, it significantly speeds up the shortlisting process by collecting information efficiently and reducing the need for scheduling.
The key to a smooth process is selecting the right tool—this is where Willo can help. With Willo, you get:
- Full control over your assessment structure, including video, text, or audio responses
- Customizable answer durations, retakes, and thinking time for candidates
- A simple one-click process to publish and share your interview via a generated link
- Seamless integration with leading ATS platforms like Greenhouse, allowing you to send invites to candidates at scale
These features helped WillowTree scale up candidate-centric hiring experiences to more than 17,000 candidates per year.
4. Evaluate candidates with a scorecard
Once responses start coming in, invite your team to Willo using the Showcase™ feature. Together, create a scorecard to assess candidates objectively. Ideally, the scorecard covers all the key criteria your questions were based on.
Then, rate each candidate on a consistent scale. While Likert scales (1-5) are popular, we recommend using a more actionable approach that focuses on whether you would advocate for hiring the candidate:
- Strong Yes — Endorse this hire
- Yes — Consider for hire
- Maybe — I need more information
- No — Should not consider hiring
- Strong No — Oppose this hire
Immediately rule out candidates who receive "No" or "Strong No" ratings on mandatory criteria. The real deliberation should be between candidates receiving "Yes" and "Strong Yes" ratings, while "Maybe" ratings indicate areas where you need more information before making a decision.
5. Communicate the outcome with candidates
Once you’ve finalized your shortlist, it's crucial to notify all candidates about their status. How you handle this step can significantly impact your company's reputation and the candidate experience, so it’s important to be both clear and considerate.
For candidates moving forward:
- Send a personalized message congratulating them on advancing to the next stage.
- Provide clear information about what’s next, whether it's an in-person interview, another assessment, or the final decision.
- Include any necessary details regarding timelines or preparation, and ensure candidates feel appreciated and informed about why they were selected.
For those not moving forward, it’s equally important to send a thoughtful, timely response. While it might be tempting to use a generic rejection, a more personalized message can leave a positive impression. Thank them for their time and effort, and if possible, offer constructive feedback or encourage them to apply for future opportunities.
Streamline Your Hiring Process with Smart Shortlisting
Shortlisting speeds up recruitment and ensures you focus on the most qualified candidates. In this article, we’ve outlined five key steps to help you successfully shortlist candidates. A crucial part of this process is using the right async shortlisting tool—Willo.
With Willo, you can easily gather all the important data, review candidates, and decide who moves forward in a fraction of the time.
Ready to streamline your shortlisting process? Try Willo for free today.
