Screening questions
Ask applicants extra questions on the application form, mark some answers as disqualifying, and let Vakanssi flag the people who do not meet your must-haves.
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Screening questions Pro feature, requires a Vakanssi Pro license add a few extra questions to a job’s application form. You can mark certain answers as disqualifying, and Vakanssi flags anyone who gives one, so you spend your time on the applicants who actually meet your must-haves.
Nothing is rejected silently. A disqualifying answer always flags the application for you to see. Moving those applicants out of the way is a separate, optional setting.
Where your questions come from
There are two levels, and a job always uses one of them:
- A global default set. These questions apply to every job that has no set of its own, including jobs you already published. Set them under Hiring, then Settings, then Screening.
- A per-job set. Open a job and override the default for that job alone.
A job inherits the global default until you change the questions on the job itself. If you edit a job’s questions back to exactly the default set, the job goes back to inheriting, so a later change to the default reaches it again.
Which one am I editing?
On a job that is still inheriting, the screening section says “Inheriting the global default set. Editing here overrides it for this job.” Once you save a different set, that job stops following the default.
Adding questions
Both the global set and a job’s own set use the same editor.
- For the default set, click Hiring, then Settings, then Screening. For one job, open the job and click the Employment & application tab, then find Screening questions.
- Click Add question below the table, then type your question in the Question column of the new row.
- Pick a Type. For a question with a list of answers, put one option per line in the Options column.
- Tick Required if the applicant must answer it before they can submit.
- On the Settings tab, click Save changes. On a job, update the job to save its questions.
Since v0.34.7, Add question adds as many rows as you like before you save. To remove a question, tick Delete on its row and save.
The Order column controls the order the questions appear in on the application form. Use the up and down arrows on each row to move a question. With JavaScript turned off, the editor shows one blank row and a number per question instead (lowest first, numbered 10, 20, 30), so you can slot a question into a gap.
On a Short text or Paragraph row, the Options and Disqualifying answers boxes are greyed out and read-only, because nothing typed there would survive a save.
Question types
| Type | What the applicant gets | Length limit |
|---|---|---|
| Short text | A single-line box | 500 characters |
| Paragraph | A multi-line box | 2,000 characters |
| Single choice | A dropdown, pick one | Set your own options |
| Multiple choice | Checkboxes, pick any number | Set your own options |
| Yes / No | A dropdown with Yes and No | Always Yes and No |
Choice questions need options
Single choice and Multiple choice questions are dropped when you save if you have not given them any options. Put one option per line in the Options column. Yes / No questions always use Yes and No, so you can leave their options blank.
A question is also dropped if its label ends up blank (for example, a label that was only formatting or markup, which is stripped). Either way you are told: saving shows a notice naming how many questions could not be saved and why, so a dropped question is never a silent surprise.
Marking an answer as disqualifying
Only the three choice types (Single choice, Multiple choice, and Yes / No) can have disqualifying answers, because Vakanssi has to match the answer against a known list.
Put the disqualifying answers in the Disqualifying answers column, one per line, spelled as they appear in Options. Capitalisation does not matter, so for a Yes / No question, No and no both work.
Since v0.33.43, a disqualifying answer that matches none of the question’s options is not saved, and the save notice tells you how many were dropped, so check the spelling against the Options column.
An applicant who gives a disqualifying answer is always flagged. On a Multiple choice question, picking any one disqualifying option is enough.
Moving flagged applicants automatically
By default a flagged applicant stays exactly where they are, at the top of your pipeline, marked so you can see why. If you would rather they were moved out of the way, turn on the setting under Hiring, then Settings, then Screening:
Automatically move knocked-out applicants to your Lost stage.
With it on, a flagged applicant is moved to your pipeline’s closed “lost” stage, which marks the application rejected.
No email is sent either way
Flagging and automatic moving are both silent to the candidate. Vakanssi sends no rejection email for a screening knockout, whichever setting you use. Every knockout is written to the application’s activity log, where the Activity tab shows it as “Screening knockout”. The log entry stores which question (or questions) disqualified them, never the answer they gave, so a sensitive answer never lingers in the log.
If a job’s pipeline has no closed “lost” stage, there is nowhere to move the applicant to, so they are only flagged.
What the applicant sees
Screening questions appear on the application form under the heading A few more questions, after the cover letter and before the consent checkbox, so agreeing to your privacy terms stays the last thing they do before submitting.
Required questions are marked with an asterisk. Dropdowns start on Select… so an unanswered question is obvious.
If a submission fails validation, the applicant gets their screening answers back rather than an empty form. They do have to attach their CV again, and the form says so.
What you see on an application
Open any application from Hiring, then Applications. The candidate panel gains a Screening tab, listing every question and the answer given. A question the applicant did not answer shows a dash. Applications that were never asked questions have no such tab.
If the applicant gave a disqualifying answer, the Screening tab carries the badge Does not meet requirements. Since v0.33.43 the same flag also shows in the panel’s header whichever tab is open. On the applicant’s card on the stage board and in the List view it reads Screened out, so you can spot knockouts without opening anyone.
Applications you add by hand were never asked the questions, so they get no Screening tab.
Answers are stored with the wording of the question as it was when the person applied, so editing or deleting a question later never relabels or orphans an answer somebody already gave.
The Print / PDF sheet in the candidate panel’s header carries the same questions, answers, and badge, so an interview panel sees exactly what you do.
Screening answers and privacy
Screening answers are part of the candidate’s personal data, and they are covered by the same tools as the rest of it. A data export request returns each answer next to its question, and erasing an application removes its screening answers with it. See Privacy & Data Retention.