Application Forms
Why use an Application form?
Because it demonstrates an applicant's commitment to the organization. If they are willing to give you personal information they are already attracted to your organization and your cause.
- Because it shows a person's work history.
- Because it highlights a person's skills and abilities.
- Because it shows similar work experience.
- Because it helps to compare and contrast applicants.
Application Form Design
Application forms should be based on principles of equality and comply with provincial and federal legislation including the Employment Equity Act and Human Rights Act.
Applicants should not be discriminated against on the basis of any of the following factors :
- Place of Origin
- Colour
- Ethnicity
- Citizenship
- Religion
- Gender
- Ancestry
- Sexual Orientation
- Age
- Marital Status
- Family Status
- Handicap
- Race
On this basis the application form should not include questions on these issues. Please see the Sample Application Form from the Tools Page.
Suggested Web sites:
http://www.scn.org/scna/volunteers/volform.html
Scoring Application Forms/ Resumes
Select a target number to move to the interview phase of the selection process.
Often this is done by taking the number of positions you are staffing and adding an extra amount to allow for unsuccessful interviews and applicants that have to drop out of the process on the basis of other employment or personal reasons.
In many cases the formula is ( the number of positions + 25%, rounded to the next whole number). Therefore if we were staffing for 10 positions the formula would be 10+ (10x50%)= 10+5=15 which would give 15 interviews.
Set a baseline
It is important to note that we should set a minimum requirement for experience and qualifications. An acceptable baseline would be half or three quarters of the required skills for the position. Anyone scoring less than this baseline would not be considered for the position.
Score on the number of requirements outlined in the position description.
As we have already determined the desired qualifications for this position, we can now screen applicants on this basis. Perhaps the simplest way to do this is to score each applicant on the number of qualifications we have identified.
Initial scoring
Conduct the initial scoring based on the elements of the position description. Any skills or experiences that would be valuable but not necessary should not be taken into consideration until after the initial screening has been completed.
Therefore, if we have identified ten desired skills/ qualities, we assign a score out of ten. If the applicant has demonstrated seven out of these ten qualities in their application, we would assign them a score of seven. We would then narrow the applicants on the basis of best score.
Sorting
We would then sort the applications by scoring results. Those that received a score of ten would go into the first pile. Those that received a score of nine would go into the next pile. And so on, etc.
Ranking
If there are less Applicants in the first group than positions available, these applicants would move on to the interview phase and we would look at the next highest scoring group of applicants.
If there are more applicants in the first group than positions available, we would go through the applications of the highest scoring group and rank them in order of suitability on the basis of skills and experiences that are not necessary but are valuable. We would have to make judgements on which of these skills is more important to the program. At this stage it is very important that we document these decisions.
Note:
- If there are sufficient applicants within the top scoring group to conduct interviews (usually the number of positions available plus 50%), then it will not be necessary to move to the next highest group.
- If it is necessary to move to the next highest scoring group the whole group should be examined and sorted on the same basis as the previous group.
- At this point if we were to staff for 10 positions and the top scoring group yielded 8 candidates. We would then need 7 more candidates for the interview stage. If there were 20 applicants in the second highest scoring group, we would need to sort that group on the basis of the non-declared valuable skills/ experiences.
- If in the ranking process there were applicants that scored the same within the range of the top 7 of these 20 applicants we would include them in the next phase of the selection process. Therefore we could end up interviewing 17 applicants instead of the targeted 15.
We would now move on to the Interview phase.
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