Career Answer
A career answer is one candidate's answer sheet for one application. He fills it in on the public careers page straight after applying, PeopleNest marks the answers against the marks you set on the options, and the total and the pass or fail go back onto his application.
What it is for
The careers page is outside the company, and a candidate using it is somebody nobody has met. The questionnaire is how you ask him the three or four things that decide whether his CV is worth opening. This record is what comes back.
It holds one line per question, with what he picked or typed and what that answer was worth. The marks are added up as he submits, the total is compared to the pass mark on the Questionnaire, and the total and the pass or fail are written onto his Career Application. That is what lets an HR officer sort three hundred applications in a morning.
There is one answer sheet per application, and one attempt. A candidate who submits his answers cannot submit them again, and the careers page tells him so. This is deliberate: a screening question anybody can retake until he passes screens nobody.
Submitting answers does not move the application along. It writes the score and the pass flag and nothing else, so a candidate a recruiter has already shortlisted stays shortlisted.
Text answers carry no marks. There is nothing to add up for a question the candidate types freely, so a questionnaire made entirely of text questions produces a score of zero for everybody. Use choice questions when the score has to mean something, and text questions when you want words a human will read.
What a consultant must set up
- Write the questions on QuestionBank, as choice questions, with marks on the options.
- Build a Questionnaire from them and set its pass mark against the marks actually available.
- Attach that questionnaire to the vacancy on Recruitment Project. A vacancy with no questionnaire asks nothing, so no answer sheet is ever created.
- Make sure the company is enabled on CareerPageSetting and the Applicant Portal User is set on Recruitment Setting, or nothing reaches the careers page in the first place.
Every field, in plain words
This record has no entry form in the current build. It is written by the careers page when the candidate submits his answers. The score and the pass or fail are what the recruiter works from, and they appear on the candidate's application.
The answer sheet
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Application | The application these answers belong to | Fills itself. | One answer sheet per application, and only one. |
| Questionnaire | The set of questions he was asked | Fills itself from the vacancy. | The questions come from whichever questionnaire was attached to the vacancy when he applied. |
| Submitted At | The moment he submitted | Fills itself. | |
| Total Score | The marks he earned in total | Fills itself by adding up the marks of the options he picked. | |
| Is Passed | Whether the total reached the questionnaire's pass mark | Fills itself. | This and the total are what go back onto his Career Application. |
The answers
One line per question on the questionnaire.
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Question | The question he was asked | Fills itself. | |
| Answer Text | What he typed, for a text question | Fills itself. | Blank on a choice question. This is where words a human must read end up. |
| Selected Option | What he picked, for a choice question | Fills itself. | Blank on a text question. |
| Answer Score | What that answer was worth | Fills itself from the marks on the option he picked. | Always zero for a text answer, because there is nothing to mark against. |
Scenarios
"Three hundred people applied for one Quality Inspector job"
Set the questionnaire up before you publish the vacancy, with six choice questions worth 5 each and a pass mark of 20. Every application then arrives carrying a score and a pass or fail, and the HR officer reads the forty that passed. The other two hundred and sixty are still there if the forty come to nothing.
"A candidate scored badly but we know he is good"
Ignore the score. Nothing in PeopleNest stops a recruiter moving a failed application forward. The score sorts the pile, it does not make the decision, and it can never be resubmitted so there is no point waiting for a better one.
"We want to ask them why they are leaving, not test them"
Use text questions. The answers are kept on this sheet for the panel to read and they contribute nothing to the score. Do not then set a pass mark, or every candidate fails.
"We changed the questionnaire halfway through the advert"
Answer sheets already submitted keep the questions they were asked and the marks they earned. Candidates applying after the change answer the new set. The scores on the two groups are not comparable, so change a questionnaire between vacancies rather than during one.
What it is connected to
- QuestionBank holds the questions and the marks on their options.
- Questionnaire is the set asked and holds the pass mark.
- Recruitment Project is where the questionnaire is attached to a vacancy.
- Career Application carries the resulting score and pass or fail.
- The marking arithmetic is set out in the maths.
If something looks wrong
- "No answer sheets exist for a vacancy" - no Questionnaire is attached to it on Recruitment Project.
- "Everybody scored zero" - the questions are text questions, or every option carries a score of zero. Marks come from the options.
- "Everybody failed" - the pass mark is higher than the marks available on the attached questions.
- "A candidate wants to answer again" - he cannot. One submission per application, by design.
- "The score is right but the application did not move" - that is correct. Submitting answers writes the score and the pass flag only. A recruiter moves the stage.