Questionnaire
A questionnaire is the set of questions a candidate sees after he applies on the public careers page, in the order you choose, with a pass mark. You attach one questionnaire to a vacancy on Recruitment Project and every candidate for that vacancy answers it.
What it is for
QuestionBank is the pool of questions. A questionnaire is a selection out of that pool, put in an order, with a pass mark on the front of it. Nothing on the careers page asks a question that is not on a questionnaire.
The pass mark is what makes the screen worth having. A candidate submits his answers, PeopleNest adds up the marks of the options he picked, and compares the total to the Pass Score. The application then carries a score and a pass or fail, and the HR officer sorts on it instead of reading three hundred CVs.
A candidate gets one attempt. Once he has submitted his answers to a vacancy he cannot submit again, so the pass mark has to be right before the vacancy is published.
Build one questionnaire per kind of vacancy rather than one per vacancy. A manufacturing client usually ends up with three: one for factory trades, one for office staff, one for supervisors and above.
Every field, in plain words
General
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Questionnaire | The short reference for this questionnaire | QN-FACTORY | Required. Must be unique. |
| Name | What HR calls it when attaching it to a vacancy | Factory Trades Screening | Required. |
| Is Active | A marker that this is a questionnaire still in use | Ticked | Untick one you have retired so nobody attaches it to a new vacancy by mistake. |
| Pass Score | The total marks a candidate needs to be marked as passed | 10 | Add up the marks available on the questions you have put on the lines below and set this somewhere sensible against that total. A pass mark of zero means everybody passes. |
| Time Limit Minutes | How long the candidate is given, published to the careers page with the questions | 15 | Leave it at zero if the client does not want a limit. |
| Description | A sentence for the consultant's own benefit | Used for all weaving and stitching vacancies | Not shown to the candidate. |
Questions
One line per question, in the order the candidate should meet them.
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Question | The question to ask | Pick it from the list, for example Q-NIGHTSHIFT | Comes from QuestionBank. The question's own wording and options come with it, you do not retype them here. |
| Sort Order | The position of this question on the page | 10 | Number in tens so a question can be slotted in later without renumbering everything. |
| Is Required | Tick if the candidate cannot submit without answering this one | Ticked | This is per questionnaire, so a question that is optional on the office questionnaire can be compulsory on the factory one. |
| Max Score | The marks recorded against this line | 5 | The automatic marking adds up the Option Score of the options the candidate picked, which is set on the question itself. This column records what the line is considered to be worth. |
How to configure it
- Write the questions first on QuestionBank, with the marks on the options. Nothing can be picked here until they exist.
- Open Questionnaire, give it a reference and a name HR will recognise, such as QN-FACTORY and Factory Trades Screening.
- Go to the Questions tab and add a line per question, numbering Sort Order in tens. Tick Is Required on the ones no candidate may skip.
- Add up the marks available across those questions, then come back to the General tab and set Pass Score. Half the available marks is a usual starting point.
- Set Time Limit Minutes if the client wants one, tick Is Active, and save.
- Go to Recruitment Project and set its Questionnaire field to this one. A vacancy with no questionnaire attached asks the candidate nothing.
Scenarios
"Three hundred people apply for every Production Supervisor vacancy"
Build a supervisor questionnaire of six choice questions, each worth 5, and set Pass Score to 20. Candidates who answer fewer than four of the six correctly come back marked as failed and the HR officer filters them out without opening a single CV. Nothing is deleted, so a thin month can be worked through by hand later.
"We want the same questions for every factory job but a different pass mark for skilled and unskilled"
Two questionnaires sharing the same question lines, one with Pass Score 20 and one with Pass Score 10. Because the questions themselves live on QuestionBank, you are not maintaining two copies of the wording. Attach the strict one to the Quality Inspector vacancy and the lenient one to the helper vacancy.
"A candidate says he answered wrongly and wants another go"
He cannot have one. A candidate may submit his answers to a vacancy once. If the client genuinely wants him reconsidered, the HR officer moves the application along by hand on Career Application and ignores the score.
What it is connected to
- QuestionBank supplies the questions and the marks.
- Recruitment Project is where a questionnaire is attached to a vacancy. That attachment is the only way a questionnaire reaches a candidate.
- Career Answer is where the submitted answers and the total land.
- Career Application carries the resulting score and the pass or fail.
- The pass mark and the marking are explained from the arithmetic side in the maths.
If something looks wrong
- "Nobody is being asked anything" - the vacancy on Recruitment Project has no Questionnaire attached.
- "Every candidate passes" - Pass Score is zero, or the options on the questions all carry a score of zero.
- "Every candidate fails" - Pass Score is higher than the marks actually available on the lines. Add up the option marks on the questions you have attached and compare.
- "A question is in the wrong place on the page" - the Sort Order numbers. They are what the candidate's page is ordered by, not the order you added the lines.