Screening Applicants
Add required yes/no knockout questions to a posting's application form to filter applicants before they reach your board.
A screener is an optional set of required yes/no questions on a posting's public application form. Use it to filter out applicants who do not meet a hard requirement (work authorization, a license, on-site availability) before they take up space on your board or consume any AI scoring.
How it works
When a screener is enabled, every applicant must answer each question on the application form. You set the correct answer for each question. If an applicant's answers all match, they continue through normally. If any answer does not match, the applicant is "screened out".
A screened-out applicant is still recorded, but:
- Their résumé is not parsed or scored, so no AI tokens are spent on them.
- They are hidden from your board by default.
Turning on a screener
You can configure a screener in two places:
| Where | When |
|---|---|
| Create Posting | While first setting up the posting. |
| Hiring Plan builder | Any time afterward, on the Applications section. |
Add a question, type the question text, and choose whether Yes or No is the passing answer. Use the add and remove controls to manage the list.
Enabling a screener automatically turns on the public application page, since the screener questions live on that form. The page's candidate messaging still applies, so make sure those fields are filled in.
Reviewing screened-out applicants
By default the board hides screened-out applicants. To see them:
- Toggle Show screened out in the search and filter controls.
- Screened-out applicants carry a Screened out badge.
- The first board tab reads Application instead of Resume, and each candidate's detail view gains a Screener tab showing their answers.
What a screener blocks
While a screener is enabled, applicants can only enter through the public application form, so every other way of adding people to the posting is blocked: invites, bulk import, ATS candidate import, talent-pool import, and Greenhouse test sends. Pulling existing records from a connected ATS is still allowed, because those are already-known people rather than new applicants.
Editing a screener after applicants arrive
Once at least one applicant has been screened, the screener configuration locks to keep results consistent. Editing the rest of the posting (job description, stages, messaging) is unaffected. Super-admin test mode can bypass the lock for testing.