Auto-rejecting with knockout questions

Have a hiring dealbreaker? Set up a knockout question to automatically weed out applications that don't meet your dealbreaker criteria. Knockout questions help reduce the amount of time you spend manually reviewing applications that you know you won't be able to move forward with.

For instance, maybe you have a food truck and you are unable to consider applicants without a driver's license. Setting up a knockout question like, "Do you have a valid driver's license?" allows you to automatically reject any candidate that responds, "No."

The candidate does not see a difference between a knockout question and a regular screening question. Even if they choose your auto-reject answer, they are still prompted to finish their application as normal.

Let's get started:

1. Click in to edit one of your job templates and visit the Questions tab.
2. Add a single-choice screening question to the template. The question type must be single choice – not yes/no or text. The full steps to add a screening question are outlined here!
3. Type in your answer options and set each option to either good, bad, or auto-reject.

Here is an example for the question, "Do you have a valid driver's license?":

You can see that the second answer, "No," is set to auto-reject. This means that any applicant that answers with this option will be automatically assigned the status "Auto-rejected" and their fit score will be automatically reset to 0.

✋ Don't over-do it! We recommend using one or two knockout questions at most to ensure that you don't eliminate otherwise strong candidates. You can always adjust the weight of your fit score categories to help dial in which candidates rise to the top.

You can still see your auto-rejected applicants on your Applications dashboard – filter by status to narrow down your list! For reporting purposes, the auto-rejected status is treated the same as a normal (manual) rejection.