Minimum qualifications are the mandatory qualifications that a candidate must meet to be able to do the job. A simple example of a minimum qualification is whether the candidate is legally able to work in the country.

These types of qualifications are often considered knockouts because either the candidate has it and can move forward or they don’t and gets screened out of the process.

Candidates that meet the minimum qualifications move onto the second step of screening resumes.

Preferred qualifications are non-mandatory characteristics that would make someone a stronger candidate for the job. A common example of a preferred qualification is whether the candidate has prior related work experience.

These types of qualifications are often called nice-to-haves and are generally more qualitative than minimum qualifications (e.g., strong communication skills).

Candidates that meet both the minimum and preferred qualifications move onto the short-listing step of resume screening.

Deciding which candidates get shortlisted for the interview phase depends on your recruiting needs.

For high volume recruitment, generally, all candidates that meet the minimum qualifications move forward to the interview process. For low volume recruitment, generally, only the top few candidates that meet both the minimum and preferred qualifications receive an interview.

You can determine how many candidates you should shortlist using your recruitment conversion rates.

Based on recruiting data, the average recruitment conversion rates are:

12% for application to interview

17% for an interview to offer

89% for an offer to acceptance

That means for every 100 candidates you screen, you need to shortlist 12 of them to interview, two of them will receive an offer, and one candidate will accept to result in one successful hire.