That sort of box ticking is there to protect the company when someone complains. Last time I recruited I had a complaint afterwards from someone we had not offered an interview to and they were claiming it was discrimination due to them being disabled. We have a guaranteed interview policy for disabled people that meet the minimum requirements. We don't get told someone is disabled though so I had no idea from the application but they didn't meet the minimum requirements so they had never qualified for the guaranteed interview. I hadn't got close to considering them and thankfully the low scoring was evidence that they hadn't been discriminated against.Having been on the other side of the table recently, for 1 day of interviewing you've got 5-6 spots to fill. You've received 25 applications, 10 have sent a CV when the advert said fill in the application form, Line 1 of the scoring matrix "Fully completed application form, score 0-3" they get a 0 & on the first zero you can stop marking, great we are down to 15. 5 haven't provided copies of their certificates, Line 2 of the scoring matrix "Have provided evidence of qualifications" boom, 10 left.
Now the hard work begins of reading the application forms, & if you've got 2 applicants for 1 spot that is when the nit-picking 'the advert said knowledge of Excel is essential but candidate A hasn't mentioned it' starts.
Daft way to recruit someone imo but it keeps HR happy.
When I get a stack of applications I can tell after a quick scan of each one which ones are potentially suitable for interview. There are so many that just aren't and being able to score them as 0 for certain criteria saves a lot of time in filtering them out. Any application that is good but they have missed a qualification like a degree or GCSE English etc just gets something else scored favourably. We're not dismissing candidates for something that isn't particularly relevant. If you are being nitpicked for not having written something that is essential it's probably because the rest of the application isn't strong enough and they are looking for a way to not waste their (and your) time.