Conducting multiple interviews is a crucial step to find the candidates who have required competencies and show culture fit. However, recruiters often face several problems while scheduling interviews, from large volumes to complex formats. These issues are likely to create negative impacts on the recruiting team’s overall performance and productivity.

But every problem will encourage the development of adaptive solutions. As for interview management, interview scheduling software may become recruiters’ next best friend to turbocharge the interview scheduling productivity.

Investing in an All-in-One Platform for Interview Arrangement

Recruiters may have several different tools or systems to manage their recruitment processes and communications with candidates. However, the interview management features within these systems may not be well-developed or integrated. Thus, it is harder to manage the whole process seamlessly, collaborate with other stakeholders, and ensure efficiency.

Well-developed interview scheduling software will be an all-in-one interview management solution for modern recruiters to manage different interview projects, improve communication efficiency, and keep everything under control. Recent interview scheduling software can be used as a standalone or integrated with other HR tools and systems.

This extra support will boost the overall performance of the talent acquisition team, especially when you have to manage high volume interviews or complex formats. Managing panel interviews or assessment days with multiple time slots happening at the same time with the involvement of multiple stakeholders can be time-consuming for recruiters without the support from technology. Furthermore, if you are third-party recruiters, scheduling tools will be helpful when handling multiple projects for partners from different organizations.

If you are considering several different options to invest in an interview scheduling tool, let’s check offerings that have these essential features:

• • Integration with Microsoft Outlook & Google Calendar: This is a must-have feature for every scheduling tool to ensure that you can leverage the existing calendar system.

• • Self-scheduling options for candidates: Allowing self-scheduling will ensure that candidates can proactively manage their schedule and select the optimal time. This feature will reduce the risk of scheduling conflicts and rearrangement.

• • Automated messages feature: A built-in messaging feature that allows sending out personalized messages automatically for each interview event can save recruiters significant time.

• Evaluation form: Having standardized and customized evaluation forms automatically sent out and collected after interviews can fasten the hiring process.

This image is designed by Freepik

A Quick Guide to Turbocharge Your Interview Scheduling Productivity

How can you take advantage of interview scheduling tools and turbocharge your productivity? This quick guide may take you several minutes to read, but it will surely save hours of working.

Integrating With Hiring Team’s Calendars for Availability Check

Those were the days when you had to ask each stakeholder about their availability, either through email or calendar sharing. But here are the foreseeable problems. The first approach may lead to back-and-forth communication and non-centralized information about availability and suitable time slots. The second option can be challenging sometimes when a stakeholder does not want to share their calendar or different stakeholders are on different calendar systems.

Thus, interview scheduling tools with integration options will be the optimal solution as everything can be connected within one platform. Concerning the hiring team’s privacy, interview scheduling tools like Rakuna’s can also request availability submission for a particular period only.

Source: Rakuna's interview scheduling tool screenshot

Automating Interview Generation and Management

If you have to manage high volume or concurrent interviews, scheduling every single event can consume a great amount of time, with the potential of making mistakes. Thus, using a scheduling tool with the feature of generating bulk interview time slots can be a life-saver.

With this feature, schedulers just have to select the expected interview time using the drag-to-select feature from the calendar screen, fill in the duration of each meeting as well as break time between continuous sessions, and the software can handle the rest. It will automatically generate bulk time slots ready to send out to relevant parties. If the scheduling tool is integrated with the recruiters’ ATS, information about applicants such as resumes and relevant files can also be added in the interview event and will be sent to interviewers in the scheduling emails.

Recruiters can also choose to generate time slots without assigning a specific candidate for each time slot. They can send a self-scheduling link out to candidates for selection later. Additionally, some interview scheduling tools offer auto-suggestion in case of rescheduling, or flagging for time conflicts. These extra support will reduce human errors in setting up interviews.

Source: Rakuna's interview scheduling tool screenshot

Fastening the Process With Message Templates

Having multiple email templates prepared beforehand is a common best practice for HR professionals to save time and ensure consistency. Modern recruiters may already have different tools or systems such as Mail Merge or email services to handle messaging with candidates, and it may still work great for many of you.

However, having a built-in feature that offers similar benefits in content customization and data management will save a significant amount of time switching between tools and reduce making mistakes. By using a feature of the interview scheduling tool, you can prepare customized messages for both interviewees and interviewers. You can add these messages to interview events, and they will be automatically sent out to stakeholders once the event is created.

Centralizing Evaluation Form

Some interview scheduling tools also allow recruiters to create standardized evaluation forms for different vacancies. After being attached to interview events, these customized forms will be automatically embedded within each interview time slot. They will allow interviewers to fill in during or after an interview. This feature will free recruiters from chasing after evaluation and making mistakes in the process. Forms are centralized on one single platform and can be accessed by relevant authorized stakeholders.

Different interview scheduling tools may have different user interfaces. In terms of efficiency, we suggest looking for a tool with a simple drag and drop feature with commonly used question formats. And you can create your form in no time.

Allowing Stakeholders to Suggest or Handle Rescheduling

For every interview event, there is a possibility of personal conflict or unexpected events. Thus, some interview scheduling software allows candidates to easily reschedule by selecting one of the remaining time slots or submitting a note to recruiters about their new proposed time.

Recruiters can choose how to delegate the interview rescheduling tasks. If it solely depends on interviewers to make the decision, recruiters can give interviewers the “editor” permission to handle rescheduling. Otherwise, the recruiters can control the entire rescheduling process from receiving notes to make adjustments, They will receive new proposed time from candidates/ interviewers to accept or decline within the platform, and cut out the back-and-forth emails.

Conclusion

Interview scheduling software is a powerful tool for modern recruiters. It will be especially handy for those who have to manage high volume interviews or complex interview formats in their recruitment processes. Taking advantage of advanced tools can help you increase productivity, boost efficiency, and stay ahead in the hiring competition.

To view this original post and other exciting articles, visit us at Rakuna!