Automated interview scheduling: way towards achieving recruitment efficiency

Finding the right talent is probably one of the biggest challenges you might face as a recruiter. You’ve got to keep the pipeline full and ensure you have enough applications from quality candidates. However, this can be time-consuming, complex, and even frustrating.  

In this blog, we discuss automated interview scheduling – a platform to help you engage better with candidates and make scheduling interviews faster and easier. Here is how automated interview scheduling solutions can help you make recruitment more efficient. 

Key challenges to interview scheduling 

Time is one of the most valuable and tricky commodities for recruiters throughout the recruitment lifecycle. Suppose your recruitment process is manual, inconsistent, and time-consuming. In that case, you may lose quality candidates to the competition, whereas if it is focused only on speed, you may oversee valuable candidature. Chances are your prospective candidates may also be exploring other opportunities outside your recruitment pipeline; an incompetent and inconsistent recruitment process may cause them to drop off – plaguing the entire process with several barriers to acquiring ideal employees. 

Here are some common interview scheduling challenges most recruiters face.

Coordination

Coordination is a crucial concern for recruiters when scheduling interviews with candidates, attempting to find an ideal occasion where all parties to the interview are available. The availability of interviewees and interviewers can be limited, making it difficult to find mutually convenient times. 

Further, time zone differences can make scheduling difficult, especially when accommodating international interviewees.

Large communication threads

Manually coordinating interview schedules requires multiple correspondences consisting of large e-mail and/or message threads and even multiple telephonic conversations with several candidates simultaneously. Often, this drowns relevant information in the clutter and prevents recruiters from keeping track of the status of interviews with different candidates – especially their availability.

Coordinating multiple interviews

Conflicts can arise when crucial hiring team members are already committed to other appointments or events. This can hamper recruitment as recruiters must contact multiple interviewees again and reschedule the interviews, repeating the entire ordeal.

Understanding automated interview scheduling

An automated interview scheduling system helps employers and job seekers coordinate their availability for interviews, and the system will automatically schedule interviews based on the available times. The system is used to send interview requests to candidates based on the availability of the hiring team and track their responses. The system schedules interviews and follow-ups and handles rescheduling when required. 

How it works

The process of automated interview scheduling is relatively simple and generally goes as follows:

• A potential employer reaches out to a job seeker to schedule an interview with a list of potential dates and times for the interview.
• The candidate selects a date and time from the list and sends a confirmation to the employer. 

What does automated interview scheduling offer?

Here’s how an automated interview scheduling platform can help recruiters become more efficient.

Synchronisation

Automated interview scheduling can automatically synchronise the calendars of recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates to manage interview schedules and display availability as slots. It ensures consistent engagement with candidates and eliminates the need to contact all related parties manually to discover expected availability.

Candidate freedom

Automated interview scheduling enables candidates to schedule interview without waiting for the recruiter to get back to them. It saves both time and effort for everyone involved in the recruitment process, allowing multiple candidates to get interviews scheduled without any back and forth efficiently.

Rescheduling 

The software handles the rescheduling process if a candidate or a hiring team member is unavailable at the predetermined date or time. Both parties can pick a different slot for the interview based on availability on either side and change the time of the interview. 

Multi-tasking

An automated interview scheduling solution enables recruiters to schedule several interviews simultaneously. It is beneficial if the recruitment team is small and doesn’t have enough resources to cover the workload.

Automated Reminders

When scheduling interviews, remember when the interaction has to happen – and it is essential for both the interviewer and interviewee. Here, automated interview scheduling solutions help provide timely reminders about upcoming interviews to prevent any lapses in the process.

Why recruiters need automated interview scheduling

Here are some ways in which automated interview scheduling helps recruiters and organizations:

Preserving time as a resource

Scheduling interviews is a time-consuming and cumbersome activity requiring gradual effort from recruiters. Often, recruiters have to handle multiple candidates and various hiring managers for several positions within the organisation, coupled with limited time slots from both parties. Continuous back-and-forth communication with candidates through different communication channels takes away a lion’s portion of the recruiter’s time and effort, affecting recruitment efficiency. 

Here, Automated Interview Scheduling solutions enable organizations to automate routine, clerical, and manual efforts, they can quickly onboard quality candidates while eliminating candidate drop-off.

Improved candidate experience

During the hiring process, candidate experience is critical to ensure that the best talent applies for a role. By reducing unnecessary communication with the team, candidates can comfortably choose a slot for their interview in virtually no time – ensuring confirmed slots for them.

Better experience for recruiters

Automated interview scheduling help recruiters manage schedules by syncing calendars based on the candidates’ responses – enabling recruiters to handle many candidates simultaneously. Further, since the software takes care of reminders, recruiters do not need to communicate manually with interviewers and interviewees to send out prompts. 

Reduced time to scheduling interviews

Automated scheduling enables unhindered engagement with candidates, allowing recruiters to instantly schedule interviews when an ideal candidate is found – no delays or redundancies.

Reduced candidate drop-off

Automatic interview scheduling removes barriers between recruiters and candidates. Further, since long communication trails are reduced to a mere selection of slots, candidates get confirmed opportunities to connect with the organization almost immediately. Consequently, as candidates can instantly schedule interviews, drop-off rates reduce dramatically.