Scheduling interviews in a recruitment process is a significant step in the interviewing process. Hiring candidates basically depends on the personal interview session.

Traditionally, the hiring managers would decide upon a time for interviews by sending tons of emails to the candidates. The candidate would confirm the same via email, and this process would take days to finalize. This process would consume a lot of time, thereby increasing the hiring costs. That is why having the right interview scheduling system is the need of the hour.

What You Should Consider When Scheduling an Interview

Interviews are a sensitive part of the recruitment process. Therefore the HR manager or recruiter needs to be keen during this process and ensure that the right candidates are invited for the interviews. 

Time

The time at which an interview is to be conducted is essential in any recruitment procedure. You need to identify the best time of day (probably morning hours) that you are not overwhelmed or hungry. Having peace of mind will keep you focused on the interview to make informed decisions.

Number of Candidates

Usually, applicants who send application letters for open positions are many. Therefore, you need to whittle down the number of candidates for interviews, or else you will be overwhelmed and end up making the wrong choices. 

You can control the number by reviewing resumes and making video calls to select the ones that you feel are manageable. Once you have the shortlisted few, you can then proceed to schedule interviews.

Interview Style

There are different styles of conducting interviews including videos, and one-on-one meetings. If you are planning either of these interviews, it’s best to communicate to the candidate beforehand to enable them to prepare for it.

Additionally, if you are used to interviewing candidates with a panel, then prepare one when sending interview invitations. That way, you will be comfortable and ready to conduct successful interviews. 

Organizational Schedule

The everyday organizational duties must continue as usual. Consider planning interviews on less busy days where you do not have strict deadlines for your tasks. 

However, note that once you have received job applications, consider responding promptly because if you delay in scheduling an interview, you might lose the best talent to other organizations. 

How Can the Interview Process be Improved?

When a company demands-resources, it is very important that the hiring process is streamlined. Hiring managers generally tend to spend a lot of time selecting candidates from hundreds of applications received online. Along with this, they are constantly emailing candidates individually to schedule interviews. Hence, automating this entire interview scheduling process is mandatory.

Automating the job interview process will minimize hiring efforts for good. You can save valuable time by interviewing multiple candidates at a time. In addition to this, you can improve the candidate experience by eliminating scheduling glitches. You should, however, opt for smart interview scheduling tools.

Several factors come into play during interview scheduling. They are what contribute to successful interviews. So, let’s get into it. 

6 Ways to Improve your Interview Scheduling Process

Let us find out ways you can improve your interview scheduling process in a jiffy.

1. A steady interview process

Streamlining your interview process will improve the candidate interview experience and help strengthen your employer brand as well. A seamless interview process has to start right with proper interview scheduling goals. You can make use of your Google/Microsoft calendar to schedule your interviews.

Calendars are the best way to check the availability of your interviewing team. All you need to do is opt for an interview scheduling software that allows calendar integration. Once the interview is scheduled, you will also be able to block the said time on your calendar. This will in turn help you save time on deciding on interview times.

Smart interview schedulers that are available today, check your availability on your calendar and suggest the best interview times to you. Thus, helping you save lots of time. Furthermore, you can also screen your candidates on a video before calling them to schedule an interview. You can ask some personal questions or job-specific questions and shortlist the best-fit candidates for your roles. Save a lot of time and cost to hire top talent. By doing this, you are starting your interview process in a more efficient way to achieve your organizational goals.

2. Performing Batch interviewing

To reduce the hiring time, even more, you can select a group of candidates and let them choose a convenient time slot for the interview. This will eliminate the hassles of deciding an interview time for multiple candidates at once.

Setting the interview time slots based on the availability of your hiring team will reduce the burden of deciding upon a perfect interview time. As for the candidates, they will be able to choose a convenient interview time from the list of available slots. This will ensure a smooth interview process.

3. Online Candidate Confirmations

Handling interview confirmation from the candidate manually can be frustrating at times. It can be burdensome for your hiring team to manage all the confirmed interview timings and reschedule the rejected ones. This in turn leads to imprecision and omissions.

To fill the communication gap between the candidates and your hiring team, you can opt for a platform that can get your task done in a matter of time. You can notify your candidates about the date and time for the interview. Interview confirmations happen at a click of a button, in a much easier way. Furthermore, if the candidate wishes to reschedule, he can be presented with other options.

4. Video Interviews

Since we have to follow the new normal in this momentous period of the COVID-19 pandemic, hiring for recruiters has become a challenging task. Conducting face-to-face interviews is troublesome as well as risky for the team.

The best option is making the most beneficial use of video interview software. The hiring team can interview candidates directly on a video without having to conduct onsite interviews. Jobsoid Video Interview platform gives you the opportunity to facilitate the interview process in a much comfortable way. You can view your candidate’s responses to your interview questions as a playlist in your account. Thus, you can shortlist the perfect candidates for your job without having to actually meet the candidate.

5. Collaboration with the Hiring team

Collaborating with your team is an essential part of any interview process. You should ensure that all team members are engaged in your recruitment process. Hence, it is important to get your team connected to a single platform. Proper communication will facilitate a good rhythm to your interview process.

However, making a great selection of candidates for the open position is a tedious task. Having the desired experience and qualifications is not enough. Your candidate ought to be a perfect culture-fit as well.

You should efficiently collaborate with your team to review and shortlist the qualified candidates from your talent database. As a result of which your candidate selection process will be smooth with a dramatic reduction of time and hiring cost.

6. Review and feedback

Every interview process should end with a feedback or review. You ought to rate your candidates on certain criteria and share your feedback with your hiring team. You can also collect the feedback from other interviewers. This will help you make an informed decision about hiring the candidate.

If the candidate does not make it to the final interview round, this review can be of help when there is another opening for a similar role.

Interview Scheduling Tools

The recruiting and hiring procedures can be overwhelming sometimes, especially for large enterprises. With interview scheduling tools, not only will the hiring process be more straightforward, but you will also focus on other issues such as building initiatives for brainstorming the recruits. 

An interview scheduling system also improves workers’ collaboration. It stores all records of interviews for future references. However, you need a tool that integrates with your organizational interview plans. It should be able to help in managing the interview scheduling goals efficiently and effectively. 

Emails and phone calls are the main communication channels between HR managers and job applicants. So, choosing a tool that automates your emails and phone calls, either during job invites or confirmation, goes a long way in improving your interview scheduling process. 

Conclusion

You can now ditch the hassle of interview scheduling by a great deal. As a result of which you end up streamlining your recruiting process, diminishing hiring costs, and saving a lot of time.

Ease up your interview scheduling process today.