Industry Research - Why You Need to Automate Your Interview Scheduling Process

A less-than-ideal interview will cause top candidates to walk away

You’ve implemented a strong sourcing program, a creative recruitment marketing strategy and an engaging onboarding program. But none of these initiatives matter if your candidate interview experience is less than stellar. Why is it that this often-overlooked part of the candidate experience is so important?
 
According to research by the Brandon Hall Group, 90 percent of employers consider interviewing to be important or critical to their organization’s success and more than 50 percent believe this stage of the recruitment process has the biggest impact on the candidate experience. Put simply, the interview is essential. A less-than-ideal interview will cause top candidates to walk away.

But even with general agreement that the interview experience is critical, many talent departments don’t prioritize the interview in their recruitment process. Employers facilitate interview processes that are, at best, reactive and inefficient and, at worst, disorganized and ineffective. Think: back-and-forth emails to schedule and reschedule, hours struggling to match availabilities for interview days and manual communication to confirm every logistical detail. In fact, the average interview process now takes nearly 23 days as employers add more screens, interviews and assessments(1).
 
At a time when we make restaurant reservations with the tap of our phones and schedule doctor appointments through an app, it’s clear interview booking is ripe for improvement. Bringing technology and automation to this burdensome, time-consuming task not only offers time savings, but drastically improves the entire experience for candidates, interviewers and recruiters. Unfortunately, the same Brandon Hall survey found only only a small percentage of organizations (18%) have automated their interview process.

The stakes are high; employers who maintain the status quo risk losing top candidates and frustrating interview team members. Automating the interview process can alleviate these major concerns. AI-powered scheduling software takes the pain out of booking interviews by streamlining the schedule-and-reschedule loop. It’s a remedy for the redundant, manual work caused by interview scheduling. Benefits include:
 
Find availabilities for every interviewer
Drawing from the availability of your team members, interview scheduling software syncs with services like Gmail and Outlook to offer a unified view into open time slots. Whether you need to coordinate two interviewers or 12, AI-powered software automatically suggests interview times that work for every team member. The smart technology also enables coordinators to identify which calendars are obstacles to scheduling, enabling the coordinator to reach out directly to determine an available time.
 
Empower candidates to self-select interview times
Without interview scheduling software, scheduling is filled with email chains, calendar invites and phone calls as you try to find the best times to speak with each candidate. Even after settling on a few times, the candidate may suggest an alternative, and the dance begins again.
 
Automated interview scheduling eliminates this bottleneck from your recruitment operations.
 
Candidates use interview scheduling software to choose a time that fits best in their schedules. If a candidate needs to reschedule, interviewers will receive automated communications that keep them informed whenever an appointment time is changed.
 
Forget about booking rooms
Without automation, aligning availability among interviewers is a major challenge to overcome and once that’s complete, recruiters must face the next obstacle: securing room locations. Through real-time sync with internal room calendaring systems, scheduling software does the heavy lifting, automatically coordinating the locations and rooms for every interview.
 
Improve the candidate experience
Exchanging emails and phone calls over days and weeks to find the right meeting time is frustrating not only for recruiters, but candidates too, leading to a candidate experience that is less than ideal.
 
Through self-scheduling interview software, candidates review possible meeting times and set their own schedules. Self-scheduling allows candidates to take control of this part of the candidate experience, feeling confident that the company respects their time and prior commitments.  

While each step is crucial to the recruitment process, redundant work like manual correspondence or matching candidate availability with multiple interviewers adds burdensome amounts of time to a recruiter’s workload. AI-powered scheduling software automates the scheduling process, while freeing recruiters to focus on more strategic priorities and engage top talent.
 
A Randstad US study found 82 percent of respondents agreed that “the ideal interaction with a company is one where innovative technologies are behind the scenes and second to personal human interaction(2).” Interview scheduling software does just that, working in the background to enable recruiters to focus on the most important task: helping candidates find the right position.

1. https://www.glassdoor.com/research/studies/time-to-hire-study/
2.https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/an-over-automated-recruitment-process-leaves-candidates-frustrated-and-missing-personal-connections-finds-randstad-us-study-300498881.html

Kelly Powers is the Senior Product Marketing Manager at Yello, a company that builds talent acquisition software to help eliminate the gaps in the hiring experience. In her current role, Kelly leads the go to market strategy for Yello's product suite. Prior to this role, Kelly was a principal in Yello's solution consulting practice, serving clients in an advisory capacity on end-to-end solution architecture. With a background in human capital consulting, Kelly has a passion for HR technology and brings a wealth of expertise leading enterprise-wide HR transformations enabled by technology. Connect Kelly Powers Follow @kellyjanepowers Visit www.yello.co