Recruiters dedicate over 20 percent of their time to interview scheduling, and some spend upwards of 50 percent. Chasing people around and being chased around are not enjoyable experiences for anyone. And while recruiters and hiring managers struggle to coordinate, candidates sit at home impatiently waiting for something to happen.
With so many interview scheduling software options available, why does scheduling still remain an unsolved challenge for most companies? The answer lies in a simple fact: when dealing with a high volume of candidates, the challenge grows beyond what a simple “here’s my availability, pick a time” kind of solution can offer.
Interview scheduling automation, like all automation, is limited by data. Just having access to a stakeholder’s calendar is not enough. A complete interview scheduling tool needs to be deeply integrated with your ATS and recruiting workflows.
Interview Scheduling Software Solutions vs. Mere Plugins
Simple add-ons and plugins are of limited help because they’re not built to adapt to the particularities of your recruiting strategy and hiring processes. They only know of dates – they don’t speak the language of qualifications, funnels, campuses, responsibilities, interview feedback, offers and the other dozens of elements that make up contemporary talent acquisition.
Whenever you need to schedule an interview, you’re facing a make-or-break moment. If you’re too slow or the process requires too much back and forth, not only will candidates lose their patience and start considering other options, they will also conclude that the lack of coordination displayed during the scheduling of their interviews is representative of the experience of working at your organization.
That’s why we’ve decided to bake interview scheduling directly into the Avature platform.
Scheduling Tools Integrated Into Your Recruiting Software
We’re putting the same tools our customers use to build their entire recruiting strategy, the same ones that help them automate entire parts of the recruiting process, to the service of improving the scheduling experience of everyone involved.
Getting interview scheduling right is not trivial. And in the past, our scheduling functionality was not all we wanted it to be – it lacked the flexibility and agility that characterize Avature. We’ve spent the past couple of years listening to our clients and refining our approach based on their feedback.
What’s Coming Next For Our Interview Scheduling Software?
We’re working hard to build a next-gen interview scheduling solution.
Our future implementation will not only take availability into account and find open spots automatically, but it will also be capable of triggering alternative scheduling methods based on the type of interview, the requirements and the stakeholders that will be involved.
For example, sometimes, when time-strapped senior stakeholders are involved, you can’t just assume that a free spot on their calendars means that they’re free to interview a candidate. So instead of offering the available slots to candidates, we will trigger a process that asks the stakeholder themselves to select when they’re willing to attend.
If, for any reason, you need to reschedule, Avature will be intelligent enough to kickstart the process all over again. Whether that’s finding a new matching time or asking stakeholders again about their availability, the system is capable of handling the process from start to finish by itself. If somebody can’t attend, then it can remind recruiters to replace one of the stakeholders.
Not to mention, scheduling can go beyond just interviews. Our roadmap is ambitious, and new features will be rolled out in phases. For instance, we recently released a set of features that allows you to create entire agendas for any candidates attending your events.
Interview scheduling is a game-changing feature when it’s deeply integrated into your ATS (or recruiting CRM or campus solution). All the tools – branded emails, SMS integrations, automated workflows – can help you create a candidate experience that is hard to match.
It can save your recruiters dozens of hours every week, hours that are currently spent chasing hiring managers and candidates. Freeing them from the pains of manually scheduling interviews results in more time spent on high-value-added activities like getting to know your candidates and finding the top talent you need to stay ahead.
