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6
 min read
February 22, 2018

How Scalable is Interview Scheduling?

Interview scheduling is becoming widely adopted. Just last week LinkedIn announced that its users can now schedule interviews from LinkedIn Mail. The Home Depot also announced last week that 80,000+ candidates will be able to self-schedule their interviews. Just think about how much time that could save hiring managers!

Interview scheduling is becoming widely adopted. Just last week LinkedIn announced that its users can now schedule interviews from LinkedIn Mail. The Home Depot also announced last week that 80,000+ candidates will be able to self-schedule their interviews.

Just think about how much time that could save hiring managers! All those candidates and the hiring manager doesn’t need to do anything to schedule the interview – the whole thing is completely in the hands of those 80,000 candidates. Brilliant.

Automating the interview process

A use case like this demonstrates just how powerful interview scheduling is.

Most companies aren’t going to need to schedule interviews on such a mass scale. But the fact that a big company has decided to do this shows just how scalable interview scheduling is.

With the right tools, your ATS could give your users the power to automate interview scheduling for just as many applicants, maybe even more!

That’s what’s so great about real-time interview scheduling – because it works in real-time, it’s completely scalable. It works just as effectively for one candidate as it does for one thousand (or even one hundred thousand).

Scheduling interviews is a simple but time-consuming part of a hiring manager’s working life. Over time, it quickly adds up to several days wasted every month. Over the course of a year, well over a week of a hiring manager’s time gets wasted. This equates to a loss of over $13,000 per employee per year for the companies that they work for.

Allowing candidates to schedule their own interviews saves the hiring manager this time. It also puts candidates in control, making them happier and more excited to work for the company they’re applying for. The better the candidate experience, the better it reflects on the company and the more likely candidates are to want to work for the company.

For candidates that need to factor in child care or shift work when scheduling an interview, it’s also much easier for them if they can schedule it themselves. They can pick a time that’s convenient for them and causes the minimal amount of disruption to their day.

Getting candidates to schedule interviews themselves is also a faster process. Hiring managers don’t need to liaise between the interview panel and the candidates, then send each candidate a list of times for them to choose from. There’s no risks of double-bookings or miscommunications.

Perfect for seasonal workers

There’s no busier period for the retail sector than the holidays. Hiring enough workers to cover this period is a military operation.

Companies that need to hire on a mass scale during this period could take a less from The Home Depot’s book.

It’s not just about interview scheduling, though. While this creates a great candidate experience, the candidate experience starts with the application itself.

The more complicated the application process, the more likely candidates are to drop off. It’s a myth that a more complicated application process weeds out the poorer candidates. In fact, it has the opposite effect. The better candidates are less likely to stick around to finish filling out a complicated application process if they can go to a company’s competitor and spend ten minutes applying instead.

The Home Depot realized this and rolled out a fifteen-minute mobile application feature last year. Since rolling out said feature, applications have doubled. When you’re desperate to win the war on talent, it’s stats like that that show just how powerful using the right ATS can be.

The right ATS doesn’t just speed up the application process, though. It can also screen applications before they even get into the hiring manager’s hands. The right ATS can check the application for the right keywords and phrases, ensuring the candidate is a good fit before their application is reviewed by the hiring manager.

If the application process is automated, the hiring manager could even be cut out completely until the candidate is ready for interview. If the candidate fits the criteria for the role, the application could generate the interview link automatically. Candidates can then schedule the interview themselves at their own convenience.

Automating the early stages of the interview process also helps to eradicate the bias that can occur when applications are shortlisted manually. However, there have been discussions about if an ATS acquires its users’ biases, too. It really depends on how the software is built, and how it is used. All software is a product of its creators’ minds. It then becomes a product of its users’ minds, too, particularly as programs get more intelligent and show us more of what we want to see.

Happier hiring managers, happier candidates

When the application, shortlisting, and interview scheduling processes are automated, they can all be completed in less than 24 hours. No matter how streamlined a company’s hiring process is, there’s no way that this could be achieved manually.

For businesses looking for ways to save time and money, automating the early stages of the hiring process is a simple yet effective way to do so. It takes the pressure off hiring managers during busy hiring periods, and it gives candidates control. Companies that are reluctant to give candidates more control over the hiring process will increasingly find themselves falling behind over the next few years as more parts of the hiring process are automated and more companies focus on creating a better candidate experience.

Some people may argue that part of a great candidate experience is dealing with people. And you know what? It is. But people will still conduct the interview, and with the extra time that hiring managers have, they can use this to give unsuccessful candidates feedback. This feedback helps candidates to improve for future interviews. While there’s no immediate benefit to the business from doing this, it makes candidates feel appreciated even if they don’t get the role. This makes a huge difference to a company’s employer brand, and may even affect their sales.

Whatever size company your clients are a part of, there’s no denying that interview scheduling can benefit them. Find out more about how you can offer scalable interview scheduling to your clients with Cronofy. Email hello@cronofy.com to find out more.

How long do recruiters waste scheduling interviews?

Find out in our interview scheduling survey

Jeremy is the Head of Marketing at Cronofy with over a decade of experience in the tech industry.

Cronofy reviews sourced by G2