The latest release of Interview Coordinator includes new features designed to make the process of scheduling interviews (and any other “events”) much easier and less time consuming.
When it comes to scheduling interviews with candidates, life would be simple if the whole world used a single shared access calendar system. However, in reality, not even all organisations provide shared calendar access between employees across remote locations, so it is perhaps unlikely to expect that internal calendar systems also provide shared access to candidates or other “external” recruitment contributors (E.G. recruitment agencies).
Interview Coordinator has always allowed all the different people involved in the recruitment workflow to interact with the central recruitment administration database via their local browser. Therefore it’s been relatively straight forward to update the existing web pages to make it easy for all the same people to collaborate remotely to agree convenient dates and times for interviews, but still use their own local calendar systems. This article provides a couple of examples of how the new workflow features work :
When arranging an interview, the obvious first decision is to decide who will conduct the interview. It could be that only the designated hiring manager will conduct the interview. Alternatively, it could be multiple line managers (perhaps located remotely) who will conduct the interview via a conference call. It could even be a team from an outsourced recruitment service who have been tasked with conducting initial telephone interviews to help whittle down a long list.
In the scenario where a single person will conduct the interview, the workflow would be roughly as follows :
- The interviewer consults their own diary and decides on one or more interview date(s) and time(s) to offer (or “suggest”) to the candidate. They input those date(s) and time(s) as “Events” into Interview Coordinator and then “publish” those events to a candidate facing webpage.
- The interviewer then sends a template email to the candidate. The email contains a password protected URL link which will display the published event(s) when clicked.
- The candidate looks at the published event(s) and decides which date(s) and time(s) they can “accept” or “reject”. Or use the web page to make their own suggestion as to when they might be available.
- The interviewer is notified by email that the Event(s) has been accepted or rejected and can easily click a URL within the notification email to display the newly updated webpage. The interviewer now “confirms” any of the “accepted” Events and can click a button to add the confirmed event to their own local diary. Alternatively, if none have been accept they can suggest more event(s) and begin the process again.
- Having Confirmed a published event, the interviewer now sends another template email to the candidate with the “confirmed” interview(event) date/time.
- The candidate receives the confirmation email and can click an attachment which will add the event date and time to their own local calendar (as long their calendar is iCal compatible – which most are)
In the scenario where multiple people (possibly in remote locations) will conduct the interview, the workflow will be slightly different to allow all interviewers to first coordinate their own diaries :
- The hiring manager consults their own diary and decides on one or more interview date(s) and time(s) to offer to the candidate. They input those date(s) and time(s) as “Events” into Interview Coordinator and send a template email to all the other interviewers.
- The template email contains a URL link which each prospective interviewer can click to view the suggested interview date(s) and time(s). They check their own diary and then indicate whether they are “available” or “not available” for each suggested event. They can also suggest other times if they are not available for any of the current events.
- The hiring manager is notified when the other interviewers have input their availability and can easily choose one or more events which are convenient for everyone. Those events are then published to the candidate facing webpage and the workflow is same as above for rest of the process.