10 key benefits of automated interview scheduling
With having to balance multiple tasks, not to mention people, recruitment can become overwhelming. The most important activities involved in the recruitment process are advertising open positions, shortlisting from a huge pile of resumes, initial filtering, scheduling relevant assessments and interviews and final onboarding. Every step is vital, and delays or oversights can result in candidates dropping out. Perhaps, the worst feeling is when candidates become no-shows for interviews, or you miss out on a good candidate owing to scheduling issues or miscommunication. Coordination between the various stakeholders in the process can become a bottleneck, pushing all the hard work that has gone into getting candidates to that stage down the drain.
The time and energy that you invest again to get a few other good candidates to the interview stage will sap your energy. Given the scale involved and the need to match up to the changing expectations of Gen Z, matters can only get compounded with campus hiring. Also, if the intention is to find the best campus talent, you cannot afford to slip as your every step as a prospective employer is being watched and weighed.
To sum up, the manual recruitment process is time-consuming, tedious, inconsistent and even chaotic. What’s more worrying is the lack of flexibility and the impact on hiring efficiency and quality. Humans are prone to making errors, and under stress, the tendency to slip is heightened. Ensuring that every part of the process takes place in a timely manner needs much more than just skill. So, what can recruiters do to salvage the situation and become more efficient?
This is the digital age and automation is everywhere, hiring included. One of the most critical parts of recruitment is candidate engagement. Communication flow should be a continuous activity, right from the time of reaching out, which kickstarts the process, to the final onboarding stage. Delays in communication due to a lack of coordination between the recruitment team, candidate and hiring manager are common. However, it cannot be denied that candidates feel frustrated by such delays and may opt out or go for other options on hand. Automated interview scheduling significantly turns around such scenarios.
Automated interview scheduling is software-backed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automatically set up and schedule interviews at the convenience of both parties. It automates complex workflows, streamlines and eases up the process, and provides all stakeholders with real-time and constant updates. There will be no more instances of missing out on calls or emails, interviewers not being updated on rescheduled interviews, etc. The process eases to such an extent that recruiters will discover they have valuable time on their hands. That’s not all. Listed below are 10 advantages of automated interview systems.
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- Enhances candidate experience: Candidate experience carries a lot of weight in hiring, especially in campus hiring. The first impression matters, and freshers watch and gauge throughout the hiring process to understand the organisation’s culture and people policy. It is essential to ensure good, if not great, candidate experiences. An interview schedule that could take about ten back-and-forth emails or a few calls can happen easily through intelligent slot matching and automated emails. What’s more, with automated interview systems, rescheduling becomes easier and less chaotic as the system automatically reassigns the interviewer or resends emails with changed inputs, making for a better experience overall.
- Lends speed with accuracy: Automation always lends speed to workflows. However, it is also essential to maintain accuracy and quality in the hiring process. Hiring is undeniably competitive, and most top candidates may be engaged with more than one employer at a time. The speed and accuracy of your hiring process will impact such scenarios and help you land the best. Automated processes eliminate delays and make the process seamless by reducing the hiring cycle time. Recruiters, hiring managers and candidates will all benefit greatly from this.
- Enhances hiring efficiency: Processes get streamlined and efficiency is enhanced when you get rid of bottlenecks. Automated interview systems address this requirement. Besides, automation removes human dependency and the scope for errors and biases. Hiring efficiency is measured by the time and cost taken to fill positions and the quality of hires. Automated interview scheduling helps on all counts, thus improving the hiring efficiency.
- Allows scheduling flexibility: Interview scheduling can become tedious and chaotic due to the slot preferences of the interviewers and candidates. The automated interview scheduling software provides stakeholders options to pick from slots entered by both parties. This intelligent matchmaking reduces the need for multiple communications between the two to schedule interviews. Also, if the candidate or the interviewer requests a reschedule, the system does the matching again and rescheduling emails are automatically sent to all parties in real-time.
- Streamlines the process: A vital aspect of efficient hiring is to know which part of the process causes issues, what to track, how to track, etc. Unless one can measure the effectiveness of the process using some metrics, streamlining the process will not happen. Automated interview scheduling software provides the much-needed transparency and relevant insights that help streamline the process.
- Reduces human errors and biases: Recruiters generally carry the mantle of expectations from both candidates and employers. Hiring managers follow up to fill the open positions fast, and candidates look for speedy and great hiring experiences. However, the process involves multiple stakeholders and scenarios, giving rise to stress, errors and biases. A rescheduling mail may get missed, an interviewer may not be in the mood to conduct an interview, or a candidate may not have provisioned for a lengthy interview. Automated interview scheduling software helps eliminate such errors. Also, the software is free of all types of biases related to gender, caste, religion, etc.
- Recruitment teams get more time to focus on core issues: With the automated interview scheduling software ushering in ease, speed and accuracy, recruiters receive the luxurious gift of time on hand. This time can be better utilised in core areas such as strategy, process improvement, scaling up operations, etc. In campus hiring, the extra time helps form connections with the candidate community and establish your employer brand. Also, with reduced stress and chaos, productivity can be enhanced.
- Accessibility to larger and diverse talent pool: With DEI taking precedence in most hiring strategies, recruiters have to ensure that the talent pool matches these requirements. Great hiring experiences are always highlighted among the candidate community. The goodwill can help you get access to a larger talent pool. Also, with automated scheduling, if you incorporate virtual interviews and customised online assessments like those from HirePro, your candidate pool widens. With the pandemic-induced change in mindset, most candidates are not so open to travelling for hiring processes. Automated processes will also encourage a diverse set of candidates to reach out to you, considering the various constraints that they may already have.
- Appeals to the digital-savvy crowd: Campus hiring is a time-tested hiring process for most organisations looking for top talent. However, Gen Z is rather choosy and comprises first-gen digital natives. Unless your hiring process appeals to them with its speed and ease through digitalisation, they will lose interest. Automated interview scheduling can help you score a few brownie points with this crowd.
- Value-added benefits of data analytics: Most AI-backed interview scheduling software has in-built analytics that provides multiple actionable insights. These can help you identify areas of improvement to streamline the process and focus on the big picture. HR and recruitment are the engines that drive growth within an organisation. Initiatives driven by them can help bring immense value throughout the organisation. Data analytics helps make informed decisions. The positive changes from these initiatives benefit both the hiring managers and candidates as their hiring experiences improve by leaps and bounds. Organisations benefit through improved employer branding, higher conversion rates and better talent quality.
Overall, the benefits of automated interview scheduling are multipronged. They contribute to hiring efficiency by reducing many issues and enhancing several aspects of interviews, which are the final steps to securing an entry into your organisation.
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