5 ways candidate self-scheduling makes the interview process more efficient

Scheduling interviews and selecting the right person from your talent pool can seem as overwhelming as trying to pick something to watch on Netflix. It’s time-consuming, inefficient, and not guaranteed to result in the best choice. 

Reaching the best-fit candidate faster requires an automated, streamlined recruitment process. That process starts with a modern, engaging candidate experience — especially during the interview stage. Today’s job seekers are less likely to engage with an outdated, cumbersome hiring process. A 2022 study found that negative candidate experiences caused 1/3 of job seekers to decline an offer. 

To make interview scheduling efficient, seamless, and hassle-free, it’s important to use a self-scheduling tool.

5 benefits of self-scheduling interviews with automation

Here are five ways automated scheduling makes your interview processes and workflows more efficient:

1. Improves candidate experience

Being able to self-schedule their interview empowers the candidate to see where their availability matches available time slots on interviewers’ calendars.

Not only does this make the process more seamless, but it puts them in the control seat. Candidates often lose interest due to gaps in scheduling, miscommunications, or not being able to uncover interviewer availability.

The faster and more structured your interview process, the better your odds of landing the perfect hire. Plus, candidates are more likely to engage with your employer brand if their interview experience is smooth.

2. Reduces back-and-forth

Scheduling an interview can often require long email exchanges, as candidates are forced to manually coordinate availability with the hiring manager's calendar. It's common for candidates to have questions or even need to reschedule, resulting in a time-consuming process. Self-scheduling features give candidates more control over booking and rescheduling, creating a more positive user experience during the interview process. 

Interview scheduling software also automates features and removes burdens from recruiting teams while increasing interview success rates. For example, Calendly’s Routing Forms feature lets you pre-screen candidates with customized questions, and direct candidates to a team member or info page based on their responses. Meanwhile, Workflows prevent hiring teams from manually following up to remind each applicant of their interview time or provide video interview access details. These reminders and notifications reduce no-shows and eliminate early candidate loss.

By reducing the back-and-forth, you'll have more free time to spend on higher value tasks like building relationships with other top candidates.

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3. Minimizes errors

Human error is natural and unavoidable. Using a tool that lets candidates self-schedule an interview helps minimize the chance of duplicated time slots and overlapping interviews.

By letting candidates schedule their interviews, they become solely responsible for that time slot. You and your team, in turn, can focus on making the interview run as smoothly as possible. 

You can also use automated scheduling tools to standardize and manage meeting processes centrally, saving recruiters time while providing a consistent candidate experience.

4. Speeds up the recruitment cycle

Besides saving the candidate time, self-scheduling functionality allows you to speed up time to hire by booking and confirming interviews faster.

Using a tool that enables you to conduct Round Robin scheduling (for initial candidate screens) and collective scheduling (for remote, on-site, individual, or panel interviews) also enhances your scheduling process.

For example, when conducting panel interviews, you can collate team members' availability and only show candidates interview slots when all members are available — and adjust for the candidate’s time zone.

By accelerating the hiring funnel, you'll re-allocate time to other areas like strengthening your overall talent acquisition strategy, or developing onboarding plans for new hires.

5. Automates reporting

Using automated interview technology, especially ones that integrate with applicant tracking systems (ATS), empower your team to look at the data associated with this stage in a new way. Calendly, for example, integrates with leading recruiting and ATS platforms like Greenhouse, JazzHR, Zoho Recruit, and others.

Tools like scheduling reports and analytics enable you to view your past or upcoming interviews, track reschedules and cancellations, and view your team’s progress in the recruiting process. This allows you to more easily and accurately track conversion rate metrics, time-to-interview, and time-to-hire.

Streamline your recruitment process with self-service interview scheduling software

Remember, requests to self-schedule an interview can be used at every candidate touch point.

For example:

• In a text or email when scheduling an initial phone screen

• In a LinkedIn Messenger or InMail message for more passive candidate outreach

• At the offer stage to schedule a suitable call time

The efficiency gains of self-scheduling let you significantly streamline your recruiting process and reduce hiring costs for each job requisition.

Ultimately, a good candidate self-scheduling process is about as good of a productivity boost as you can ask for — especially in the world of recruiting.