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The Hireology Interview Suite offers tools to increase hiring manager and recruiter productivity, reduce interview ghosting, conduct a consistent and compliant interview process and maintain transparency for all stakeholders. In this article, you will review best practices to drive these results. 

 

In this article we will cover: 

• Best practices to schedule an interview
• Best practices to reduce interview ghosting
• Best practices for conducting and documenting an interview
• Best practices to maintain interview transparency 
• Supporting documents

 

Best practices to schedule an interview

Automated Interview Schedule

48% of applicants are likely to ghost if you don't meet their expectations for interview timing 

To sync your calendar, click on personal settings and then select 'Calendar Sync'.

 

 

Locate the Calendar Sync section and click 'Connect'. 

 

 

Choose your email provider and follow the prompts. We support Google, Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, and Apple iCloud calendars. 

 

 

Administrators can see which users have their calendars synced by clicking 'Management' and then 'Manage Users'. You will note 'Calendar Synced' next to users who have completed this. 

 

When you navigate to a candidates interview, you will now be able to select "Launch Scheduler" 

 

Follow the prompts to select the Interview Type, Duration, and Interviewer.

 

 

Once the Interviewer is selected, Hireology will showcase the calendar availability of that interviewer. You can then choose the date(s) and time(s) you would like to offer for the interview. This is where having your users' calendars synced can be especially useful as you will not be able to select time slots that are already booked on your / the interviewer's calendar!

 

 

 

When prompted, click 'Create Invite'.

 

 

 

 

You will see a preview of the message the candidate will receive. If everything looks good, click 'Send'. 

 

 

 

 

The candidate will receive an email with a link to select their preferred interview time. This invitation will expire for the applicant in 7 days.

When your calendar is synced, changes in your availability will be reflected in time-slots the candidate can choose. For example, if you offered interview time-slots to a candidate but later added a meeting to your calendar that conflicted with some of the time-slots, the candidate's options would be updated to only reflect the time-slots for your new availability. Similarly, you can offer the same list of dates and times to multiple candidates who will be able to choose their time-slot on a first-come, first-serve basis. 

 

When a candidate selects an interview time and clicks “Confirm Interview”, they will be presented with a success message and confirmation email. The email includes a calendar invite so the candidate can add the time to their calendar. The Interviewer will also receive email confirmation of the confirmed interview. 

 

 

 

When navigating back to the candidate in your Hireology account, you will see their interview status is set to "Scheduled" and you are able to view the time/date the candidate selected 

 

Best practices to reduce interview ghosting

Best Practice: Automated Candidate Interview Reminders

44% of applicants who ghosted stated it was due to lack of communication.

Keep your candidate in the loop and engaged with consistent communication prior to and during their interview process. Our interview reminders functionality promptly sends automated notifications to candidates about their upcoming interviews, to help minimize time wasted on manual communications and missed interviews.

Once an interview is scheduled you can view the default interview reminder settings 

 

 

Note: An interview must be scheduled in order for the reminder to be sent to the candidate

By default, a reminder will be sent to your candidate 1 hour before the interview is scheduled to start via email and text (if the candidate is opted into text messages) 

 

 

Customizing Automated Candidate Interview Reminders 

You can customize the interview reminder per candidate as needed by selecting "Customize Reminder" 

 

Adjust the time frame and/or the mode of delivery based on your preferences. 

 

Select "Update" to save changes 

 

You can also customize Interview Reminders for all scheduled interviews moving forward in the "settings" tab of your account. Select "Automations" to review and adjust

Adjust the timing and the mode of delivery

Note: This edit will update the default for ALL interview reminders moving forward

You are also able to customize the email and/or text template that is sent to your candidate

 

Adjust the copy or add dynamic fields, then select "Save Changes" when complete

 

Best practices for conducting and documenting an interview

Best Practice: Documented, Consistent Interview Guides

55% of applicants expect to be interviewed within 72 hours of applying to a job

Conducting consistent and professional interview communication reflects positively on your organization and ensures legal compliance. 

After an Applicant has been advanced to Candidate, you can schedule an interview. Once the interview is scheduled, you can begin the interview by locating the candidate with whom you will be conducting the interview. 

 

Navigate to the 'Jobs' tab and then click into the role that you are interviewing for.

Select the interview that you are looking to conduct. 

 

Click 'Start Interview' or select 'Print' if you would like to take notes on the conversation by hand. 

 

Tip: It's important to configure interview guides prior to conducting interviews. Once you start an interview, you cannot go back and edit the guide.  However, you can skip a question. This tells the system to remove the question from scoring consideration. If you skip a question, we recommend skipping that question for all candidates to create consistency in your interview process. 

 

Clicking the 'Start Interview' button will enable you to type candidate responses in the text boxes. On the left side of the page, you can toggle between Notepad and Resume. The Notepad section is for additional notes that you would like to add during or after an interview. Clicking 'Resume' will open the candidate's resume to reference as you're conducting the interview. 

 

Scoring an Interview

 

All interview guides include a mechanism to score each question. For in-person interviews, we suggest waiting until the interview has been completed and the candidate has left before scoring. You can score a candidate's response as Excellent, Good, Ok, or Poor based on how well you think they responded to the question. If you did not ask a question on the guide, select 'Skip' and do not enter a score. 

 

After you have scored the interview, click the 'Finish & Score' button to generate the candidate's total interview score.

 

If applicable, confirm any skipped questions. 

 

 

 

Interview scores will indicate if the candidate is a Low Risk, Moderate Risk, or High Risk hire. You will also see a visual representation of where the candidate falls on the scoring spectrum. 

Note the overall score and risk category. 

 

 

 

Related Topics: 

Editing Interview Guides

Best practices to maintain interview transparency 

Best Practice: Updated Interview Statuses

Drive speed and maintain transparency in your hiring process and insights data by updating interview statuses to reflect your candidates progress.

Where to find your Interviews Status

Navigate to the "candidates" tab and view interviews within the roles hiring process

 

Use the interview scheduler to schedule the interview or select "schedule manually" 

 

You will see the status update with the details of the interview. 

Note: When using the scheduler, the interview type that you selected (phone or in-person) will be available in the "Interview Details" as shown below. In addition, scheduling an "Impressions Interview" manually will result in the interview type to be displayed as "Phone"

 

 

This and future statuses will also be available from the candidates tab.

Status Options

• Invite Sent Note: this status will only populate when a user takes an action - in this case, sending their availability to a candidate via the scheduler
• Confirmed 
• In-Progress
• Completed
• No Show 
• Canceled  Note: canceling an interview will set status to canceled instead of Candidate Not Contacted

The status "Scheduled" and "Unscheduled" are not available for manual selection, however, are based on user actions within the interview scheduler. 

 

Supporting Documents:

• Syncing Your Calendar
• Editing Interview Guides
• Creating an Interview From Scratch
• Scheduling Interviews
• Automated Candidate Interview Reminders
• Interview Statuses
• How to Conduct an Interview
• Taking Notes While Conducting an Interview