Is Automated Interview Scheduling the Key to an Effective Recruiting Strategy?
It’s rare to find an organization today that doesn’t use an applicant tracking system (ATS) – and for good reason. Companies rely on their ATS to keep track of data from hundreds, at times, thousands, of candidates, and it’s a job the systems generally do quite well. But, when it comes to the process of actually interviewing those candidates – managing calendars, sending meeting invites, managing last-minute schedule changes – then not so much.
Even the best ATS in the marketplace can’t take scheduling management off your shoulders, leaving the tasks to be handled manually. Scheduling seems simple enough on the surface, so this should be an easy problem to solve, right?
Well, not quite.
When recruiters are left to take on scheduling themselves, they lose countless hours that could be spent in more valuable ways, like making strategic decisions, sourcing more talent, and actually completing the candidate interviews that they spend so long preparing for.
In fact, Yello surveys have found that 60% of recruiter time is spent solely on the administrative tasks involved in scheduling interviews. That means less than half of their time is devoted to actual recruiting.
And it turns out, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to manual scheduling.
Estimate your team’s interview scheduling time
Let’s start by estimating the number of initial scheduling tasks that your recruiters are completing each year:
This number should include all types of interviews: phone screen, in-person, group, video interviews, panels, etc. If you don’t feel you can make a realistic estimate, then take the number of new employees typically hired each year and multiply that by 12 – on average, there are 12 interview activities per one hire.
Next, take that figure and add your estimated number of rescheduling activities caused by no-shows, cancellations, or time conflicts. Again, you can use a shortcut by multiplying the total number of interview activities by 55% (that’s the industry average of how often conflicts occur.)
Once added, you have a ballpark figure for the total yearly interview scheduling activities your recruiters are doing.
And, since the industry average time for either initial scheduling or rescheduling is one hour, this number also represents the total hours spent each year in administrative time. Now you have a better picture of how quickly those hours are adding up.
Consider the steep labor costs your organization is paying for simple administrative tasks – those hours that could be spent on complex projects, and are instead lost, wasted in Outlook or Gmail.
It makes you think – what could you complete over the next year with that much time given back to your team?
Take back your time
Automated interview scheduling solutions reduce scheduling time by 87-90%.
(If you’re still calculating, multiply the total yearly hours you found above by .9, then multiply that figure by the average hourly wage of your team. The result = your annual savings with automated interview scheduling software.)
With automated interviewing scheduling, your recruiters immediately benefit, because they won’t have to waste hours on rescheduling interviews, sending out reminders, or coordinating multiple calendars.
At the same time, candidates will be impressed with your quick response time, their ability to self-schedule via email or SMS, and the personalized experience that your recruiters now have the bandwidth to provide. Most tools, like Yello’s own interview scheduling solution, work with today’s most popular ATS platforms, allowing your team to seamlessly sync all scheduling details, candidate correspondence, and other data.
All-in-all, while automated interview scheduling software seems simple on the surface, the massive benefits your organization will see from it’s implementation make it a contender for the most effective tool within your HR tech stack.