If you work for a recruiting agency, you understand the challenges associated with coordinating interviews between candidates and your clients. Hiring managers are always busy and you don't want to bother them too much. At the same time, candidates need to find the right time to sneak away from their current job so they can meet with a potential new employer. The recruiter is stuck in the middle, trying to find the best time to make this happen. You'll have to be ready for curve balls, such as cancellations, last minute time changes, or interview extensions. Email works, but you can do better! Find a tool that makes it seamless to collect availability from each party involved throughout the interview process. Ideally, you'll want to look at one screen and know exactly when is the best time to schedule meetings.
Simple collection
When scheduling cross-organization meetings, it can be difficult to know when there are common times for availability. Each individual could be using a different email client (Microsoft Outlook versus Google Cloud Email), and each on it's own network. Therefore, you can't simply view someone's calendar to know when they are available. However, there are many tools that allow each individual to share when they are free, and the tool will help you identify good times to book an interview. Group meeting polls work great!
Organization
You'll need great tools to keep everyone's schedule organized and accessible. Folder systems or tags work best. If your collecting everyone's availability through email, keep a good folder tree setup so you can quickly find each party's schedule that they provided you. If your using an app, make sure it has a good way to organize everyone's calendars by client, position, candidate, etc...
Remote vs In Person
Remote interviews have become more common now that most industries have adapted a hybrid or full remote working environment. Almost everyone is comfortable using Zoom for interviews. Make sure the technology you are using for scheduling allows you to share video conferencing links.
Calendar Sync
Once you've set a time for the interview, you want to make sure that it is easy for all meeting members to add the details to their own calendar. This is sometimes done by software that has a sync feature, or simply sending the meeting invite to their email.
Password Protection & Privacy
Make sure the technology you choose doesn't overshare information across the individuals. Set privacy rules to keep the data safe.You may also want to set a password to view any public meeting pages that you setup.
Prepare for next steps
You'll want to keep up with collecting availability and possibly collect the information for next rounder interviewers so you can quickly schedule a candidate when they are selected to move forward. The last thing you want is for the process to fall apart because you couldn't get candidates scheduled fast enough.