Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
Making a candidate’s availability a primary decision factor may cut your interview no-shows by 1/3.
Why? Because when you identify the root causes of interview turndowns and no-shows, you find that many occur because of the primary factor used in selecting the interview time and place. Was the hiring manager only available during normal work hours? That is a problem, especially for each of your fully employed candidates.
It is extremely difficult to participate in interviews scheduled during normal work hours. So, if you’re serious about improving your recruiting results, it’s time to become more collaborative. When you schedule your interviews, offer your candidates more time and location options.
A Negative Candidate Experience Will Damage Your Hiring Results
If you buy into the basic premise that providing each candidate with “a great candidate experience” is a high-impact factor. A great candidate experience will cause them to remain in your hiring process and later say yes if they get an offer.
So, beginning today. Everyone must accept that making it easy for each candidate to schedule and participate in your interviews is now an essential part of that candidate experience. Research has shown that candidates are unhappy with corporate hiring processes.
In fact, one candidate survey found that 40% described their last job search as frustrating and long. A similar survey revealed that a negative candidate experience has caused one-third of job seekers to decline an offer.
The Difference Between Candidate-Friendly And Unilateral Interview Scheduling
In many cases. Without much give-and-take. Each interviewee is unceremoniously “sent” their final interview schedule. I call this traditional one-way approach “unilateral interview scheduling” because the company makes all the scheduling decisions.
This harsh approach has the assumption that candidates are desperate for a job as its foundation premise. So, they will automatically show up at whatever time and place the hiring manager decides. Unfortunately, in many cases, the candidate’s current schedule and/or transportation issues will severely limit their availability.
So, to increase their participation in your interviews, organizations need to adopt what I call “Candidate Friendly Interview Scheduling” (or CFIS). This approach is labeled “candidate-friendly” because it uses a collaborative approach to determine interview schedules.
One of its goals is to schedule the interviews of top candidates at a time and location that makes it easy for busy candidates to participate in every interview. In addition, this process adds both new “outside of work hours” interview time slots and alternative locations for in-person interviews.
4 Compelling Reasons For Candidate-Friendly Interview Scheduling (CFIS)
Unfortunately, most hiring managers and recruiters don’t realize there are several painful areas where poor interview scheduling can directly hurt your recruiting results. Those areas of damage include:
Candidate no-shows and process dropouts will decrease your finalist pool – most of your top candidates will have multiple job choices (including staying with their current employer). That means that after initially agreeing to a scheduled interview, many will decide at the last minute not to show up. In other cases, some candidates will simply refuse to participate in any interview schedule they consider unreasonable. And in this case, your “unreasonable expectations” may cause the candidate to prematurely drop out of your hiring process (after giving you a phony excuse). In both these cases, your finalist candidate pool will unnecessarily shrink. Unfortunately, that will reduce your chances of hiring a top candidate.
Future job applications will be reduced after candidates report a bad interview experience – employer comment sites like Glassdoor allow candidates to judge and rate their interview experience with your company. You can be assured that any negative publicity about your flawed interview process will discourage future applications to your company.
Your offer acceptance rates will go down when candidates experience your non-collaborative environment – It’s universally true that top candidates demand a collaborative work environment. So, when candidates discover that your process for scheduling interviews is not collaborative. Many will assume that the non-collaborative approach they are currently experiencing will continue across the board after becoming an employee. And that fear will directly lower the offer acceptance rate of your top candidates.
Inconvenient scheduling will hurt a candidate’s interview performance – The performance of your candidates during their interviews may be reduced if the scheduled time and place of each interview doesn’t allow them time to prepare. Or when the rush to actually make the interview increases the stress level of the candidate. This stress will, unfortunately, hurt a top candidate’s performance during their interview. And that low interview performance rating will cause you to misjudge many stressed top candidates.
Unorthodox Interview Time And Location Alternatives To Consider
In this section, you will find a list of new alternative times and locations for your interviews.
The first step is to begin working with your hiring managers to identify the available unorthodox times and locations you have chosen to offer. Because offering a range of unorthodox choices requires the agreement of each hiring manager. It’s essential that you work with each manager to determine which unorthodox interview options each manager is willing to allow (e.g., nights and weekends).
Unorthodox time options to consider – This section covers new alternative times to hold interviews. These additional “outside of work hours” interview time slots are necessary. Each candidate’s time availability is unique. The “alternative time” options that you should consider include:
- During the workweek. Offer working candidates one-hour before or one-hour after work interview time slots (when managers don’t have any scheduled meetings) as well as lunchtime telephone or text interviews. If the interview is electronic, it can also be scheduled for after both the manager and the candidate arrive home from work.
- Outside of the normal workweek. When managers are willing, offer interviews on Saturdays and/or during holidays.
- Offer them fully automated interviews. Today, numerous asynchronous interview software packages allow the candidate to answer your preselected questions at a time and place of their choosing. And it carries an added benefit. Managers and recruiters don’t need to be present when the candidate completes their interview.
- Give them an option to complete all interviews on the same day. Getting off work is often extremely difficult for the fully employed. You can minimize the number of times they need to “lie to their boss” to get off work for your interview. Offer them the option of completing all of your interviews during a single day (this approach is sometimes called “Interview Fridays”).
Unorthodox location options – the second section of interview options covers the location of a face-to-face interview. A candidate’s ability to attend in-person interviews will almost always be limited by their transportation options. Try to expand the number of unorthodox locations where you offer face-to-face interviews. Those “alternative location” options might include:
- Consider offering face-to-face interviews outside of the office but in easy-to-access locations. These locations might include a hotel close to a major transit hub or a private room at a suburban hotel or mall close to where they live.
- When your company has retail outlets or satellite offices, consider holding your interviews there.
- When a candidate is not concerned about being seen in public with you, consider holding the interview during lunch or dinner at a notable restaurant near their work or home. It might be an added incentive to participate.
- Make rendezvousing at a local or national conference an option. The best candidates often attend professional conferences. Consider interviewing them at a discreet location near the conference.
Implementation Tips For The Candidate-Friendly Approach
This is for those serious about offering more flexible and candidate-friendly interview scheduling. Here are some implementation tips to consider.
Start by making hiring managers fully aware of the cost of unilateral hiring – It’s a huge mistake to assume that hiring managers will change their scheduling behavior on their own. The only approach that has worked has been making them fully aware of how much their arrogant scheduling approach is costing them.
Realize that collaboration is essential – This second tip is by far the most important one. One of the foundation elements of the “candidate-friendly” approach is that you proactively collaborate with the candidate to identify their most desirable interview times and locations. This collaboration should begin by soliciting their input on their preferences for the interview method, time, and location. After the schedule is initially set, the candidate is provided with an opportunity to make suggestions.
Provide each candidate with at least one additional option – Wherever possible, avoid offering the candidate only one “take it or leave it” interview option (especially one during normal business hours). Instead, strive to become more flexible and give them at least two time and place choices for each interview.
Utilize interview scheduling software – Today, at most companies, the amount of give-and-take occurs when you try to determine both the manager and the candidate’s availability. It can be both tiring and frustrating. So, the company should consider using electronic self-service scheduling software (e.g., Rakuna). This software gives the candidate extra time to ponder their interview choices.
Make most of your interviews electronic – Both the time and the place options for a candidate expand greatly when you shift to primarily offering electronic interviews. So, schedule interviews that allow candidates to be interviewed using only their ubiquitous smartphone (phone options include voice, live video, and text). And when you need better video resolution or more security, switch to computer-based Zoom calls.
Make your candidate-friendly scheduling process data-driven – If you want your new scheduling process to be wildly successful. You must set up performance metrics to measure its actual impact. Those metrics should cover the number of no-shows and the percentage of top candidates that make it to your finalist list. Candidate satisfaction with your scheduling and overall hiring process should also be measured.
When a manager feels that a candidate should be grateful simply to be offered an interview slot, you can bet that this arrogant attitude will spill over into a manager’s interview scheduling. To the point where you can bet on the assigned “take it or leave it” interview time and place slot will only be convenient for the hiring manager. And, yes, the candidate will sense and react to that attitude.
Final Thoughts
It should be obvious to every manager and recruiting professional that it is a costly mistake to prematurely lose the best candidates (those who are up-to-date because they are currently employed). Simply because you unwittingly made it extremely difficult for them to participate fully in all of your interviews. So, at the very least, you should take steps to involve each candidate in your interview scheduling process formally. If you’re really bold, why not begin treating your top candidates like they were one of your customers? Provide them with flexibility and several options covering the time and the location of their interviews.
Note for the reader
This is the latest in Dr. Sullivan’s 25+ continuous years of weekly talent articles. Access his thousands of articles here.
