Use the latest in AI technology to automate your interview scheduling

You have to act fast if you want to land the best talent for your organization. According to data from Workleap, a creator of employee experience software, 10 days is all it takes for quality candidates to get scooped off the market. That isn't much time to identify, screen, and contact these candidates, much less coordinate schedules to arrange an interview. To make the most out of the limited time frame, you'll have to find ways to streamline the hiring process.

With artificial intelligence tools, such streamlining may come easier than you think. In a joint effort with the global decision intelligence company Morning Consult, we at CareerBuilder surveyed 400 hiring decision-makers across a swath of industries and found that more than half of them were already using AI for scheduling interviews. You can see the stats for yourself by accessing our white paper "AI in Hiring: 2024 Trends, Insights & Predictions." Here, however, let's further examine AI's utility when it comes to interview scheduling.

What's involved in scheduling interviews with AI?

Scheduling interviews with AI refers to a form of automation that leverages machine learning to streamline the overall process. The scheduling process can be highly complex, as it involves multiple parties operating on independent timelines. On the one hand, the various hiring authorities within an organization are striving to fill a vacancy by a specified deadline. On the other, the candidate is trying to get hired as soon as possible, possibly while working a full-time job. Quite likely, each party also has other prospects to fit into their schedule.

An AI tool can be the solution you need to manage these potential points of entanglement. It begins by capturing and coordinating the information of everyone involved in the process. With access to digital calendars within the organization, it synchronizes data from the hiring team members to identify slots in which everyone is available to meet at the same time. It then informs the candidate of the available time slots and allows them to choose the ones that suit them. 

Once that's done, the hiring team has the final piece of information needed to finalize the date and time. The tool can also send automated messages to the involved parties so that everyone remains aware of the upcoming interview.

With AI, the hiring manager, HR team, job candidate, and other stakeholders can enjoy a seamless and largely hands-off experience at this stage in the hiring process. It also requires little to no mental resources, so the opportunity for human error is low.

5 challenges of manual interview scheduling

To appreciate the advantages of using AI to schedule interviews, we need to understand the challenges associated with the old, manual way of doing things. There are five challenges in particular:

• Coordination: Manual coordination requires constant checking of one schedule against another to identify availabilities that work for everyone — a chore, to say the least.
• Time differences: The difficulty intensifies if even one of the involved parties is in a different time zone, which is a higher likelihood in today's age of remote work.
• Miscommunication: Relying on manual correspondence can introduce mistakes in the communication thread. A single mistyped or misunderstood piece of information can cause enough confusion to slow the hiring process.
• Navigating your correspondence: The more parties involved in the hiring process, the more complex your correspondence is likely to be. You can easily lose important information in such a complex communication web.
• Arranging back-to-back interviews: As we said, the hiring and applying parties may each have multiple prospects to schedule around. For you, the hiring organization, difficulties arise when you have to schedule multiple candidates directly before or after another. If one interview goes over time, that can throw off the entire day's schedule.

Advantages of using AI to schedule interviews

The advantages your organization can realize with AI directly address the challenges described above. Namely, using AI to schedule your interviews places all of the most complex activities in the digital hands of an algorithm specifically designed to handle coordination, communication, and confirmation. As a result, you:

• Save time: No longer must you or the candidate engage in a back-and-forth to pinpoint the ideal times for an interview. Even when unexpected events arise, any one of the involved parties can easily reschedule via AI chatbot.
• Prevent scheduling errors: The AI system reviews and analyzes the relevant data much faster and more accurately than a human can. Therefore, you can forget about conflicts that arise from timing mistakes, misunderstandings about time zones, and other common errors.
• Provide seamless communication: Speaking of the AI chatbot, it's an invaluable feature for ensuring the candidate stays up to speed on developments in your process. It can keep them engaged, too, so your organization stands a greater chance of landing extraordinary talent should you offer them the job.
• Fill your vacancies more quickly: Every improvement in hiring efficiency contributes to a faster time to hire. That's great news, especially if you have urgent hiring needs or you're trying to attract top talent before they leave the market.

"The scheduling process can be highly complex, as it involves multiple parties operating on independent timelines… Quite likely, each party also has other prospects around which to work their schedule."

Tips and strategies for using AI to schedule interviews

AI is still a relatively new tool in the HR space, so it's normal for practitioners to be unsure about the full extent of its application in interview scheduling. With that in mind, we've provided these tips and strategies to help you get the most out of your AI tool:

Choose the right AI tool

The AI marketplace is diverse, so you can't blindly select a recruitment tool and expect it to meet your needs. You may even end up with a program that doesn't include a robust scheduling option, leaving you in the lurch in terms of one of the most difficult-to-navigate stages of the hiring process. Prevent such an outcome by carefully studying your options so that the tool you choose has the functionality you want at a price point you can afford. 

Tailor your AI to your circumstances

When you implement AI in your hiring process, take the time to familiarize yourself with its customization features — a common feature among AI-powered recruitment tools. You might configure it, for instance, to offer scheduling times not only within your organization's operating hours but also within specific windows that your organization has allotted to interviews. 

Provide feedback

What we know as AI today is really machine learning. As such, it requires human input to improve. You may experience some hiccups early on, but providing regular feedback allows the AI to correct itself and prevent such errors from arising again.

With its current widespread use, along with the rapid and ongoing development of AI technology as a whole, we expect AI scheduling will continue to find its way into an ever-growing number of HR toolkits. The same can be said of other AI applications, too. From sourcing candidates to onboarding new hires, businesses are leveraging AI at every stage of the hiring process. Learn more about its myriad uses by downloading "AI in Hiring: 2024 Trends, Insights & Predictions."

Then, when you're ready to apply advanced approaches to your hiring process, feel free to reach out to us at CareerBuilder, one of the first hiring solutions on the market to use AI technology to support both job seekers and job creators. Use our AI tools to write and optimize your job descriptions as well as to deliver larger volumes of qualified candidates to your HR specialists. Call 877-345-5256 to discover how CareerBuilder's AI offerings can yield better hiring metrics for your organization.

More tips about navigating the hiring process:

It isn't just scheduling but the hiring process in general that's complex. Navigating it successfully often relies on having a well-defined approach to start with.

Outside of leveraging AI, your organization can make smarter hiring decisions with data-based recruiting.

Hiring bias is another hurdle that many HR teams struggle to clear. You can help your team overcome bias with some strategies and tips.