Are you consistently losing candidates, even though your hiring process seems to be in great shape? You may be overlooking one significant culprit: low-quality scheduling automation.

As talent acquisition teams juggle multiple calendars, time zones, and interviewer loads, leveraging scheduling automation is an absolute necessity to coordinate fast and intelligently. Automation is invaluable to the scheduling process…until it isn’t.

With some interview management systems, the promise of automation doesn’t deliver. Not all tools can navigate the twists and turns of modern-day interview scheduling. Subpar scheduling automation makes a recruiter’s job harder and degrades a candidate’s hiring experience. 

What Does Subpar Scheduling Automation Look Like?

If your scheduling automation can’t handle the complexity of everyday scheduling, then you have low-quality automation. This type of automation presents suboptimal scheduling decisions as the “best fit.” It doesn’t think like a recruiting coordinator would.

Subpar automation can’t handle the turbulence of the recruiting landscape, where interviewer availability can shift at a moment’s notice. If you can’t trust your system to adapt to changes and make the best scheduling decisions, then is your automation really saving you time?

How Lackluster Automation Deters Candidates

Candidates expect a fast-moving, frictionless hiring process that positively connects them to your culture and team. Lackluster automation delivers the exact opposite experience. Here’s how:

Candidates Are Picky—and Poor Automation Is a Turnoff

Today’s record-low unemployment rate makes finding stellar talent a challenge. To ramp up the pressure, candidates are increasingly selective when vetting job offers. Nearly half (49%) of candidates have turned down an offer due to a bad recruiting experience. Candidates have high expectations of your process—and you better live up to them. 

Recruiting teams need to be on their A-game to impress picky candidates, and that means leveraging intelligent HR technology. Poor scheduling automation creates a clunky process filled with bottlenecks. That’s a major turnoff.

Top Candidates Lose Enthusiasm When There Are Delays

Put yourself in the shoes of a candidate. A recruiter approaches you for a phone screen—success! You give them your availability, but then a week goes by without any communication. Did they just ghost you? Ouch.

Suddenly, the recruiter reaches back out: your interview is scheduled. It’s about time. You complete the interview, yet then the cycle of delayed communication starts once again. Time to apply to other companies.

Doesn’t sound like a pleasant hiring experience, does it? It certainly doesn’t match up with expectations; 55% of candidates believe that it should take one to two weeks from the first interview to receive an offer. When scheduling automation creates delays, candidates steadily lose enthusiasm and opt out of your process.

Candidates Flock to Companies With Refined Automation

Almost all candidates have multiple companies vying for their attention. If you don’t hire with polished automation, another company will. (Hint: that’s the company that candidates will run to.)

A tech solution that doesn’t create a compelling hiring experience or cultivate bonds with candidates drives talent straight into the arms of competitors.

What Does Intelligent Scheduling Automation Look Like?

Intelligent scheduling automation revolutionizes the hiring process. It knows just as much (or more) about your interview team and workflow as you do. High-quality automation can be just the thing that makes your hiring process impress top talent.

AI for more human hiring

Interview scheduling is just the start. Use human-centric AI to elevate your hiring experience while automating 90% of interview scheduling tasks — for any role, in any place, at any scale.

Intelligent automation possesses advanced calendar awareness. It’s able to schedule for both speed and “best fit.” Intelligent automation is also agile; it can handle a request to change or reschedule an interview in a matter of seconds. Overall, this automation considers the nuances of your company’s calendar so that it truly thinks like a recruiter.

How Smart Automation Engages Candidates

While smart automation makes a recruiter’s job easier, it also enhances a candidate’s experience with your team and your company.  Here’s how:

Caters to Your Candidate’s Schedule

It’s a candidate’s market; talent teams must schedule to accommodate their candidate’s calendar, not just their own. Intelligent automation puts this in motion.

Perhaps an interviewer’s first available time slot is too far into the future, and you don’t want to keep your candidate waiting too long. (They’ll either lose interest in you, or another company will scoop them up!) Have no fear: intelligent automation knows how to ignore certain scheduling restrictions to schedule the interview sooner.

Yet sometimes, getting a candidate in front of your team as soon as possible isn’t the priority. Maybe you’d rather schedule a time when interviewers with the most relevant skills can speak to the candidate. (This is a surefire way to improve the candidate’s interview experience!) In this case, smart automation can schedule a meeting time that’s a “best fit” for this factor.

Enriches the Hiring Experience With Personalization

Personalization makes people feel special, and the same applies to candidates. It’s why you always see personalized name keychains in gift shops; people love a personal touch. It’s only human nature.

Sending automated, personalized meeting reminders adds a human element to the hiring process. This fosters meaningful connections with candidates and makes the scheduling process feel less “robotic.” When it comes to enhancing a candidate’s hiring experience, the best automation to use is the kind that feels a little less automated and a little more human.

Eliminates Delays and Keep Candidates Interested

If you‘ve ever had interviewers bow out or change their availability, you know how many bottlenecks that can cause. To make matters worse, candidates lose interest when they’re met with scheduling delays. Luckily, the right scheduling automation can eliminate this problem. 

Smart automation sorts through countless scheduling options to identify the top choice. Even if an interviewer or a candidate’s availability changes, smart automation adapts to display the best options. No bottlenecks mean happy candidates.

Schedule Smarter and Win More Talent Today

If you’re thinking, “There’s no way that a software can handle the complexity of our scheduling process,” think again. Start scheduling smarter today with GoodTime. 

GoodTime Hire’s new Flexible Scheduling delivers scheduling automation that you won’t need to second-guess. Recruiters who use Hire’s Flexible Scheduling know they can trust the solution to make the right interview scheduling decisions, no matter the complexity.

Learn more about how Hire’s Flexible Scheduling can revolutionize the way that you schedule.

About the Author

Rachel Heller

Rachel is passionate about creating and distributing powerful, engaging, and expert-vetted content. As the former Content Specialist at GoodTime, she covered the latest trends, insights, and expert recommendations for all things talent acquisition and recruiting.