- Candidates can be scheduled for an interview by moving the candidate to any of the statuses listed under ‘Interview’ in the status category. 

- Changing the status and clicking the ‘Schedule Interview’ button under the status section opens up the ‘Schedule Interview’ form.


Scheduling an Interview:


The Schedule Interview form has the following sections:


1. Find Interview Slots:


Interviewers

  • The user can choose the interviewer(s) from the drop-down by typing the first few letters of the interviewer’s name.  
  • Only names of the users added as team members will appear in the selection.
  • The user can add multiple interviewers this way.


Duration: The user can select the duration of the interview from the drop-down.  The drop-down lists values starting from 15 mins to 4 hr 45 minutes with increments of 15 mins.


Find Slots: Once the interviewer(s) and interview, the duration is selected, clicking on 'Find Slots' opens up the calendar of the selected interviewer(s).  The user can view the calendar by day, week or month, and find free slots on the user's calendar. Availability can be found for users who have synced their calendars with Param platform (this can be done from the My Profile section under Settings.)  The user will only be able to select free slots on the interviewer's calendar.  


Once the user selects the time on the interviewer's calendar, the slot appears on the interviewer's calendar in Param, for the date, time and duration selected by the user.



2. Interview Location: 


Add Location:  This is an optional field and is a free-text field. The user can update the location of the interview such as the conference room name/building location etc.


Candidate Time zone: This section allows the user to select the candidate’s timezone so that they receive the interview schedule in the invitation email in their time zone.



3. Competencies to Cover:  This section lists out the pre-set competencies to be covered in the interview.  The competencies to be covered can be set from the Job Setup tab under the job. An interview can only be scheduled once the competencies have been set against it.



4. Additional Information:


Video Interview (Optional):  This section allows the user to set up a video interview via Skype. Selecting ‘Skype Interview’ from the drop-down in this field generates a video conference URL for the interview, which is sent to the interviewer and interviewee in their respective invites.  The code editor and whiteboard in the Skype interview allow collaborative editing and are especially useful for interviews requiring coding or whiteboard drawing.


Notes for Interviewer (Optional): This section can be used to specify notes or instructions for the interviewer such as which interviewer will cover which of the competencies etc.


After filling up the Schedule Interview form, the user has 2 options to schedule the interview:


a. Save & Schedule Later: If you are not sure about the interviewer schedule/availability then this option can be used. We will discuss more of this in a separate article.


b. Schedule Now: This option allows the user to schedule a confirmed interview as per the details provided in the Schedule Interview form. Once the interview has been scheduled using Schedule Now, the interviewer(s) receive an email with the details of the interview.  The interviewer's calendar will also get blocked for the duration of the interview.



Please see this example below to get a clear idea of how this is done on the tool.



Kindly go to the job first and choose the candidate. 


Open the candidate’s profile and on the right-hand side, you do see the candidate status


Click on the candidate status dropdown and choose the interview that you want to schedule for the candidate from the list. 



Once you choose the interview, it will highlight in blue ”schedule interview”. Click on “schedule interview” and a new window will pop up.



On the new window you will see the interview round name, the candidate’s name, an option to choose the duration of the interview, choose the interviewer(s) and choose the time slot that you want to keep for the interview. You also do have an option to update the location of the interview, candidate’s time zone, option to keep a video interview and can add notes for the interviewer. You can also see the competencies that the interviewer will judge the candidate on.



Fill in the details and click on the schedule now button. 


The interview will be scheduled.


Bulk Scheduling Interview:


You can also schedule an interview by going to the job and selecting the candidate by checking the box to the left of the candidate’s name.


Once you check the box at the bottom of the page you do see a number of options


First, change the status of the candidate to the particular interview round that you want to schedule for and once the status is changed, click on the “schedule interview” option.


Choose the interview round from the list and the interview scheduling window will pop up


Follow the above steps to schedule an interview successfully.





Editing or Rescheduling an Interview:


Users can edit or reschedule the interview from the ‘Interviews’ tab on the candidate profile. The ‘Edit’ button allows the user to change details of the interview such as date and time and the interviewer(s). After making the changes, selecting ‘Reschedule’ updates the details for the interview.



Cancelling a Scheduled Interview:


The Cancel Interview button appears against interviews that do not yet have interview feedback against them. 




Clicking on this button opens up a prompt window, asking the user if they are sure about cancelling the interview. Selecting Cancel Interview on this window changes the status of the interview to Cancelled




Additionally, the candidate and the interviewer also receive an email regarding the interview cancellation.  Interviews that have feedback entered against them cannot be cancelled.