Interview Tracking Software
Interview tracking tools, also referred to as interview scheduling software, are designed to help recruiters and hiring managers to automate the candidate interview scheduling and management process.
Interview tracking software is a tool that is used to manage candidate interview schedules. It is a software solution that is often used by a hiring team within organizations to help them save time, especially when dealing with a complex and time-consuming recruiting process. It gives HR personnel and recruiting professionals the ability to streamline the job interview process, while also providing an enhanced candidate experience for job seekers. The software utilizes automation technology to eliminate, or at least minimize, the back-and-forth emails and time-intensive phone calls between the recruiter and the job applicants. It also allows HR personnel, recruiting teams and managers to view upcoming interviews in real-time.
An interview tracking solution can be a standalone system or it can be a part of a complete applicant tracking software suite. It syncs with recruiting teams’ and interviewers’ calendars to gain insight into their schedules and figure out when to schedule candidate phone screening, video interviews, as well as onsite panel interviews. Some of its core features are interviewer and applicant interview email reminders, rescheduling options, auto-fill email templates, as well as calendar and email integration capabilities. Interview tracking software can often be integrated with applicant tracking systems (ATS) and HR software. It is also most commonly implemented together with some type of video interviewing/conferencing app, especially with HR and hiring teams conducting remote interviews.
Managing and scheduling candidate interviews are a major part of the hiring process, regardless of what kind of job position you’re trying to fill within your organization. It is a crucial function that you will often find in most ATS and HR management and recruiting software platforms.
The key difference is that with an interview tracking or interview scheduling solution, the focus is mainly on the interview scheduling aspect. With an ATS or HR management system, on the other hand, you get all the tools and capabilities that you need to effectively handle the entire talent acquisition cycle, from creating offer letters and preparing job descriptions to publishing job postings across multiple channels and scheduling interviews for the top candidates.
An interview tracking system is tailor-made for HR personnel, hiring managers and teams, helping them to streamline the entire interviewing process and bring order into an otherwise chaotic candidate screening process. An interview scheduling and tracking solution is the one application for which recruiting professionals and teams can take over and control the entire interview process, from scheduling candidate interviews and collecting feedback to communicating with each of the candidates, making the right hiring decisions and handling all the key aspects in the candidate screening workflow.
Interview tracking software is commonly used by large organizations as part of their applicant tracking system. They use it to track and manage multiple interviews with different candidates, both remotely as well as in person. This type of recruiting software is much more than an interview scheduling tool, although scheduling candidate interviews are among its primary functions.
Interview tracking software can help with managing interviews at multiple levels, from dealing with no-shows and hanging communication and email threads to facilitating long-distance or remote interviews, multiple subsequent interviews as well as panel-type interviews. With this software, you have the power to set, track and access candidate interviews via automated emails, reminders and/or notifications, depending on the product.
This type of application will often have a built-in calendar—or it can be integrated with any calendar tool within your technology stack—that you can use for scheduling and tracking interviews as well as other related activities without leaving the system or switching to a different app. Some vendors offer a complete interview management solution, which features scheduling and tracking capabilities for different types of interviews. A complete interview management system will enable you to set up, schedule and track your candidate interviews with push notifications and email reminders, calendar views and data syncing with third-party calendar apps.
Interview tracking software often uses automation to facilitate the interview scheduling and tracking process. It automatically provides all members of a hiring team and/or interview panel with all the details they need about upcoming candidate interviews, such as the date and time of the interview, the location for onsite interviews, candidate information, secure links/room keys for online video interviews and other important factors for effectively conducting or participating in candidate interviews.
Automated interview tracking is a crucial feature, especially if you’re working with multiple interviewers or have a complete recruiting team that needs to communicate and work together in order to properly screen multiple applicants. This is particularly important for large businesses and organizations that have to fill multiple positions and want to find the right candidate for every vacant position. However, the feature is also useful for any fast-growing company that wants to optimize their candidate interview scheduling while also streamlining their entire talent acquisition process.
A number of interview tracking solutions are often equipped with a few features that overlap with most applicant tracking systems, such as employer branding, onboarding, offer letters and of course, interview scheduling. Modern ATS are designed with the candidate experience in mind, which means they can deliver much more than your recruiting needs.
Employer branding with interview tracking solutions are more focused on giving you the ability to place your company branding on various candidate interview materials, such as email templates, candidate profiles, candidate interview questionnaires, as well as on video conferencing and interviewing applications. It allows you to embed employer/company brand messaging and other branded media into the candidate communication process.
Some interview tracking software solutions can automate the distribution of offer letters to the top candidates or potential new hires. After the initial, second or the third interview, the next obvious step is to submit an offer. Normally, this would be a simple process if you only have one or two candidates in line. However, if you are hiring for multiple positions, then sending different offer letters to each candidate can quickly become a laborious and time-consuming process for your hiring team. The automatic distribution of these offer letters can significantly improve their workflow and productivity.
Interview tracking software can be a very effective tool for tracking, managing and scheduling interviews with different job applicants. You can schedule interviews more easily through built-in or integrated calendars that show which date and time your interviewers and the interviewees are available to avoid scheduling conflicts and no-shows. These calendars will often have automatic alert options via email or SMS, so candidates and hiring teams will always be notified of upcoming interviews.
A calendar sync function will enable you to sync up all your calendars. This is to ensure there are no clashes with your candidate interview schedules. You also have the power to check the availability of your interviewing team, which is very useful if you have an upcoming panel-style interview and you want to make sure every one of your panel interviewers are available to participate.
Interview tracking systems also allow you to gather interview feedback from your hiring team through online means. You can eschew the old ways of gathering feedback through physical debriefings and meetings with hiring managers and interviewers. The traditional method just takes a lot of time and effort, since you have to bring everyone in the same room just to discuss how the interviews went. For instance, if your hiring team consists of members that are stationed in different locations, then having the ability to collect interview feedback online can make things a lot easier and more efficient for everyone involved.
In addition to the ability to collect feedback online, many interview tracking software also offers automated emails and feedback posting. This is simply a function that lets you automatically send emails to your hiring team, to the candidates, as well as your HR manager with regards to any sudden changes to the interview setup, such as if there is a need to postpone, reschedule or cancel a scheduled interview.
Seamless integration is another benefit that you can expect from a good interview tracking solution. This category of software can be integrated with other recruiting software solutions. If you’re not using a complete applicant tracking system or HR software, for example, interview tracking and scheduling systems can be easily integrated with email services, video conferencing apps and other simple recruiting software that you might already be using for your current hiring process.
Integrating your interview tracking software with a video conferencing app, for instance, will allow you to conduct interviews with candidates remotely, which is useful if you’re a business that wants to hire remote employees or freelance professionals.
Interview tracking software is a subcategory of HR and ATS software solutions. Its main focus is to help you track, schedule and manage candidate interviews. It aims to streamline the interview process and other associated tasks like distributing candidate information to interviewers, collecting interview feedback from the hiring team, creating interview schedules, as well as notifying both interviewers and candidates about upcoming interviews.
With native or integrated video conferencing, this type of software can also help optimize the interview process and reduce potential costs for businesses that frequently hire remote workers and freelance professionals. Interviews can be conducted entirely online, including the debriefing process and the sharing of candidate feedback and other relevant information.
