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In this Guide
- Best Interview Scheduling Tools
- Introduction and Criteria
- Our Reviews of the Top Vendors
- Interview Scheduling Software Key Use Cases
- Common Pitfalls and Misconceptions about Interview Scheduling
- Return on Investment (ROI)
- Interview Scheduling Software Pricing
- Key Features
- Demo Questions
- Implementation Best Practices
- Interview Scheduling Software FAQs
- Last advice
Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
The many steps between sourcing candidates and making an offer can easily become a logistical nightmare, especially when you’re dealing with a high volume of applicants. Modern scheduling tools allow for faster time to fill, a better candidate experience, and decreased recruiter headaches. Interview scheduling is a critical part of the hiring process with impacts to both the candidate and hiring team, yet one that can be the most prone to error.
Manual scheduling requires coordinating multiple schedules, sending countless emails back-and-forth, and juggling potential last-minute schedule changes. The process itself is antiquated, time-consuming, inefficient, and creates an inconsistent candidate experience. Some recruiters estimate that they spend up to 90% of their time on scheduling!
We put together this guide after researching the various vendors in the automated interview scheduling space, and talking to recruiting teams about their experiences with these tools. We hope you’ll find the list of best vendors helpful, along with the various advice we’ve outlined below on implementation best practices, questions to ask on demos, etc. Good luck!
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
Top Automated Interview Scheduling Software
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best interview scheduling tools per our research and expert council as of 2023.
Why we love it
:
VidCruiter stands out for being quite flexible. They offer a range of robust recruiting solutions that you can purchase individually or combine with one another as needed. It’s also available in seven languages besides English, both for recruiters and applicants.
- VidCruiter’s customers can choose the modules they want and purchase them individually, or purchase the entire recruiting suite, inclusive of all modules, i.e. video interviewing, applicant tracking, skill assessments, scheduling, and more.
- VidCruiter’s pre-recorded interview feature saves hiring managers a lot of time and eliminates scheduling conflicts. It also offers candidates the flexibility to record their answers at their convenience.
- VidCruiter supports mobile recruiting for on-the-go access. Both candidates and recruiters can view pre-recorded video interviews or join live video interviews/conferences from their iOS and Android mobile devices.
- VidCruiter’s account managers are quite hands-on. Besides helping you get started with the platform, they’ll also help you perform other processes, such as setting up the tracking and conversion metrics of your targeted ad campaigns so you can measure their success.
- VidCruiter is a multilingual recruiting solution. Besides English, it’s available in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and Korean, both for recruiters and candidates.
- VidCruiter’s customers can choose the modules they want and purchase them individually, or purchase the entire recruiting suite, inclusive of all modules, i.e. video interviewing, applicant tracking, skill assessments, scheduling, and more.
- VidCruiter’s pre-recorded interview feature saves hiring managers a lot of time and eliminates scheduling conflicts. It also offers candidates the flexibility to record their answers at their convenience.
- VidCruiter supports mobile recruiting for on-the-go access. Both candidates and recruiters can view pre-recorded video interviews or join live video interviews/conferences from their iOS and Android mobile devices.
- VidCruiter’s account managers are quite hands-on. Besides helping you get started with the platform, they’ll also help you perform other processes, such as setting up the tracking and conversion metrics of your targeted ad campaigns so you can measure their success.
- VidCruiter is a multilingual recruiting solution. Besides English, it’s available in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and Korean, both for recruiters and candidates.
- Several users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes some time to get used to.
- A few users reported occasional video lag issues that aren’t internet connectivity-related.
- VidCruiter’s skills assessment module is great as an add-on, but isn’t built out enough compared to point solutions in that space. For example, it doesn’t really support advanced technical skills testing.
- VidCruiter doesn’t have a lot of pre-built integration options with HRIS/Payroll systems. That said, VidCruiter’s team is working on expanding their partner network and might create integrations upon customer requests.
- Several users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes some time to get used to.
- A few users reported occasional video lag issues that aren’t internet connectivity-related.
- VidCruiter’s skills assessment module is great as an add-on, but isn’t built out enough compared to point solutions in that space. For example, it doesn’t really support advanced technical skills testing.
- VidCruiter doesn’t have a lot of pre-built integration options with HRIS/Payroll systems. That said, VidCruiter’s team is working on expanding their partner network and might create integrations upon customer requests.
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VidCruiter
Review:
A leader in the video interviewing software category, VidCruiter also offers a robust scheduling tool allows you to automate interview scheduling, integrate third-party calendars and seamlessly sync meetings in real-time so everyone is always up to date. If you purchase the whole suite, you’ll also get to benefit from VidCruiter’s video interviewing, applicant tracking, skills testing, digital interviewing (live and pre-recorded options), and automated reference checking tools.
VidCruiter
Customers:
VidCruiter is used by over 40,000 recruiters, including ones from Lowe’s, Lionsgate, Samsung, Bears, US Foods, and United Nations.
VidCruiter is used by over 40,000 recruiters, including ones from Lowe’s, Lionsgate, Samsung, Bears, US Foods, and United Nations.
VidCruiter
Stats:
- FGH Security, a UK-based security services company, managed to reduce their time-to-hire from 10 days to 48 hours using VidCruiter.
- BioScript Solutions, a Canadian provider of specialty medications and health care support, used VidCruiter and accelerated their time-to-hire by 33%.
- Achievement First, a US-based charter school network, was able to reduce their average interview scheduling time by 35% with VidCuiter.
- FGH Security, a UK-based security services company, managed to reduce their time-to-hire from 10 days to 48 hours using VidCruiter.
- BioScript Solutions, a Canadian provider of specialty medications and health care support, used VidCruiter and accelerated their time-to-hire by 33%.
- Achievement First, a US-based charter school network, was able to reduce their average interview scheduling time by 35% with VidCuiter.
VidCruiter
Pricing:
The pricing of VidCruiter’s solutions is not disclosed on their website and is calculated based on your number of hires. You can get in touch with VidCruiter’s Sales team for a custom price quote.
The pricing of VidCruiter’s solutions is not disclosed on their website and is calculated based on your number of hires. You can get in touch with VidCruiter’s Sales team for a custom price quote.
Best For
We recommend VidCruiter for organizations that hire more than 100 people a year, i.e. medium and large-sized companies and recruiting agencies.
Why we love it
:
Paradox's AI assistant, Olivia, automates interview scheduling, reminders, cancellations and more. Just connect your calendar and Olivia will take it from there.
- Their implementation and customer service is very efficient and accessible. You will not only get a Customer Success Manager to help you with every step during your implementation phase but your issues will also likely be resolved within the same day. Unlike many vendors, you can contact their support team via phone and explain your issue in real-time.
- It’s very time-saving and cuts down on back-and-forth communication between job candidates and recruiters. As Derek B, Head of Recruitment at a large-sized enterprise puts it, “Olivia helped us shave our response time from 7 days to under 24 hours. This time saving ensured that the applicants we chose to interview were the best of the bunch.”
- Olivia, their AI chatbot is programmed to respond to candidates in a way that feels personal, as if a real person is responding. What’s even better is that despite complete automation, you can see all chats and manually override them if need be.
- Their implementation and customer service is very efficient and accessible. You will not only get a Customer Success Manager to help you with every step during your implementation phase but your issues will also likely be resolved within the same day. Unlike many vendors, you can contact their support team via phone and explain your issue in real-time.
- It’s very time-saving and cuts down on back-and-forth communication between job candidates and recruiters. As Derek B, Head of Recruitment at a large-sized enterprise puts it, “Olivia helped us shave our response time from 7 days to under 24 hours. This time saving ensured that the applicants we chose to interview were the best of the bunch.”
- Olivia, their AI chatbot is programmed to respond to candidates in a way that feels personal, as if a real person is responding. What’s even better is that despite complete automation, you can see all chats and manually override them if need be.
- Although you can get some data and feedback about your company and its processes, analytics is not very robust in Paradox. If you’re looking for advanced features that let you slice and dice your data in various ways, you’ll have to look for other applications.
- Their AI assistant is intelligent and has a human touch but at the end of the day, Olivia is still AI. At times when you want nuanced answers in conversations, you’ll have to manually operate the chat.
- Although you can get some data and feedback about your company and its processes, analytics is not very robust in Paradox. If you’re looking for advanced features that let you slice and dice your data in various ways, you’ll have to look for other applications.
- Their AI assistant is intelligent and has a human touch but at the end of the day, Olivia is still AI. At times when you want nuanced answers in conversations, you’ll have to manually operate the chat.
Paradox
Review:
Paradox is best known for their HR chatbot Olivia. While the bot can do many things, one of the core ways it drives value for recruiting teams is through scheduling candidates for interviews. While using Paradox solely for scheduling isn’t doing its full solution justice, it does belong on your radar as you look at various scheduling tools.
Paradox
Customers:
Unilever, McDonald’s, Amazon, 3M, CVS Health, Nestlé, Lowe’s
Unilever, McDonald’s, Amazon, 3M, CVS Health, Nestlé, Lowe’s
Paradox
Stats:
- After using Paradox, fast-food chain Wendy’s started saving 4-6 hours per restaurant per day
- Their customer MultiCare experienced a 22% decrease in cost per hire after using Paradox
- Great Wolf Lodge, one of Paradox’s customers saw a 225% reduction in employee turnover
- Major fast-food join McDonalds saw a 60% reduction in time to hire after using Paradox
- 250+ customers
- After using Paradox, fast-food chain Wendy’s started saving 4-6 hours per restaurant per day
- Their customer MultiCare experienced a 22% decrease in cost per hire after using Paradox
- Great Wolf Lodge, one of Paradox’s customers saw a 225% reduction in employee turnover
- Major fast-food join McDonalds saw a 60% reduction in time to hire after using Paradox
- 250+ customers
Paradox
Pricing:
Pricing is not disclosed upfront. You will have to schedule a demo to get custom pricing based on your company size. After filling out a demo form on their website, their team will reach out to you within one business day to learn about your team’s challenges and schedule a custom-tailored demo.
Pricing is not disclosed upfront. You will have to schedule a demo to get custom pricing based on your company size. After filling out a demo form on their website, their team will reach out to you within one business day to learn about your team’s challenges and schedule a custom-tailored demo.
Best For
Paradox is ideal for large enterprises that deal with a high volume of job candidates on a frequent basis.
Why we love it
:
Prelude helps recruiting teams with complex interview scheduling needs automate and streamline the hiring process. Their modern and intuitive platform saves time for recruiters and interviewers while improving the candidate experience.
- Prelude is incredibly time-saving. They have many customer stories to back this up. For example, Glassdoor cut down their interview scheduling time from 4-5 hours to an average of 11.5 minutes.
- The user interface is great. You wouldn’t have trouble navigating and understanding the software because of its ease of use.
- Prelude handles complex scheduling, which means there’s plenty of room for customization. You could add multiple interviewers to a booking, distribute interview load as per your desire, add interviewer attributes, and more.
- Prelude is incredibly time-saving. They have many customer stories to back this up. For example, Glassdoor cut down their interview scheduling time from 4-5 hours to an average of 11.5 minutes.
- The user interface is great. You wouldn’t have trouble navigating and understanding the software because of its ease of use.
- Prelude handles complex scheduling, which means there’s plenty of room for customization. You could add multiple interviewers to a booking, distribute interview load as per your desire, add interviewer attributes, and more.
- Prelude is a niche software built solely for scheduling candidate interviews. Teams looking for a more comprehensive scheduling tool will find it quite limiting.
- Integrations are limited, especially for ATS. If you want to request a custom integration, you would have to buy their most expensive plan.
- Prelude does not offer a free-trial. Although you can get a sense of the software during your demo, it’s not always the same as using the product yourself and for an extended period of time.
- Prelude is a niche software built solely for scheduling candidate interviews. Teams looking for a more comprehensive scheduling tool will find it quite limiting.
- Integrations are limited, especially for ATS. If you want to request a custom integration, you would have to buy their most expensive plan.
- Prelude does not offer a free-trial. Although you can get a sense of the software during your demo, it’s not always the same as using the product yourself and for an extended period of time.
Prelude
Review:
In-house recruiting teams often spend half of their resources on the logistics and admin work that surrounds candidate interviews. They spend too much time on scheduling, conference room management, and emailing people internally about the best time to meet a candidate. This deceptively complex problem is what Prelude was made to solve.
Prelude lets you take parts of your candidate interview scheduling process and automate it based on people’s profiles, rules about calendars, time zones, and other parameters. For example, if a candidate reaches the point when it’s time to have a panel interview, the system can know who’s on the panel based on that particular hiring workflow, read each person’s time zone and individual preferences, and propose appointments based on them. Once a moment is chosen, the invite is automatically sent to everybody involved, containing a conference call link and right to their Google Calendar or Outlook.
Prelude
Customers:
Over a hundred top companies use Prelude, some of which include Cloudflare, Policygenius, Samsara, Duolingo, One Medical, Klaviyo.
Over a hundred top companies use Prelude, some of which include Cloudflare, Policygenius, Samsara, Duolingo, One Medical, Klaviyo.
Prelude
Stats:
- Founded in 2017
- Used by 100+ companies around the world
- 500,000+ candidates scheduled for interviews
- Glassdoor, Prelude’s customer, was able to cut down the time to schedule interviews from 4-5 hours to an average of 11.5 minutes after using Prelude.
- Policygenius, a company that started using Prelude now spends 50% less time on interview debriefs.
- Founded in 2017
- Used by 100+ companies around the world
- 500,000+ candidates scheduled for interviews
- Glassdoor, Prelude’s customer, was able to cut down the time to schedule interviews from 4-5 hours to an average of 11.5 minutes after using Prelude.
- Policygenius, a company that started using Prelude now spends 50% less time on interview debriefs
Prelude
Pricing:
Prelude has three pricing plans:
- Starter Plan: It comes with automated interview scheduling, ATS and calendar integrations, intelligent conflict resolution, and confirmation templates.
- Growth Plan: This plan has all the offerings of the Starter Plan plus advanced reporting, intelligent interview recommendations, employer branding, and on-demand support.
- Enterprise Plan: This plan has all the offerings of the Growth Plan plus branded candidate experience, interview training, load balancing, implementation training, and a dedicated Customer Success Manager.
The exact pricing of each plan is disclosed only after you sign up for a live demo. The demo is free and you could schedule it by filling a small form on their website.
Prelude has three pricing plans:
- Starter Plan: It comes with automated interview scheduling, ATS and calendar integrations, intelligent conflict resolution, and confirmation templates.
- Growth Plan: This plan has all the offerings of the Starter Plan plus advanced reporting, intelligent interview recommendations, employer branding, and on-demand support.
- Enterprise Plan: This plan has all the offerings of the Growth Plan plus branded candidate experience, interview training, load balancing, implementation training, and a dedicated Customer Success Manager.
The exact pricing of each plan is disclosed only after you sign up for a live demo. The demo is free and you could schedule it by filling a small form on their website.
Best For
Prelude has customers from both small and large recruiting teams, ranging from 30 employees to over 15,000. So, it’s suitable for companies of all sizes that have complex scheduling needs and are in serious need of cutting down their interview scheduling time.
Why we love it
:
HireVue is a pioneer in the video interviewing software space and stands out from its competitors for its AI-powered on-demand interviews that helps recruiters conduct the initial screening of candidates.
- HireVue is very useful when it comes to screening a large number of job candidates in a short frame of time. Its virtual assistant can do an initial screen of applicants on its own, leave messages for them, and get responses in return. All of this frees up recruiters’ time.
- It has a great on-demand interviewing feature. Recruiters can sit and watch candidates’ interviews as per their convenience. The ability to change the speed of the interview while watching can also help recruiters save time.
- Their implementation team and customer support is extremely responsive or in the words of a Global Talent Attraction Director, “I love the support, tenacity and just constant desire to do the right thing. They take the time to understand our business and I never feel like it is a ‘catch and release’ relationship that is so common in this space”
- HireVue is very useful when it comes to screening a large number of job candidates in a short frame of time. Its virtual assistant can do an initial screen of applicants on its own, leave messages for them, and get responses in return. All of this frees up recruiters’ time.
- It has a great on-demand interviewing feature. Recruiters can sit and watch candidates’ interviews as per their convenience. The ability to change the speed of the interview while watching can also help recruiters save time.
- Their implementation team and customer support is extremely responsive or in the words of a Global Talent Attraction Director, “I love the support, tenacity and just constant desire to do the right thing. They take the time to understand our business and I never feel like it is a ‘catch and release’ relationship that is so common in this space”
- HireVue is not very affordable compared to its alternatives, especially when you factor in the functionality. Their pricing plans are geared towards companies with at least 2500 employees and even then, you only get a small set of features.
- HireVue does not have a lot of integration partners and the range of software it integrates with is also very limited (mostly ATS).
- Too much automation can at times lead to unwanted candidates. For instance, the asynchronous interview feature can allow candidates to adjust their responses in order to fit the job criteria. However, HireVue wouldn’t screen such candidates out and your company may need human intervention to pick up on visual cues and body language.
- HireVue is not very affordable compared to its alternatives, especially when you factor in the functionality. Their pricing plans are geared towards companies with at least 2500 employees and even then, you only get a small set of features.
- HireVue does not have a lot of integration partners and the range of software it integrates with is also very limited (mostly ATS).
- Too much automation can at times lead to unwanted candidates. For instance, the asynchronous interview feature can allow candidates to adjust their responses in order to fit the job criteria. However, HireVue wouldn’t screen such candidates out and your company may need human intervention to pick up on visual cues and body language.
HireVue
Review:
HireVue is a hiring software that has a tool for scheduling, apart from other hiring solutions. The scheduling tool is fully automated and they have a conversational AI that coordinates with the job candidates. HireVue allows candidates to self-schedule as per their availability. It can also be used as a scheduler for managing hiring events like virtual career fairs and graduate hiring.
HireVue
Customers:
HireVue has customers in a variety of industries ranging from aviation to retail. Some popular names include Amazon, Unilever, Vodafone, Beacon Health System, SmartLynx Airlines, The Co-operative Bank, and National Safety Apparel.
HireVue
Stats:
- Founded in 2004
- Available in more than 41 languages
- Has facilitated over 26 million interviews
- Serves over 800 enterprise customers worldwide
- One of their customers, Unilever, experienced a 90% faster hiring after implementing HireVue and increased their diversity and inclusion goals by 16%.
- After using HireVue, Amazon saved 68,124 recruiter hours, reached 300% more candidates, and saw an 86.8% candidate satisfaction rate.
HireVue
Pricing:
HireVue has two pricing plans:
- Essentials: This plan starts at $35,000 per month for a company with 2500-7500 employees. It includes live and on-demand interviewing features, custom branding, and single language configuration.
- Enterprise: This plan is suitable for companies with over 7500 employees. Pricing is custom and you would have to request a demo to receive a quote. In addition to all the features of the Essentials plan, this plan comes with scheduling, chatbot, pre-built ATS integrations, analytics, among others.
Best For:
Large enterprises who frequently have hiring needs.
Why we love it
:
Calendly stands out from its competitors for its ease of use, slick design, and the amount of time it saves. It’s also one of the few scheduling tools with an indefinite free plan.
- Calendly’s simplicity is its biggest pro. It has an elegant user interface, it's very easy to navigate, it promptly gets the task done, and connects seamlessly with other applications.
- The reduction in back-and-forth emails. Your invitees can book a meeting slot, without reaching out to you multiple times. Calendly automatically sends them a confirmation and they can reschedule or cancel on their own. It’s even better for virtual meetings because once your invitees schedule a meeting with you, Calendly will automatically generate a meeting link based on your preferred video conferencing tool.
- The ability to set your own rules so that you can get complete control over your availability preferences. For example, you can decide how long a particular kind of meeting should be, buffer time between meetings, how many appointments can be booked per day, etc.
- Calendly seamlessly integrates with popular calendar and mailing tools. Meetings are automatically reflected on your personal calendar and video conferencing links with tools like Zoom or Google Meet are generated without any extra steps.
- Calendly’s simplicity is its biggest pro. It has an elegant user interface, it's very easy to navigate, it promptly gets the task done, and connects seamlessly with other applications.
- The reduction in back-and-forth emails. Your invitees can book a meeting slot, without reaching out to you multiple times. Calendly automatically sends them a confirmation and they can reschedule or cancel on their own. It’s even better for virtual meetings because once your invitees schedule a meeting with you, Calendly will automatically generate a meeting link based on your preferred video conferencing tool.
- The ability to set your own rules so that you can get complete control over your availability preferences. For example, you can decide how long a particular kind of meeting should be, buffer time between meetings, how many appointments can be booked per day, etc.
- Calendly seamlessly integrates with popular calendar and mailing tools. Meetings are automatically reflected on your personal calendar and video conferencing links with tools like Zoom or Google Meet are generated without any extra steps.
- Besides branding and the ability to choose different colors, Calendly does not offer a lot of options for customizations. This could be frustrating for users who want to embed Calendly in their website without making it seem like a completely different component.
- Calendly is not very mobile-friendly. You can’t perform all the functions on the mobile version.
- The payment collecting feature is not available in all currencies. Your invitees can only pay in the United States Dollar (USD), Australian Dollar (AUD), Canadian Dollar (CAD), Pound Sterling (GBP), and Euro (EUR).
- You’ll be severely limited in terms of features if you choose the free plan or the cheaper ones. According to Craig, a Customer Success Manager at a small business, “All advanced functionality is locked behind higher subscription levels – We have the Professional level so that we can set up a team, but they locked the most obvious and useful meeting type for teams behind yet another upgrade to the sub level.”
- Besides branding and the ability to choose different colors, Calendly does not offer a lot of options for customizations. This could be frustrating for users who want to embed Calendly in their website without making it seem like a completely different component.
- Calendly is not very mobile-friendly. You can’t perform all the functions on the mobile version.
- The payment collecting feature is not available in all currencies. Your invitees can only pay in the United States Dollar (USD), Australian Dollar (AUD), Canadian Dollar (CAD), Pound Sterling (GBP), and Euro (EUR).
- You’ll be severely limited in terms of features if you choose the free plan or the cheaper ones. According to Craig, a Customer Success Manager at a small business, “All advanced functionality is locked behind higher subscription levels – We have the Professional level so that we can set up a team, but they locked the most obvious and useful meeting type for teams behind yet another upgrade to the sub level.”
Calendly
Review:
Calendly is a scheduling software that has native integrations with many popular video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams.
One of the best features about Calendly is that it's candidate-centric. What that means is, you wouldn’t have to deal with the headache of figuring out and booking interview slots for all your candidates. All you have to do is share your availability calendar with your candidates and let them choose an interview slot that’s suitable for them. You don’t even have to worry about following up because Calendly automatically sends the invitees all the interview details.
Calendly
Customers:
Calendly has many big names in their customer base, such as eBay, Compass, Lyft, Dropbox, La-Z-Boy, Twilio, and Stack Overflow.
Calendly
Stats:
- 10 million user base spread across the world
- Used by 50,000 companies
- Over 100 partner integrations
- Ancestry, a genealogy company saw a 40% reduction in scheduling emails after using Calendly
- Cengage, an Ed-Tech company had a 30% increase in annual retention of employees after using Calendly
- AgriWebb, a company in the agriculture industry experienced a 75% reduction in time to schedule customer success calls because of Calendly
Calendly
Pricing:
Calendly has five pricing plans that can be billed either monthly or annually. If you choose the latter, you’ll save 20%. Below are the prices you’ll pay per month per user, if you choose to get billed annually.
- Basic Plan: This is completely free of cost. However, as the name suggests, you’ll only have limited features to use.
- Essentials Plan: This plan costs $8 and is suitable when you need scheduling automation.
- Professional Plan: This plan costs $12 and is their most popular plan. Use it if you need customizations, integrations, and basic team features.
- Teams Plan: This plan costs $16 and is useful for teams that rely on collaboration and need to align on a scheduling process.
- Enterprise Plan: This plan has custom pricing and is suitable for teams with 30+ members and advanced needs. You’ll have to contact their sales team to get pricing.
All the paid plans come with a 14-day trial, at the end of which, you’ll automatically be downgraded to the free plan. They also offer special pricing for non-profit organizations. You’ll have to reach out to their customer support specialists for details.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes looking for an affordable and user-friendly scheduling solution. Sole business owners and small businesses might find Calendly particularly helpful since there’s a free plan as well.
Why we love it
:
GoodTime Hire emphasizes candidate ‘relationships’ over just ‘experience’. It uses Candidate Relationship Intelligence to automate coordination and personalize communication. It also delivers insightful interview and candidate data that you can act on to refine your process.
- Because of how automated it is, GoodTime makes the process of scheduling and hiring very fast. From scheduling an interview to sending an offer letter – you can close the entire candidate pipeline in two weeks.
- GoodTime is highly customizable. You can create custom tags to group interviewers based on various criteria and areas of expertise, customize the maximum time you want each team member to spend on interviews daily or weekly, as well as create custom templates for interview panels and emails. The branding that you can set with GoodTime helps show your company's personality and makes it feel like it isn't just some boring, standard tool.
- Their customer service is great. You get 24/7 customer support via chat, a Customer Success Manager to guide you every step of the way, and a customer support team who regularly fixes bugs that are reported and takes your suggestions into consideration. They’re also incredibly quick to respond to your queries.
- Because of how automated it is, GoodTime makes the process of scheduling and hiring very fast. From scheduling an interview to sending an offer letter – you can close the entire candidate pipeline in two weeks.
- GoodTime is highly customizable. You can create custom tags to group interviewers based on various criteria and areas of expertise, customize the maximum time you want each team member to spend on interviews daily or weekly, as well as create custom templates for interview panels and emails. The branding that you can set with GoodTime helps show your company's personality and makes it feel like it isn't just some boring, standard tool.
- Their customer service is great. You get 24/7 customer support via chat, a Customer Success Manager to guide you every step of the way, and a customer support team who regularly fixes bugs that are reported and takes your suggestions into consideration. They’re also incredibly quick to respond to your queries.
- The implementation process can be lengthy, depending on the complexity of your own workflows.. There are many configuration choices to be made , which can be time-consuming and overwhelming without help from the GoodTime team.
- GoodTime’s user interface includes many options, and at first blush, can be challenging to navigate. The learning curve is initially due to its complex functionality.
- Occasional bugs are reported by its users, mainly related to syncing with the calendar and ATS. Although the customer support is extremely responsive and would resolve your issue in a speedy manner, this is something you should be aware of when considering buying GoodTime.
- The implementation process can be lengthy, depending on the complexity of your own workflows.. There are many configuration choices to be made , which can be time-consuming and overwhelming without help from the GoodTime team.
- GoodTime’s user interface includes many options, and at first blush, can be challenging to navigate. The learning curve is initially due to its complex functionality.
- Occasional bugs are reported by its users, mainly related to syncing with the calendar and ATS. Although the customer support is extremely responsive and would resolve your issue in a speedy manner, this is something you should be aware of when considering buying GoodTime.
GoodTime
Review:
GoodTime is a specialized meetings software with a robust module for interview scheduling. It has automated scheduling which means that recruiters don’t have to manually book every candidate’s interview times and instead let candidates give their own availability, which GoodTime then matches with the interviewers’ available times.
GoodTime is packed with a range of features such as interview training and progress tracking, interviewer tags, automated load balancing for interviewers, personalized branding, analytics, and more.
GoodTime
Customers:
GoodTime is used by over 300 companies including many notable ones such as Lattice, HubSpot, Pinterest, Patreon, Zoom, Spotify, Slack, and Quora.
GoodTime
Stats:
- Over 7 million meetings scheduled
- A customer base of 300+
- Founded in 2016
- Pinterest saw a 50% reduction in time to fill, after using GoodTime
- With GoodTime, Zoom was able to 5x the number of interviews scheduled per quarter
- Beamery had a 50% reduction in time to schedule meetings with the help of GoodTime
GoodTime
Pricing:
GoodTime Hire: Both of the plans for GoodTime Hire below include automated scheduling, interviewer selection, dynamic content personalization, interviewer training management, candidate feedback, reporting, and round the clock support and expert guidance.
- Complete: This plan is suitable for recruiting teams of all sizes with medium to high candidate volume and standard reporting requirements. You’ll have to book a demo to get custom pricing.
- Enterprise: This plan is suitable for large scale companies with high to very high candidate volume and advanced reporting requirements. You’ll have to book a demo to get custom pricing.
GoodTime Meet: This tool is completely free and provides a means for your entire organization to optimize simple scheduling between colleagues, customers or prospects.
Best For:
Medium and large companies looking for a scheduling solution to complement their recruiting products.
Why we love it
:
Unlike other virtual assistants, Clara neither requires an installation of an application nor requires you to repeatedly talk to it. You simply CC it on your mails and Clara takes care of all your scheduling woes.
- No software installation. Clara is completely cloud-based and lives inside your email. This makes it very quick to set up and easy to use.
- No new user interface to familiarize yourself with. Implementing Clara is as good as bringing a new person on your team who only interacts with you over email.
- Cuts down on back-and-forth emails. Clara removes you from the process of scheduling meetings and saves you time and mental energy caused by distraction.
- No software installation. Clara is completely cloud-based and lives inside your email. This makes it very quick to set up and easy to use.
- No new user interface to familiarize yourself with. Implementing Clara is as good as bringing a new person on your team who only interacts with you over email.
- Cuts down on back-and-forth emails. Clara removes you from the process of scheduling meetings and saves you time and mental energy caused by distraction.
- Limited features. Clara is great if you have straightforward scheduling needs. If you need advanced features like payment integration, meeting polls, routing forms etc., you’re better off using other scheduling tools.
- Clara's philosophy to never ask for more access than necessary can become a hindrance at times. For example, if you need to make last-minute changes, you will not be able to directly edit your meeting invites via Clara. You’ll have to use your calendar to make such changes.
- Although they’re constantly building new integrations and you could reach them out with a suggestion, at present Clara integrates with a very limited amount of third-party applications.
- Limited features. Clara is great if you have straightforward scheduling needs. If you need advanced features like payment integration, meeting polls, routing forms etc., you’re better off using other scheduling tools.
- Clara's philosophy to never ask for more access than necessary can become a hindrance at times. For example, if you need to make last-minute changes, you will not be able to directly edit your meeting invites via Clara. You’ll have to use your calendar to make such changes.
- Although they’re constantly building new integrations and you could reach them out with a suggestion, at present Clara integrates with a very limited amount of third-party applications.
Clara
Review:
Driven by artificial intelligence, Clara is a virtual assistant that schedules your interviews right from your email, without the installation of any software.
While sending an email to your interview candidates, you simply have to put Clara in the CC and it would coordinate with your candidates on its own to schedule an interview. You’ll then find the interview details added to your calendar. It also automatically follows up, sends reminders, and asks for the interview feedback from both the candidates and the recruiters.
Clara
Customers:
Clara serves both individuals and companies. Some of the top companies that use Clara are Pinterest, Mattermark, Experiment, InVision, Noom, Plaid, Rubrik, Whirlpool.
Clara
Stats:
- Founded in 2014
- Backed 24/7 by experienced Executive Assistants
- 14-day free trial
- Customer base of 1000+
Clara
Pricing:
Clara has four pricing plans:
- Clara Essential: This plan costs $99 per user per month. It is hosted on Clara’s domain (@claralabs.com) and you get a branded email signature.
- Clara Professional: This plan costs $199 per user per month. It is hosted on your own domain (clara@yourdomain.com) and you get a non-branded email signature.
- Clara Executive: This plan costs $99 per user per month. It is hosted on your domain(name@yourdomain.com), you get to name your Clara, and the option to customize Clara’s email signature.
- Clara for Teams: This is a customized plan for teams that require high-volume scheduling or have a growing business. You can contact sales to get custom pricing.
Apart from the broad differences mentioned above, there are more features available in the more expensive plans. Clara also offers a 20% discount on all pricing plans for NGOs. You can avail this by emailing them about your NGO.
Best For:
Clara serves companies of all sizes. However, it would be best for companies that already use email for scheduling meetings and also companies who are seeking an assistant for booking meetings.
Why we love it
:
Unlike a lot of appointment scheduling tools, 10to8 has a free plan with features that would be very sufficient for a sole business owner. What really sets it apart though is the free SMS reminder system it comes with that most other scheduling vendors charge separately for.
- You don’t have to think too much before using 10to8. Unlike many scheduling tools, you can be on an indefinite free pricing plan with 10to8. For paid plans, there’s also a 30-day free trial so you could test the waters before committing.
- You can cut down on back and forth communications and no-shows. Not only does 10to8 send automatic appointment reminders to attendees, it also lets you have a 2-way chat with them where they could update or cancel their booking. You could also include calendars for your teammates to coordinate better.
- 10to8 is completely cloud-based and you don’t need to install any app. You could also view it on any device – whether that’s mobile, tablet, or a desktop.
- 10to8 is extremely versatile and you could use it for any kind of appointment. There is also no limit on the number of services that you can offer.
- You don’t have to think too much before using 10to8. Unlike many scheduling tools, you can be on an indefinite free pricing plan with 10to8. For paid plans, there’s also a 30-day free trial so you could test the waters before committing.
- You can cut down on back and forth communications and no-shows. Not only does 10to8 send automatic appointment reminders to attendees, it also lets you have a 2-way chat with them where they could update or cancel their booking. You could also include calendars for your teammates to coordinate better.
- 10to8 is completely cloud-based and you don’t need to install any app. You could also view it on any device – whether that’s mobile, tablet, or a desktop.
- 10to8 is extremely versatile and you could use it for any kind of appointment. There is also no limit on the number of services that you can offer.
- The booking times are a little clunky. One user complained about how “You are only able to book in certain slots e.g. 9-10 but you can't select 9:30-10:30 if you're available for an hour between 9-11. But it can make it simpler to make a choice to book.”
- There’s no upper limit for how many users can book an appointment with you in a day. So, for example, if you don’t want more than 10 appointment requests for a day, you can’t set that as a limit. You’ll have to manually block time.
- If you have repeat appointments with a single individual or group, 10to8 overloads them with messages about each appointment. You also have to manually book every single appointment.
- If you want to look at a candidate’s appointment history, you’ll have to scroll through the calendar or resort to your own records.
- The booking times are a little clunky. One user complained about how “You are only able to book in certain slots e.g. 9-10 but you can't select 9:30-10:30 if you're available for an hour between 9-11. But it can make it simpler to make a choice to book.”
- There’s no upper limit for how many users can book an appointment with you in a day. So, for example, if you don’t want more than 10 appointment requests for a day, you can’t set that as a limit. You’ll have to manually block time.
- If you have repeat appointments with a single individual or group, 10to8 overloads them with messages about each appointment. You also have to manually book every single appointment.
- If you want to look at a candidate’s appointment history, you’ll have to scroll through the calendar or resort to your own records.
10to8
Review:
10to8 is an appointment scheduling tool that also lets managers and HR professionals schedule interviews with job applicants. It focuses on reducing wasted time and comes with features that make coordination simple and less chaotic.
All you have to do is, set up your calendar and share that with candidates to pick a mutually convenient time. 10to8 would then automatically send them reminders for the meeting. You could also have a 2-way chat with your applicants and they could respond to the reminders by confirming, rescheduling, or canceling the interview.
10to8
Customers:
Because 10to8 is a versatile scheduling tool, it serves customers from various industries. Some of the notable ones are Yale University, NHS, Mercedes-Benz, US Bank, Expedia, University of San Diego, NSW Government, and ResMed.
10to8
Stats:
- Used by over 100,000 businesses worldwide
- Customer base spread over 109 countries
- Available in 11 languages
- Integrates with over 1500 apps through Zapier
- They provide a 30-day free trial without taking your credit card details
- They claim to reduce appointment no-shows by up to 90% and have many client case studies with KPIs that show a positive business impact after using 10to8
10to8
Pricing:
10to8 has five pricing plans:
- Small Business: Free. You get 100 appointments per month and two staff logins.
- Basic: $9.6 per month. You get 100 appointments per month, two staff logins, and customizable branding.
- Grow: $20 per month. You get 300 appointments per month, three staff logins, and customizable branding plus SMS.
- Bigger Business: $40 per month. You get 600 appointments per month, six staff logins, and customizable branding plus SMS.
- Enterprise: Pricing depends on the size and needs of your business. You get unlimited appointments per month, unlimited staff logins, advanced features for custom branding, tools for HIPAA compliance, phone support, and other advanced features.
Best For:
10to8 serves organizations of all sizes but small businesses and sole proprietors relying on appointment scheduling will find it particularly helpful for many reasons; there is a free pricing plan, you can embed the 10to8 appointment scheduler in your own website, and the implementation is super easy and quick.
Interview Scheduling Software Key Use Cases
We think every company hiring more than a few people per year can benefit from adding interview scheduling software to the recruitment process, regardless of your HR/TA team’s structure, or organization’s size. That’s why we’ve done the research to save you time and help you pick the best solution for your company.
These solutions take a tedious, administrative task and automate it, allowing for more efficiency and productivity. Here are some of the core use cases for automated interview scheduling software:
- Better Interviewers: Many platforms offer training modules that allow interviewers to gain the key skill sets they need to be more effective in vetting job seekers. The right training means more consistency across your interview process. This means a better candidate experience, and better hires.
- Matching the right interviewers: Research has shown that who someone interviews with is just as important as what they talk about. For example, if you have a female engineering candidate coming in, you’re going to want to match them with a female engineer interviewer, preferably early in the process. This creates a better candidate experience which leads to higher offer acceptance rates.
- Scheduling: Ok, this one is obvious, but these tools will actually schedule the interviews for you without any intervention on your part! Eliminating the wasted time spent going back and forth over email to schedule candidates for interviews means a shorter recruitment cycle. Your team can conduct more interviews in less time, getting you to the right candidate faster.
Common Pitfalls and Misconceptions about Interview Scheduling
While we strongly recommend automating the interview scheduling process, we’ve seen HR practitioners make mistakes in the process that can negate many of the benefits. Here are a few things to keep in mind to avoid:
- Technology won't replace good human interactions. Yes, interview scheduling software makes the recruitment process much easier, but as with any tech, it’s not a complete replacement for your team members. The burden still rests on you to humanize the process and engage with your candidates in a way that lets them know that you value their time and interest in your company. For example, don’t just send a calendar link to your prospective colleague asking them to setup a time to chat. Sell them on working with your company by giving them materials they can look over in the meantime that dives into your employee value propositions.
- Setting the right expectations for your candidates. Interview scheduling software contributes to a seamless candidate experience, but it’s up to you to let candidates know what to expect as they move through the hiring process. People want to understand how long the process will be, how many steps there are, what you’re looking for, and of course why they should want this job in the first place. Don’t fall into the trap of optimizing for efficiency and forgetting there is a human on the other side of that email.
- Not just scheduling: A solution that can automate scheduling is great. But you should be looking at tools that can do a lot more than that. Let’s face it, unemployment is incredibly low and the war for talent is on. Beyond that, you are probably in an organization that needs to hire the right people faster. Leveraging interview training, interview matching (right interviewers for the right candidates), and interview analytics (who are your best interviewers) all contribute to a better hiring process. Make sure to treat automation as simply the 1.0 implementation of this solution.
Return on Investment (ROI)
There are two major ways that these solutions drive tangible value that your CFO can appreciate. First and foremost, you’re going to save your team time. Scheduling becomes such a nightmare that many recruiting orgs have full time HR coordinators that are more or less focused on scheduling.
Here’s the math: Let’s say you spend 1.5 hrs of time scheduling for each person who comes on site. Let’s say your HR coordinator makes $50k/yr, or $25/hr. Let’s say you hire 100 people per year, and interview 3 people for each person you hire. Ok, so that’s 300 onsite interviews per year, and 300 * 1.5 = 450 hours spend scheduling. At $25/hr, that’s $11k annually. Add in the time it takes for phone screens/follow ups and you’re looking at a significant amount of money even for smaller companies, let alone large enterprise organizations.
The second way that interview scheduling software can drive meaningful value is through decreasing time to fill. This happens in two main ways - one is that you are cutting down on the time it takes to go back and forth with scheduling and re-scheduling interviews. The second is that you aren’t losing candidates due to frustration which of course means more hires faster.
The ROI can be calculated by thinking through how much an employee is worth to your business, and then figuring out how that value adds up when you are able to get people hired and ramped faster. The value from an employee can come from new sales (sales/marketing colleagues), increased efficiency (engineering/ops), more customer retention (customer success), etc.
The easiest way to think about the value a person adds to the company is through a multiple of their salary. If a person doesn’t bring value that is equal to their salary, then that person probably won’t have a job for very long. And, if each person on average isn’t bringing value that is at least 2-3x their salary, there is almost no way that a company can be profitable!
Here’s the math: Let’s say again that we hire 100 people, and our average time to fill is 45 days. Let’s say we can decrease that by 2 days with interview scheduling software. That means in total we get those 100 people for an extra 2 days each, or 200 days in total. What are those 200 days worth to us? If each person makes $50k/yr, they make around $50k/365 = $137/day (yes I’m using 365 vs days working as let’s face it we are all working a lot more after hours than we used to). Per our previous discussion, let’s say each person is worth 2x their salary to the organization. So, that’s $137 * 2 = $274/day in value. $274/day times the 200 days that we got our new employees for, is $55k!
You can see how very quickly there is a hard ROI we can capture through implementing automated interview scheduling software. Of course, the non-economic benefits are huge as well. Scheduling can be a pain! Taking this off your recruiter’s plates will be a welcome respite.
Interview Scheduling Software Pricing
These solutions are typically priced on some metric that gets down to usage. Some are priced based on the number of employees in your organization, number of hires, number of interviews, etc. The guidelines in the chart below are meant to help you understand at a high level what you may be looking to pay at each size of company.
Also note that as your company gets larger the needs for more customization, higher tiers of support, and integrations with other software (via API or otherwise) can also increase pricing.
One last note, especially for the most basic use cases, some of these vendors have free personal plans that you can play around with as a minimum viable product to understand how this tool could fit into your broader talent acquisition team.
Key Features
Before you decide which interview scheduling software to purchase, you’ll want to consider a few of the key potential features. Many of these shorten the length of the overall hiring process by reducing the time spent emailing back and forth, coordinating schedules, and time spent waiting for a response. Automation generally removes the costly errors that can result from small oversights like typos or time zone differences. These are the key features we’ve identified:
- Automatic reminders. Reminders reduce no-shows. Depending on which software you choose, you’ll be able to customize these reminders based on the intervals, frequency, or messaging. When customizing reminders, make sure to build in links to articles/posts/PDFs that showcase your employer brand.
- Interviewer availability. Access to up-to-date calendars means more accurate interview scheduling the first time around and less time spent emailing to do it. With each platform you demo, you’ll also want to consider the types of interviews that you can schedule (one-on-one, group, round robin, etc.) and to choose the one that aligns with your organization’s talent acquisition process.
- Device syncing. Calendar syncing across all devices should be standard, as well as a way to integrate with your current ATS.
- Live support. No matter how intuitive the interview scheduling software may seem, a responsive customer support team should be available to help you troubleshoot problems as they arise. One pro tip is that job seekers should also be able to get access to support if they need it (although it should be so dead simple from their perspective that this is fairly moot).
Demo Questions
As we mentioned earlier in this post, most interview scheduling software platforms offer free demos (with the exception being purely self serve tools best fitted for the smallest of recruiting teams). To make the most of a demo, it’s important that you go into it with a game plan. We recommend preparing a list of questions, which might include the following:
- Does this integrate with my ATS? If not, do I have to manually input new applicants that I want to interview?
- Can you walk me through the candidate experience?
- Are recruiters sent follow ups if the interview is never scheduled?
- What percentage of interviews get scheduled?
- How do I train my recruiters on how to use this?
- How much human involvement is there in the scheduling process?
- What kinds of smart workflows are there around scheduling the “right” person/people on my team for a given candidate?
- What interview training is built into the system for people on my team?
- What is the average decrease in time to fill you see across your customer base?
- How much time does this save the typical recruiter per month?
- Are there any automated screening tools built in?
- How can I showcase my employer brand through this tool?
Implementation Best Practices
Once you’ve completed your demos and selected which platform best suits your organization’s needs, the next step is implementation. Here are a few best practices we’ve picked up on from talking to various HR practitioners.
- Trigger Point: The software you’ve chosen should integrate seamlessly with your current ATS. Moving a candidate to the interview stage should automatically send them the appropriate communication and scheduling. If there is no ATS integration, you’ll have to find another scalable way to get candidates into your system. For the smallest teams, it may make sense to simply have a dedicated calendar link for each recruiter that you can send on a one-off basis to interviewees.
- Recruiter/interviewer training: Schedule trainings with your team members to show them the features available to them with this new, time-saving solution. This ensures that everyone is on the same page when your new HR tool is rolled out. One pro tip here is to explain the why behind the tool to get people onboard. Namely, you’re going to save people time and headaches through this solution!
Interview Scheduling Software FAQs
What is interview scheduling software?
Interview scheduling software are tools designed to automate the interview scheduling process.
What features does interview scheduling software offer?
Interview scheduling software offers the following features:
- Device syncing
- Interviewer availability and calendar
- Automatic reminders
- Live support
- Training modules
- Automated scheduling
- Interviewer matching
What are key uses cases for interview scheduling software?
Key use cases for interview scheduling software are:
- Training better interviewers
- Matching candidates with the right interviewer
- Efficiently scheduling interviews
What ROI do you receive from interview scheduling software?
You’ll save time and money by using interview scheduling software. You can either measure this by time-to-fill, employee retention, increased efficiency, and employee value.
What pitfalls can occur when using interview scheduling software?
When using interview scheduling software, it’s important to note the following pitfalls:
- Tech doesn’t replace human interaction.
- These tools are not just for interview scheduling, take advantage of all their functionality.
- Set the right expectation for candidates. Just because everything is automated does not mean you can let the tech do all the work with following up.
Last advice
At this point, you know everything you need to understand whether it’s a good idea to pursue video interview software to help automate your hiring process. If you’ve come to the conclusion that this is something worth exploring, we recommend getting 2-3 demos from some of the top providers to start getting a deeper feel for how this fits into your strategy. Remember to stay organized, and good luck!
Best Interview Scheduling Tools
- Paradox:Recruiting platform with scheduling capabilitiesAI-driven conversational recruiting solution
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