Halloween is very scary for this HR guy. I'm absolutely terrified by how much candy and chocolate my mind and body is subjected to on a daily basis.
As Human Resources pros, there a few truly scary things we dread any time of the year. Here's a non-exhaustive list of the types of things that make my hair stand on end from a professional perspective:
- Having the dreaded personal hygiene talk with an employee (not my hygiene, theirs!)
- 2 full days of interviewing Engineers!
- Being introduced outside of work as an HR guy and then being buried in requests to review resumes or complaints about job classifications
Thankfully the first two are rare and the third one is avoidable - I just tell people I'm an Engineer with a hygiene problem and they quickly stop talking to me and go away!
Of course this is just my list….I’d be curious to hear what makes the top 3 of other Human Resource professionals.
Some scary and pointless things are hard to avoid but can certainly be made less agonizing if we shift our perspective. One of the things I was weaned on as a young, impressionable recruiter was the old telephone method of scheduling interviews. Of course we had interview scheduling templates to try to make the process easier, but at the end of the day, booking interviews became an exercise in phone tag. With a tiny shift in perspective and the massive proliferation of mobile devices it doesn't have to be like this. Throw some smartly designed interview scheduling software into the mix and you can actually add some value to the process for a change.
How do you add value to the process of scheduling interviews? I think this is done primarily by making a great impression on your future employees from the initial point of contact. One of the ways Interviewer Assistant helps you do that is by ensuring your interview candidates see you’re branding (color, logo, and URLs) on their email interview invite and not ours. Never underestimate the value of communicating your employer brand at every step of the recruitment process.
A second way Interviewer Assistant helps make your first candidate point of contact more valuable is by ensuring you can easily share all the information your interviewees will need in one, easily retrievable email. When you are on the receiving end of the alterative, it doesn't exactly win the hearts and minds of your future employees! Having this info at hand and easily retrievable should support candidates in their interview preparation and reduce non-value added annoyances like unprepared interview candidates, interview no-shows, repeated calls for location, time, documents, etc.
The third and most obvious way an interview scheduling tool will add value to your recruitment process is by freeing up valuable time for your recruiters or recruiting assistants. In this day and age, there has to be something more meaningful for them to do then leave messages on voice mails.
If you find playing phone tag with your poor candidates value added, by all means keep at it...just don't be surprised if they end up feeling like a kid with a Halloween bag full of dental floss and carrot sticks!
Boo!
