Scheduling phone and video interviews for Search Committees

Departments: Administration and Search Committees

Written: April 3, 2014 (Ruth Connell)

Purpose: This procedure describes how we schedule phone and video interviews.

1. The committee chair and Administrative Assistant will review the steps below before the process begins to determine who will take ownership of which tasks. Most of the tasks will be the Administrative Assistant's, but steps 2-4 could be handled by either.
2. Once the committee decides on a general time frame (week or weeks the interviews will take place), a doodle poll will be sent to the entire committee with all possible time slots (for ease, probably in hour increments; although interviews will only be 30 minutes)
3. Once everyone on the committee has filled out the doodle poll, the scheduler will look at all the times that everyone is available and work on scheduling needed rooms. In our 2014 interviews, we used the library fellow office for both phone and Skype interviews. If this practice is continued, room reservations will not be needed. For video (usually Skype) interviews, we have used the rooms in the basement in the Union in the past. If needed, those rooms need to be reserved through the Union (see Skype interview procedures for more info).
4. The scheduler then emails all committee members with all the time slots they should block off for possible interviews. This serves two purposes.
   1) it prevents committee members from making other commitments during times being offered to candidates, and
   2) if there has been a miscommunication with dates; this can be determined before bad times are offered to candidates.
5. Before emailing any candidates, the scheduler should create a new calendar solely for the purpose of interview scheduling (within Google calendar, select "create new calendar" under "My calendars"). This calendar will be used for scheduling both phone/Skype interviews and on-campus interviews.
6. It is easiest if only one room is being used for both phone and Skype interviews for two reasons:
   1) then we do not need to differentiate the times offered to the candidates, and
   2) we can schedule back-to-back (only 15 minutes between) phone and Skype interviews. If it is determined that Skype interviews will be in the Union and phone interviews will be in the CCLIR, blocks of time should be designated as Skype times (and these must coincide with room reservations made with the Union) and other blocks of times designated as phone interview times. In this case, these Skype/phone blocks should be noted on the calendar to avoid phone and Skype interviews getting scheduled back-to-back (15 minutes is not enough to move between buildings).
7. Although interviews are scheduled for 30 minutes, there needs to be at least 45 minutes between interview start times to allow for interviews going slightly long and bathroom breaks.
8. For interviews where Skype calls will be in the Union and phone calls in the CCLIR: Each candidate should be offered two Skype times and two phone interview times.
   For interviews where Skype and phone calls will be in the same room or if only phone calls will be offered: Each candidate should be offered two (max three) times.
   For both scenarios: These days/times should be varied: ex. Skype: Monday afternoon or Thursday morning; phone: Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon). These times must be chosen from those emailed to the committee in step #4. There must be at least 15 minutes allowed between interviews, so if Candidate A was offered 2-2:30, the surrounding available slots would be 1:15-1:45 and 2:45-3:15.
9. Before hitting send on any email to a candidate, the scheduler must go into the newly created calendar from step #5 and mark all offered times as busy with the event being named "Tentative": candidate name. This is necessary to ensure that the same time is not offered to two candidates simultaneously. Doing this step before sending an email ensures that only available times are being offered.
10. Depending on the time slots available, several candidates can be emailed at the same time. When one responds with their preferred time, the scheduler should go to the calendar, change the title of the candidate's selected slot from "Tentative: name" to "Name (phone/Skype) interview." Then the other tentative times for that candidate can be deleted from the calendar and those times can then be offered to other candidates.
11. Once an interview time is confirmed, email all the committee members with the finalized time.
12. Repeat steps 8-11 until all the candidates are scheduled.