Interview Scheduling: The Recruitment Problem Nobody Has Quite Cracked
One of the things I've been struck by in recent conversations about Avlo is how many questions come up around scheduling.
When I started building last year, interview scheduling wasn't even on the roadmap. But on reflection - and my own experience, both past and very recent, absolutely bears this out - it's one of the biggest administrative headaches a recruitment team faces.
At PwC we had entire teams of schedulers powering through tens of thousands of interviews a year. In my current role at The Gym Group I've spent hours trying to line up diaries to get interviews booked, when I should be focused on the parts of my job that actually require judgment - the bits that add the real value.
That's not to say scheduling isn't important. It's absolutely fundamental. But it's a pain in the ass, and I've seen plenty of automations try to tackle it over the years with varying degrees of success - never quite cracking it.
It's not just painful for the recruiter
The thing that doesn't get talked about enough is that the pain isn't one-sided.
The interviewer and candidate are often stuck in exactly the same loop. Both sharing availability that doesn't work for the other. Both trying to carve out time around existing commitments - sometimes booking time off work - only to find it doesn't work either. Round and round.
Think about what that experience feels like as a candidate. You've done the hard work. Good application, strong assessment, you're through. Then you wait. An email arrives asking for your availability. You send some options. A couple don't work. More back and forth. By the time the interview is booked it's been the best part of a week and four emails, and if you're anything like me you're already quietly questioning whether you want to work there.
Contrast that with receiving a link, picking a slot in two minutes, and getting a confirmation with everything you need. Before you've met anyone, the organisation already feels like it has its act together.
And from the hiring manager's side: an interview appears in their calendar. It has the candidate's name, why they were progressed, and what to ask them. They didn't request any of it. It was just there.
Scheduling done properly isn't just an efficiency play. It shapes how candidates feel about your organisation and how prepared your hiring managers are before they've said a word.
What we've built
There's no silver bullet. But there is a better starting point.
A simple prompt to the hiring manager to share their availability. A system that automatically determines the best slots from that. A booking link to the candidate - they pick what works for them. Confirmation goes out automatically, Teams or Google Meet link included.
That's what we've built. Not magic. Just the friction removed.
It's running on live roles. It works.
Where we're taking it
I'm not for a moment suggesting we've cracked it. But I'm quietly confident we've built something pretty robust - and we know exactly where we want to take it next.
Smarter handling of rescheduling and cancellations. More flexibility around panel interviews and different formats. Better data on time-to-interview that's actually meaningful rather than just a number. Two-way calendar sync.
The teams we work with know what they need, and the most useful conversations I've had about what to build next have come from recruiters who know exactly where the friction is in their own process.
If that's you - if interview scheduling is eating into your time or your team's - drop me a DM and I'll show you what we've built. And if you've got strong opinions on what automated scheduling should actually look like, I'd genuinely like to hear them.
Avlo is a recruitment intelligence platform for in-house TA teams. avlo.uk
