Best practices for using interview plans

Follow
Available for Roles Super Admin, Admin, Team Member, Limited Team Member
Permissions • Manage profiles and view associated postings
• Manage company settings
• Manage feedback settings
• Manage Easy Book links
• Create and edit postings
Packages Lever Basic, LeverTRM, LeverTRM for Enterprise

Interview plans allow you to configure a templated interview "kit" based on the posting and stage with which a candidate's opportunity is associated. Interview plans remove the guesswork and manual setup associated with scheduling interviews, by allowing you to define interviewers, feedback forms, and interview durations as part of each "kit." This article will walk you through the best practices for incorporating interview plans into your recruitment workflow. Before proceeding, check out our help article on creating and using interview plans.

Review the interview stages in your pipeline

When creating an interview plan for a posting, by default you will only be shown the interview stages in your pipeline. While it is possible to configure a kit for any stage in your pipeline, it is best practice to only include interview stages in your interview plan. Review the stages in the Interview section of your pipeline so you can think ahead about the types of kits will you will need to prepare when creating the posting.

Interview stage tiles

To learn more about the Interview section of the pipeline, refer to the following help article: Understanding your unified pipeline - Interviews

 

Missing an interview stage that you would like to incorporate into your recruitment process? You can add stages to your pipeline via Settings > Pipeline and archive reasons. To learn more, refer to our help article on adding pipeline stages.

Refresh your feedback forms

As part of the interview plan setup process, you will need to select feedback forms you would like interviewers to fill out at each interview stage. Take this opportunity to review the feedback forms in your Lever instance to make sure they are up-to-date, before adding them to any kits in your interview plan.

Feedback form editor

Refer to the following help articles to learn how to set up and optimize your feedback forms:

 

Further streamline your interview process by setting specific feedback forms as default for any stage in your pipeline by clicking Set as default for at the top of the form editor and selecting a stage. For example, if recruiters at your organization are all expected to ask the same interview questions in their 'Recruiter screen' interviews, set a standard feedback form as default for all interviews that take place in the Recruiter Screen stage (the default can still be changed when scheduling the interview and/or in the interview plan itself).

Review your interview feedback visibility settings

Interview feedback visibility settings allow you to control which types of users can view the feedback of other panelists, as well as whether or not they must first submit their own feedback before they can see the feedback of others. These settings help to protect sensitive interview feedback and ensure that an interviewer's feedback about a candidate is not influenced by that of other interviewers.

Interview feedback visibility settings

To learn more, refer to our help article on configuring interview feedback visibility settings.

Save one-off interview kits as templates to re-use in the future

Even if you do not have an interview plan in mind for a posting as you are building it, you can add to the interview plan later on as you schedule interviews with candidates associated with posting. This can be done as part of the interview scheduling workflow. If you are scheduling an interview with a candidate associated with a posting that does not have an interview kit configured for that stage, Lever will prompt you to save the interviewers, feedback forms, and event durations that you are currently scheduling as the kit for that stage in the posting's interview plan.

Scheduler with pop-up extending form schedule button asking the user i they wish to save the schedule as an interview plan to the posting.

To learn more, refer to our interview plans help article.

Use Easy Book links for 1:1 interviews

While interview plans are ideal for creating templates for complex interviews with multiple interviewers, sometimes you may just want to book a simple 1:1 interview with a candidate. For this, we recommend using Easy Book links, which allow the candidate to select an available time on their interview's calendar.

Candidate view of available times on an interviewer's calendar as shown via an Easy Book link

To learn more, refer to our help article on Easy Book links.

Schedule kick-off meetings with stakeholders

Before you open a new role, schedule a meeting between the recruiter and the hiring manager. This will provide an the opportunity to align on the role's expectations, review examples of good and bad example candidates, and define the role's interview process before the first interview is even scheduled. Formal kickoff meetings ensure that your team moves quickly - without missing out on the best candidates. Once your team is aligned, build your interview schedule into an interview plan.

Was this article helpful?
3 out of 3 found this helpful