In this article, we cover the following:
With Guide, every one of your candidates receives a unique guide, a home base for their interview journey, personalized for them. Show candidates exactly where they are in the interview process and what the rest of the journey will look like. With interview plans, you can automate the delivery of interview schedules, prep materials, and standardize your preferred communications plan.
What is an interview plan?
An interview plan is the set of steps (stages) your company will follow to hire a candidate. Guide, unlike other hiring tools, exposes these steps to the candidate – meaning your candidate always knows where they are and where they are going. When adding stages to your interview plan, you can configure the following options and attributes:
Stage details: Set a title and, optionally, add a brief description to each stage. These details will be visible to candidates in their guide.
Communication plan: Standardize process and save time by pre-defining messages you regularly send to candidates at this stage.
Set up your company-wide interview plan
We designed Guide with recruiting operations in mind. We know how important it is to standardize your unique candidate experience, which is why the interview plan defined for your jobs begins as a company-wide preference in Guide. Skip ahead for how to customize the interview plan for specific departments and jobs. To manage your company-wide interview plan, you’ll edit your company-wide guide template.
Every new company Guide account comes ready to go with one guide template out of the box. This template is assigned as the default for your organization and is applied to all your jobs. For more on guide templates, read: Standardize your candidate experience with guide templates.
To update your company-wide overview template, follow these instructions:
From the Guide Dashboard, click Templates in the main navigation.
Next, locate and click the tab labeled Guide templates.
In the list of guide templates, find and click the row with a purple-tinted badge that reads “Default”.
You will be taken to your company-wide guide template. Look for the section labeled “Interview plan.” Here you’ll see a preview of the stages that will be shared with candidates in their guide. If you’ve not yet added any stages, you will likely see a message inviting you to set up your interview plan.
Click Edit to make changes and continue reading to the next section: Edit an interview plan.
Edit an interview plan
Whether you’re looking to edit the interview plan for a job, a specific candidate, or all jobs using a template, the process is the same. The interview editing workflow is broken into two primary parts: the set of interview plan stages (on the left of the screen) and the stage settings (on the right of the screen).
Add interview plan stages
Follow these steps to add a stage to your interview plan:
Add a stage by selecting Add stage at the bottom of the interview plan.
Type the name of the stage. Remember, this name will be visible to the candidate. When you’re done, hit Enter.
Continue adding stages until you’ve completely built the interview plan.
Delete interview plan stages
You can always delete an interview plan stage by hovering over the stage row and clicking the trash can icon.
Reorder interview plan stages
You can change the order of stages in an interview plan by hovering over the row and clicking and dragging on the dragger icon.
Edit an interview plan stage details
Click on a stage, and the panel to the right will update with the stage settings. From here, you can edit the stage details, such as the title and description. Remember, both of these attributes will be visible to the candidate in their guide.
Set default messages for each stage in the interview plan
The communication plan is a pre-defined message that you would like to surface by default when messaging candidates as they either transition into this stage or as the first message you send a candidate after they move to this stage.
Set the communication plan for the stage to standardize your process and save time by pre-defining messages you regularly send to candidates.
Click on 'Edit' next to the interview plan
Click on a stage, and the panel to the right will update with the stage settings.
Click '+ Add message'
Find and select the template you'd like to assign to the stage. Note: the message must be an existing message template.
Click 'Use template'
Add as many templates to the stage as you'd like!
Department and job-specific interview plans
The interview plan defined in your company-wide guide template will be applied universally to all jobs. But what if you want to customize the interview plan for a job, set of jobs, or even a whole department? Not a problem, Guide has you covered.
First, you’ll need to create a guide template. For instructions on creating guide templates, see: Standardize your candidate experience with guide templates.
From your guide template, edit the interview plan the same as you would for the company-wide guide template. See: Edit an interview plan.
When you’re happy, navigate to a job and update the job to use the guide template you just customized.
Apply a guide template to multiple jobs at once. For more on this, read: Use a guide template with multiple jobs.
Save time by assigning a guide template to be used by default for all jobs in a given department. For more on this, read: Creating a department-specific default guide template.
Customize a template’s interview plan for a specific job
Guide templates are a convenient way to standardize the interview plan you want to use for your entire company or across a set of jobs. However, occasionally, you may need to customize the interview plan inherited from the template in use on a specific job. Not a problem.
To make changes for a specific job, click Edit above the interview plan on the settings page for the job. From the window that appears, edit the interview plan like you would normally. See: Edit an interview plan.
You can always roll back your local changes if you want to restore the interview plan to the original settings of the associated guide template.