Interviewing season is undoubtedly one of the most challenging periods during the academic year. Coordinating students, employers and staff resources to provide a seamless interviewing experience can drive even the most dedicated career services professional crazy. One school has excelled at providing a superior experience to students and recruiters by taking interview scheduling to the next level.
Currently one of the nation’s best business schools, University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business is always busy with on-campus interviews, and during their Super Week in January, the pace quickly moves from fast to frenetic. Hosting a variety of consulting and financial services institutions, the Super Week is dedicated to internship and full-time recruiting for these sectors.
“We didn’t have any interview cancellations the first semester we implemented this feature, which is unprecedented! Our employers were very happy, and happy employers are hiring employers!”
Jan Soechting
Director of Recruitment Services / University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business
Due to the highly competitive and sought after positions available, McCombs implemented an interviewing restriction for their students to help them be more strategic in their choices while allowing other candidates the opportunity to interview. This restriction was monitored through utilizing reports and directly contacting students about revising their interview choices. But the manual process was inefficient and time-consuming, and McCombs pursued a better method.
Having reached their limit, McCombs approached Symplicity about a possible solution to streamlining the interview scheduling process in CSM. Working in conjunction with Symplicity’s Professional Services team, they recommended a system update which would allow McCombs (and all CSM clients) to set an interview limit for individual on-campus recruitment (OCR) sessions. This new feature was launched and made available in all client systems during the winter 2013 update.
Now after two Super Week recruiting cycles, McCombs has hit their stride using the Interview Limit feature and are extremely pleased with their success since its implementation. We spoke briefly with Assistant Director of Recruitment Services Megan McAdams about her experience with the new feature and how it’s been instrumental in driving their services to the next level:
“I think it’s good to emphasize that the feature was a technology solution that truly benefitted all our constituents - employers, students and staff. Employers had fuller schedules and were able to interview an increased number of students who were well-prepared and more likely to move forward with them in the interview process. The feature encouraged students to give more thought, prior to interviews, to the employers they were genuinely interested in working for and allowed them to better prepare for those priority interviews, in addition to opening slots for students who may otherwise not have gotten the opportunity to interview. Lastly, McCombs staff was able to redirect valuable resources previously needed for the manual management of this process (running reports, trying to convince students to condense their own interview schedules, back-filling cancelled interview slots, etc). It was a win-win-win!”