An interview plan refers to how your hiring team will conduct interviews for a specific job. In one part, it refers to the steps or stages your organization follows to hire a candidate, such as application reviews, skill assessments, or face-to-face interactions.
However, an interview plan also refers to the planning and aggregated aspects of the interview process, such as focus attributes and interview kits, which are used to consistently evaluate candidates.
Creating a solid interview plan ensures all candidates for a particular job are evaluated against the same process and criteria which will lead to stronger decision making and stronger hires.
Create an interview plan for a new job
Note: Configuring an interview plan during the new job creation process requires that your organization has Interview Plan enabled as a step in the job setup flow.
Interview plans are made up of stages and interviews.
A stage is a section of the interview plan used to categorize a step in the interview process. Some common examples include application review and face-to-face stages.
An interview is a smaller section of a stage used to signify a specific interaction inside of a stage. For example, a face-to-face stage may have one interview with the hiring manager, and another with the other members of the team. Each stage is made up of one or more interviews.
Each interview plan, by default, starts with the Application Review stage and ends with an Offer stage. Everything in between those two stages is up to you.
Note: For more on Greenhouse Recruiting terminology, check out our glossary.
Add an interview plan during job creation
When creating new jobs, interview plans can be configured during your initial job setup.
To get started, select the Add icon > Create a Job.
After you have defined the job details and configured the scorecard, you will be able to configure the Interview plan.
If you used a sample template, blank template, or a custom job template, an interview plan may already have been created for you. You can modify this plan as needed.
Create stages
You can add a stage by selecting Add stage in the interview plan.
You can create a completely new stage, choose one from Greenhouse Recruiting's library, or copy a stage from another job.
Note: Only Job Admins with the user-specific permission to Create new job stage names can create custom stages for a job's interview process within your organization. Read more.
Once the stage is in the interview plan, you can modify it by selecting the pencil icon next to the stage name.
Note: The name of the stage is used in different reports, so creating many stage names may make reporting harder when looking at multiple jobs. For example, naming one stage "Face-to-face" and another stage "In person" may make it difficult to track candidates in reports. Learn more best practices for stage configurations here.
Most stages are used for labeling and organization. However, there are two specific stages that allow you to configure additional information when they are included in the interview plan:
- Hiring manager review: This stage adds a separate application review stage to the interview plan and automatically assigns it to the hiring manager for the job. This stage can be used when a recruiter is prescreening applications, but the hiring manager plans to further sort the list. Click here to learn more.
- Take home test: This stage configures an assignment that's sent to the candidate for completion. The take home test stage contains a unique upload link so the files and assessment for the take home test are all contained on a specific stage.
You can delete any stage by selecting the trash can icon.
Reorder stages
You can change the order of stages in an interview plan by clicking and dragging on the stage name.
Add scorecards or interview kits to a stage
In addition to adding, removing, and moving stages, your Hiring Team will also want to configure scorecards and other aspects of the interview kit for each stage. Remember, an interview plan includes both the stages and the details associated with each stage.
Click here for more information on creating interview kits.
Add interviews
After your stages are created, click the Add Interview button on the stage.
Like interview stages, you can select an interview from the Greenhouse Recruiting library, from another interview plan, or create a completely new interview.
Once an interview is added, you can modify the interview kit with the Edit icon. Click here for more information on configuring interview kits.
You can reorder interviews inside a stage by clicking and dragging the box.
Note: Milestones are a standardized way to think about interview pipelines across all of your jobs. No matter how different individual pipelines are, you can use milestones to run meaningful pipeline reports. You can view the milestones for the interview plan by selecting the tab at the top of the page.
Alert settings
Interview stages can be configured to automatically alert team members if a candidate has been in a specific stage for too long. To create or edit alerts, click Alert Settings at the top of the interview Plan page.
Edit an interview plan for existing jobs
As your team interviews candidates, Greenhouse Recruiting encourages that your team refine the interview plan often to remove unnecessary interviews/interview questions and ensure every topic is covered.
If your organization's Hiring Team needs to edit the interview plan for an existing job, navigate to the job profile (All Jobs > Job Name) and click Job Setup from the job page navigation bar.
Select Interview Plan on the left panel and edit the interview plan as necessary.
Note: Users with Job Admin level permissions can modify attributes on existing jobs without the user-specific permission Can create new jobs and request job approvals but will need the Can edit interview plans permission stripe included within their permissions to view or modify a job's Interview Plan.